Toybox REVIEW: Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters minipla BC-04 Beetle/Go-Buster Beet and SJ-05 Stag (Part 2)

In the second part of my BC-04/SJ-05 review, I'll be looking at the various combinations that can be done using one or both of these figures. 

Buster Hercules

Buster Hercules (or Buster Heracles if you prefer) is the combination of both Go-Buster Beet and SJ-05, and the main draw of this set (as its the robot on the front of all three boxes). The combination inolves swapping the Go-Buster Beet head with the Hercules one fitted onto the crane arm. Remove the back piece from SJ-05 and split it apart into three segments - the left/right "beetle" parts and the middle "jet" section. The beetle parts slot onto the left arm (and in doing so, join together too) while the jet piece is wielded as a weapon in the right hand. The Great Go-Buster head piece attaches to the back of the robot, and finally the gun section clips onto the chest via a fold-out peg.

To be honest, there isn't a huge deal different about Buster Hercules to Go-Buster Beet other than its obviously wearing SJ-05's parts. But despite the huge bulk added to the arms, they still retain the full level of poseability without being bogged down by the weight. Its essentially all the awesome of Go-Buster Beet with giant new weapons, more moveable parts and a fancy new head - what's not to love?

Given that SJ-05 is reasonably average on its own, its only natural that its because it plays a bigger part as arsenal for the bigger robot. As a powered-up version of Beet, Buster Hercules is a great figure and definitely worth being part of anyone's minipla collection. As far as combinations go, its also much more stable and fun than the three-piece Go-BusterOh.

Go-Buster Ace Stag Custom

Much like how SJ-05 can become giant weapons for Beet, the same goes for the other great single mecha of the show - Red Buster's Go-Buster Ace! While the end result is very similar to Hercules (jet gun in one hand, claw arm in the other, Great Go-Buster head parts on the back) the transformation is a little different, with Ace's arm folding back to the side of the shoulder and SJ-05 actually becoming the whole arm itself. The gun/engine piece also attaches to the back with the Great Go-Buster head.

While the overall look of Stag Custom is reasonably impressive, unlike the Hercules combination it does have a number of flaws. Ace's arms are much thinner and spindly than Beet's, and the legs lighter. This means Ace often struggles to hold outstretched action poses, whether it be the arms flopping down or the hollow legs and tiny feet simply failing to balance the figure. On a more personal note, I'm not really a fan of how Ace's arm just hangs there on the side - its show accurate yes, but it looks really silly.

Stag Custom is a nice bonus to owning both Ace and SJ-05, but that's all it is really. Hercules is the far superior combination, and Ace is a more dynamic figure on its own. Fun to play around with every so often, but much like the way the show will probably be with it not one you'll visit very often.

Great Go-Buster

And here it is...the big one. After Go-BusterOh's frankly abysmal performance as a toy and (in my humble opinion) on the show as well, it was hard to get excited about Great Go-Buster. So far it's failed to wow me on the show - the first combination sequence was well handled, but if anything its less mobile than Oh was and mostly rolls around hitting things with its oversized staff. With all this going against it, can Great Go-Buster impress?

The first thing to note about this combination is that, just like the show version, it contains a ridiculous amount of disassembly and parts shifting. Before you begin piecing it together you will have a mess of  parts ready to be pieced together like a puzzle. One of the weirdest (but strangely innovative) things I noticed was SJ-05's hind legs becoming the centre robot's shoulders to give its arms a clearer range of motion. SJ-05's "beetle" sections become the robot's arms, with the jet piece once again relegated to a handheld weapon. The lower half of Beet (the legs folded close to the pelvis) splits in half to become additional feet pieces, while the top half connects to the remaining rabbit and gorilla sections to become an oversized backpack.

After that you'll be left with a bunch of parts, which include Beet's arms, Ace's Sword, SJ-05's back section/Great Go-Buster head and RH-03's helicopter blades, boosters and Go-BusterOh head. The engine section fits into the chest section usually housing Gorilla's head, with the helicopter blades clipping on to make Great's extravagant chest section. Obviously the face clips onto Ace's head, and the remaining pieces fit together to make Great's enormous staff.

Now really I should probably hate Great Go-Buster, after all a lot of the things I hated about Go-BusterOh it does even worse. The chest sticks out ridiculously far and the whole combination looks and feels like a mishmash of parts thrown together with no rhyme or reason to it. But that being said, I actually really like it.

For starters, the new, larger headpiece looks far better than the tiny thing Go-BusterOh had. The addition of the weightier Beet pieces on the feet connect without a hitch, and give the Megazord a far better centre of gravity which means it can actually pose without the leg pieces falling off (I wish my G-12 was that stable). The poses are still limited because of the sheer size of it, but its so pleasing to have everything peg together tightly and have a combination that far outclasses its DX counterpart.

Finally just look at how imposing the damn thing is. The proportions look and and feel better than other interpretations of the combination, and the sheer size of its weapon makes it feel like a special five-piece combo that is to be reckoned with. At the moment I'm enjoying displaying the individual components on my shelf more, but this is definitely one I can see displaying in the future.

It has its flaws, but Great Go-Buster is definitely a surprise hit. It has restored my faith in combined Go-Busters mecha, and got me eagerly anticipating the minipla unveiling of the forthcoming LZ-06 Tategami Raioh. It might still be "Time for Buster" a little while longer.

Toybox REVIEW: Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters minipla BC-04 Beetle/Go-Buster Beet and SJ-05 Stag (Part 1)

While the Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters series has been walking the line of mediocrity in terms of story and characters recently, it's still mecha fights are still both a big draw and highlight. Focusing far more on the singular mecha than the combined forms, its made for a nice change of pace and a reminder that Sentai robots are made up of individual parts. With each robot also having its own transforming gimmick (whether it be one or two modes), this has also made the toys a lot more interesting. Ace, GT-02 and RH-03 have all been fairly solid even if the combined form of Go-BusterOh was ridiculously lacklustre (both in show and toy form). With the introduction of two rangers in the form of Beet and Stag Buster, this also means two new additions to the mini-pla line. With lots of different modes and combinations on offer with this set, I thought it better to divide the review into two different sections. The first will look at the individual mecha - Beet Buster's BC-04 Beetle (which like Ace has its own robot mode in the form of Go-Buster Beet) and Stag Buster's SJ-05 Stag.

BC-04 is a two-box model kit, while SJ-05 is just the one. Those who are sticklers for accuracy beware that these two are going to look very dull compared to their onscreen counterparts without a decent paintjob. BC-04 is moulded in a sickly dull gold colour while SJ-05 is a flat grey. I took these two as challenge to my paint skills and decided to give them a full overhaul, to which I was pretty pleased with the results. My pictures are of the painted versions, but if you'd like to see what they look like with stickers only then I highly recommend this blog post.

BC-04 Beetle

Following the instructions, the mode you end up with after completing the model kit is Go-Buster Beet (the robot mode), so I'm going to start with that for the review. The first box is the entire top half of the robot, while the second box is just the legs. This may not sound like much for the second box, but the legs have a fair bit of bulk to them. Height-wise the figure stands roughly shoulder to shoulder with Go-Buster Ace, so round about 4.5".

Beet has lots of articulation to show off, including a ball jointed head (although its up-down motion is limited),  swivel and hinge-jointed arms, rotating waist, swivel/hinged legs and finally ball jointed feet. The blades on the legs are removable and able to be folded out and wielded (not pictured: see here). Like the show version the figure has an extendable (right) fist, which extends and retracts by pulling on the fist itself. I'm not a big fan of how the Buster Hercules head simply slots onto the crane, because it makes the crane piece look uneven and simply looks plain weird there. Thankfully its pretty small so does go by unnoticed a lot of the time.

Transforming into animal mode (which as you have probably guessed is a beetle) requires quite a bit of taking the figure apart and reassembling, but then the show itself doesn't skimp upon this so I guess its accurate in that respect. The leg sections are brought up closer to fit properly around the pelvis section, and the head tucked away for the beetle head to fold down. The blade sections fold out and fit on the sides to make the legs, and finally the entire arm frame (from the tip of the left hand to the tip of the right) slots in underneath the body for the horn section. While the robot mode was akin to Ace, BC-04 completely trumps in animal mode in terms of size. The kit looks and feels like a big chunky beetle and motion in the horn and legs gives it just much poseability as Ace's Cheetah mode.

Finally there's crane mode, BC-04's vehicle of choice. Again the legs/blades and arms/horn sections need to be removed, with the arms straightened out and the hook section folded and closed to make a proper crane hook. The side panels swing out to make out the rest of vehicle, with the blades clipping onto the sides and the crane arm slotting onto the top. Much like the beetle's bulk, the overall vehicle is longer than you might expect and the crane arm has a full 360 degree range of motion AND is hinged. However this mode shows off the kit's main flaw, which is a lack of rollable wheels. In fact, its wheels are pretty thin and pathetic in order to accommodate all the other modes.

Despite the colour issues, BC-04/Go-Buster Beet is a stellar figure - on par if not better than Go-Buster Ace, who's been the best of the line so far. Ace may have it beat in things like colour and wheels, but Beet is a sturdier, bulkier figure with much more play value. Even if you aren't a huge fan of Go-Busters but enjoy the Sentai minipla, this is definitely one to consider.

SJ-05 Stag

Where Jin Masato goes, his buddyroid and partner Beet J Stag isn't far behind! Since Stag is a Go-Buster himself, rather than co-pilot BC-04 he has his own Buster Machine - SJ-05 Stag! More akin to the GT-02 and RH-03, SJ-05 only has two modes. The animal is again a beetle (this time in Stag variety!) and the vehicle a jet.

Though much smaller beetle than his gold counterpart, Stag still has quite a bit going for it. The legs rotate where they connect to the body, and the pincers are also fully moveable.

The transformation into jet mode is seamless, involving no parts swapping at all. The front legs and pincers fold in, allowing the wings to swing down and then finally the cockpit section comes down from the middle. Jet mode looks great, but there isn't really a lot to say about it since it doesn't have any additional play value. Sure parts move, but none of them move on a jet itself.

SJ-05 is a good kit, but nothing overly special. While RH-03 had a lot more novelty from having unique modes, Stag's novelty comes more from being able to combine with other kits. Thankfully its unlikely you'd be getting this without BC-04 in tow, so the kit is able to steal a bit more spotlight than it probably deserves.

In the next part we'll be looking at the three combinations these two can create: Buster Hercules (BC-04 and SJ-05), Go-Buster Ace Stag Custom (Ace and SJ-05) and the gigantic five-piece Great Go-Buster...

Fun with Fourze: S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Fourze Module Set 01

In my earlier review of S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Fourze I said that despite him being a great figure, just how great he can be depends on how much money you're prepared to spend on him aside from the initial figure. At the time of writing that only the first module and stand/effect sets had been released, now as we come to end of Kamen Rider Fourze a total of four module sets have been released, with perhaps the possibility of more to come. Initially I didn't have plans to buy anything else outside of the stand set (because I'm a sucker for character-centric stands) but when AmiAmi had Module Set 01 on sale for 500 yen (£4/$6), it seemed too good an offer to pass up. Included in this set are the following switches.

Switch 02 Launcher (Right Leg)
Switch 04 Radar (Left Arm)
Switch 05 Magic Hand (Right Arm)
Switch 06 Camera (Left Arm)

Packaging is a typical black Figuarts style box (albeit smaller) with some Fourze style pattern and an image of the character in the bottom corner. The back has an image of all four modules attached to the figure, and included in the tray is also five interchangeable switches that can be inserted into the Fourze driver (two versions of magic hand, two of camera and one of launcher). These switches are tiny (although they have tabs attached which need to be taken off to fit in the belt), so to save me the stress of not losing any of them, I've not changed any of them while taking photos for this post.

First up we have launcher, which is easily my favourite of the bunch. To attach it to Fourze you need to remove the lower leg section and insert the module, and then plug the foot into it. There's some really nice panel detailing on the launcher and the missiles are removable, which adds to little extra to action poses.

Radar (like all of the other arm modules included in the set) is attached by replacing the forearm and then popping a hand onto the module. While it isn't a particularly interesting module, it is one of the more commonly used ones in the early episodes of Fourze and does include a hinged dish (which I hadn't realised when taking the photos). Camera is a similar piece, but much larger and arguably one of Fourze's sillier switches. The detailing is really nice and I like the hinged viewpiece, but its not one I can ever see me displaying Fourze with.

The same goes for Magic Hand, but for slighly different reasons. In terms of features its certainly the centrepiece of the set, boasting an impressive amount of articulation and a fully moveable claw. The downside is that its simply too heavy for the arm, so any interesting posing without the aid of a stand usually goes the way of the figure flopping over.

I can see me definitely playing around with Launcher again and perhaps Radar (since they go together pretty well) but Camera and Magic Hand don't really strike me as things I'd use for display pieces. It makes sense for Bandai to package some of the interesting switches with dud ones (although these are in numerical order too) so that completists will be obliged to buy every set. I still don't think these module sets are particularly worth it (even if they were all 500 yen a pop), but it is nice to own a module for every limb. On a different note, its also made me want that stand set even more...