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I'm happy today, I got the super-hard-to-find-at-a-non-extortionate-price SH Figuarts Kamen Rider Kabuto! For a great price too!

My SH Figuarts Kuuga Amazing Mighty Form should be here by Thursday too, so that's a big bonus! Can't wait to get that one, it looks so shiny, and I love the gold/black colour combination, which leads me to my next point...

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Here's a little background to my personal favourite Rider:

Kamen Rider Kuuga is a Rider who has a great number of forms: his initial weak, Growing form, his four base forms of Mighty, Dragon, Pegasus and Titan. He then has up-graded gold trimmed versions of those four, called Rising forms.

Then, he has the aforementioned Amazing Mighty form, which is a black-armoured version of Rising Mighty form. Then, he has his (not really) Ultimate form, which is a spiky-armoured Black and Gold form.

Finally (for the moment) he has the Decade multi-verse exclusive form called Rising Ultimate Form. Ta-da!

Kuuga is a Rider who is truly ready to take on any given opponent using his tactical forms, with 12 in total.

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Now, Bandai, famous for making Kamen Rider and Super Sentai toys among many others, also love to use [sometimes crafy and down-right low] tactics in their production of toys.

Like, for instance, their recent craze of Web-Exclusive SH Figuarts toys. This essentially means that only residents of Japan can order these toys, thus making gaijin (XD) toy-crazed people like me very, very disappointed and with the need of services of middle-men like EX_Japan over on Henshin Justice forums, who I HIGHLY recommend!

(Here's her thread by the way: http://forums.henshinjustice.com/showthread.php?t=33240 )

It's either use a middle-man or face the horror of secondary-market prices such as the lunatics on eBay selling a Complete Selection Kuuga Belt for $1200. Yes, that will sell...

Hmm, anyway, the point of my rant is that is should not be that hard to obtain these:


Kamen Rider Kuuga Rising Ultimate Form: Bandai's rising ultimate drop-kick to the face of foreign toy collectors. Not only is this figure web-exclusive, it's also being sold separately!

[SPOILER ALERT FOR DECADE MOVIE] You see, in the Kamen Rider Decade movie, Onodera Yuusuke gets turned evil in order to unlock Kuuga's full power (queue Black Eyes Version of Rising Ultimate Form). However, he turns good again not long after, shockingly enough (queue Red Eyes Version). [SPOILER OVER]

Bandai felt this was reason enough to make two versions of the same figure, with different coloured eyes. Now, if you follow SH Figuarts toy releases, you'd know that SHF Kamen Rider Agito, SHF Another Agito, and SHF Hana 19 Years Old Ver., have all come released with seperate heads.

I mean come on, the difference is only in the eyes! Would it've been that detrimental to their profit to just, oh I don't know, bundle the Dark Eyes Version head in?

I know this seems like a small thing to most, but in reality, it's another $60 for serious toy collectors.

...

And yes, I pre-ordered both of them from EX_Japan...

This week's news and or events!

Hey guys, this week has been pretty cool, got my Complete Selection Kuuga Belt, a really cool Kill Bill figure and paid for my Kuuga Amazing Mighty Form SH Figuarts.

Complete Selection Kuuga Henshin Belt pictures:

Kill Bill "the Bride" figure picture:

Stock image of Kuuga Amazing Mighty Form:

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I also finished watching Kamen Rider Kabuto this week, after watching for the last month. This has been an amazing experience, and personally, it has been my favourite Toku series. Great characters (Tendou gets bearable, even interesting pretty early), really nice designs, awesome music (Full Force and Lord of the Speed) and best of all... the Hoppers. What completely wonderful Riders. Down-and-outs with no discernible goals in life apart from being insane and awesome. Emphasis on the insane.

I really recommend Kabuto to any fan of toku.

Kick Hopper for life!

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More rumours for 2010's Super Sentai Series, called Tensou Sentai Goseiger (subject to change) have surfaced this week. Dukemon over on RangerBoard posted the following:

-The 5 Goseiger and GoseiBlack have a similar Henshin Device

-GoseiBlack's weapon is called the "Viper Bute", a whip and sword. (We've seen him pictured with it.)

-The 5 Goseiger's monster beasts combine to form "GoseiOh"

-GoseiOh and Black's Cobra Monster can unite, with the Viper switching out for GoseiOh's right arm

-GoseiBlack starts out as Red's rival.

-GoseiBlack's robo, AnkokuOh, is formed from the Cobra Monster (Black) and a Wild Boar Monster (Navy Blue.) The Cobra becomes the upper-body and head, while the Boar becomes the back and lower body. AnkokuOh is said to resemble SaiDaiOh.

These rumours sound awesome, I'm loving the idea of GoseiBlack's mecha being comprised of a cobra and a wild boar. Also liking the colour scheme that's going on here. I liked the design of SaiDaiOh, so I hope these rumours come true.

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On the non-toku side of things, I also got my mid-term break from school, so a whole week off! Yay! Plenty of time to catch up on my toku watching. After all, I do have 6 episodes of Power Rangers RPM, 4 episodes of Kamen Rider W, and almost 10 of Samurai Sentai Shinkenger to watch!

Be seeing you!

Recap of 2009 (part 1)

Okay well, just thought I'd start off the blog with a recap of the toku from the beginning of this year.

In January '09, we got Kamen Rider Decade, the Kamen Rider who celebrated 10 years of Heisei Riders. The series was pretty cool, but total fan-service. It was strange as a Rider series, in that the movie plays a significant part in the series, and is mostly what the story leads up to. There's also a final movie coming out in December, to finish the series, as the "ending" of the TV show wasn't the true ending of the series. Overall, we got to meet some pretty cool new Riders, and had a great cross over with...

Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, the perfectly alliterated title of 2009's Sentai Series. It's theme is (finally) Samurai! It also has an elemental theme, and a focus on Japanese character writing. It began as a very promising show, with the opening battle being awe-striking. It kind of hit a slump during the introductions of the countless new mecha. Hopefully it will pick up again though, it's still on until February.

Kamen Rider W (Double) is the Rider Series that is currently airing, and began after the "conclusion" of Decade. This is the first Rider to feature the main character (the eponymous Double) being created from two separate people.

Well, that about brings us up to speed on 2009's Toei Toku offerings.

Thanks!