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The Kuroto Dan character in Ex-Aid ended up being evidently very popular with the audience. They made two Figuarts of him as not-a-Kamen-Rider, which is exceedingly rare a thing. Now, granted I’m pretty sure both were exclusive to Bandai’s Premium Shop, meaning they only made the number people actually wanted, but it’s still remarkable. There are two versions, and the one I have is Kuroto Dan Shin, representing him after his resurrection (look, things got weird in Ex-Aid after a bit) and when he was even more unhinged than he seemed originally. The other one is regular Kuroto. This one got all the fun facial expressions, while the other looks more at home behind a desk.
As Figuarts go, it is of course expressively poseable, but much less so than the usual fare. In this case it’s actually fine by me. The more limited articulation in the legs means the pants look more right, not having a ton of out of place seam lines for swivels and fancy multi-stage hip joints and such. The arms work on a similar concept, with the limited swivel range buried at one end or the other of the bicep. But the elbow joint is pretty visible regardless, so the illusion is less perfect. But on the balance, it’s probably one of the best looking and yet still highly poseable action figures of a dude in business-casual you’d be likely to encounter.
He also comes with a Mario-esque pipe accessory to pop back out of after each time he dies. (look, things continued to be weird in Ex-Aid) Two black Gashats make up the rest of the separate accessories, and everything else is hands, or option faces. The face sculpt sort of resembles Tetsuya Iwanaga, but in like the most uncanny valley kind of way. There’s certain angles with each face where it comes across, but also plenty where it just doesn’t. But the spirit of the character is there, even if the image of the actor is less so.
Kuroto transforms to Kamen Rider Genm, first in the form of a dark Ex-Aid, and then later as Dangerous Zombie in two different iterations. This figure is the later of the two, but ought to be mostly the same as the earlier Figuart of this suit; the original release is very very expensive to get second hand now. The main difference is the use of a Gamer Driver instead of a Buggle Driver like the original had. Oh, and this comes with a copy of Ex-Aid’s sword.
Unfortunately, Kuroto’s torso is too thick to be able to wear the Gamer Driver belt if you remove it from Dangerous Zombie. But if you have both Kuroto and Genm like I do, you can put Kuroto’s accessory Gashats in the storage slots on the side of the belt. I would recommend never doing this since they don’t slot in snugly at all and will jump to freedom never to be found again. That did not happen to me, but only because I only dared try this long enough to get an in-focus photo of the attempt.
I don’t have any plans at this point to obtain any more Figuarts. Poppy and Kuroto I was only able to get hold of because I caught sales friends were having, so I got (probably a little better than) fair deals on both. Genm I was able to order directly through an importer, and even that was kind of on the expensive side. But still cheaper than trying to get Genm Level X!
And with that, this weekday theme is wrapped up. Photober the 17th will kick off the weekend diversion, and then next week we’ll start down a new road. Come back tomorrow for the next gallery!
