Now obviously it goes without saying that all Shinkis are wonderful and are to be loved. However, whilst all Shinkis are equal, some Shinkis are regrettably more equal than others.

So basically, are there any Shinki toys that, compared to the usually extremely high standard for the line, just fall a little flat?

Now I can't really comment as I only own Espadia (though Lancamento and Strarf Lavina are on their way from Mandarake) but on looks alone, I have a candidate: Vitulus. Her base design is alright I suppose (though not the best by a long shot), but her armoured form is just a mess. I don't quite know what they were going for- it kinda makes her look like a grotesquely bloated, legless pregnant woman with cannons strapped to her- which, whilst potentially fitting in something like Warhammer 40,000, has absolutely no place in Busou Shinki. Is it supposed to be a gun platform? Some kind of mobility unit? On top of that, from the looks of things the modularity/parts-mixing element seems to be pretty limited with her, and the combined form with Tigris looks pretty dumb in all honesty.

Also, her alternate faceplate is really, really creepy.

So anyway, that's my (rather uneducated) opinion. What's yours?

general consensus is Benio, with Xiphos in not-quite-so-close second, unless moods have changed since then. They're fairly... low-quality, even among initial waves. Especially in the headsculpt-compared-to-artwork category.

People also don't have much nice to say about Howling/Maochao's armor.

Xehn wrote:general consensus is Benio, with Xiphos in not-quite-so-close second, unless moods have changed since then. They're fairly... low-quality, even among initial waves. Especially in the headsculpt-compared-to-artwork category.

People also don't have much nice to say about Howling/Maochao's armor.

I agree to an extent with these, as they definitely have a lot of untapped potential and with the improvements we saw in the quality of sets from their initial release to some of the very last releases they could do a much, MUCH better job with those figures with a remake.

I have to say a bigger example of the exact same thing for me is that of Howling and Maochao. Such simple ideas but with so much missed potential. I can only imagine how well those two girls would could be done now and they'd be right at the top of my list of redesigns or mk.2s. I really want to like the versions we have but I can't.