Yo guys. ExplodingShark here. As I'm sure many of you are aware, CS Toys will be putting SIC Kiwami Tamshii Kamen Rider Hibiki up for sale in a couple of hours. So I thought maybe re-posting a review I did on my blog might be useful for y'all. So here it is.
SIC Kiwamii Tamshii is an off-shoot of the popular SIC series of figures which do various characters from tokusatsu shows in a very unique way. They usually take the characters and make a fantastically sculpted, horror-movie inspired version of the character. A lot of these figures look great, but are generally quite pricey. Kiwami Tamshii are smaller figures which are a lot cheaper, but don’t think that means they are poorly made. They are still fantastic figures.
Kiwami Tamshii Kamen Rider Hibiki is no exception. He’s sculpted to look very much like he does in the show, but with a slight SIC-style twist on the suit. A very muscular looking body for the well-trained oni and a head fit for a demon. His head is pretty scary looking with his horns sticking quite far out and looking magnificent. He’s painted in a shiny purple like he is in the show, which really works well especially when light reflects off of it. His hands are red, but the red fades into the purple as it goes up his arm which looks very nice. All the ‘metal’ parts from the show are actually plastic on this figure, put are painted in a nice silver which looks rather convincing and works well with the purple. Everything else is detailed and painted the correct colours from the show. Overall he looks excellent.
Even though he’s a small figure, this guy is still packed with joints. I’m not too good with the names of joints, so I’ll just tell you where he has joints. He has joints at his shoulders, elbows, double-jointed knees, the top of his legs, his ankles and his neck. The problem with the joint at his neck is that it doesn’t allow him to really look up. He can look down slightly, but not up. His hands also swivel because you can remove the hands to swap them with another pair you get. I have another problem with Hibiki, his shoulder joint is slightly hindered by his shoulder pads. He can lift his arms up, but only as far as his shoulder. So his arm would be horizontal with his shoulder. His legs are definitely the most posable part of him, being able to move all over the place. Having double-jointed knees is a huge help too. I don’t think this figure has many flaws when it comes to joints, he’s very posable.
Hibiki comes with quite a few accessories. Unfortunately, most of these are just things to put on his belt. There’s his tuning fork, disc animals, and a couple of Ongekibou Rekka holders. One of the holders has molded in Ongekibou Rekka, with removable heads, which I’ll talk about later. The other one is empty, which I’ll also talk about later. All of these accessories just peg into his belt. All of the accessories are sculpted nicely and painted. That’s pretty impressive considering the price of this figure.
As I mentioned earlier, Hibiki comes with another pair of hands. These hands come with molded in Ongekibou Rekka, but they don’t have heads on them. So you have to take the heads off of the Ongekibou Rekka which are in the holder. That’s quite annoying, since it’s just another two pieces of plastic which could quite easily get lost. Would of been nice if they could have just been molded onto them both. But oh well! His hands just pop out, and new ones can be pegged in. On my figure though, the left hand has become kind of loose. Not sure if this is the case with all the figures, but it still might be something to watch out for. You can also replace the holder with the Ongekibou with the empty one if you want to. Hibiki looks pretty damn cool with his weapons in hand, and it’s great they included this. Sort of wished they included a hand with Hibiki’s signature hand gesture too though.
Overall, I have to say, this figure is brilliant. Pick it up if you like Hibiki, Kamen Rider, SIC or anything. It’s really cheap compared to the bigger SICs, and is just amazing.
You can purchase SIC Kiwami Tamashii Hibiki from CS Toys here, if it's up yet.
