[Tokumonkey]

We're more than a month into the series and we don't have a thread for Gavv? Seems like something that needs fixin'!

This year, I got possessed by a mad urge to pick up a couple of entries from this year's retail line, Gavv and Valen. The latter showed up yesterday.

One of the things that makes me curious about these lines is that, unlike most of the toy-aisle lines for modern Kamen Rider, there's no apparent gimmick beyond a well-articulated figure and, at least where Valen is concerned, some neat swappable hands.

Off the top of my head, every single retail-toy-store-Rider figure since at least Decade had some sort of gimmick, usually swappable something-or-other (armor, halves, thirds, tires, hoodies), but occasionally, full-on transformation like Geats' Revolve Change or Revice's Remix. The hands are the only thing I can think of to set these apart from, say, Rider Kicks.

The paint on Valen is terrific: The chocolate looks legitimately, in person, like chocolate, with the white and milk chocolate textures looking maybe a touch different. The "wrapper" parts of the suit look terrific, better than anything I'd ordinarily expect from a Rider retail line.

In addition to the type of hands you'd expect, Valen comes with a few nifty extras for both himself and Gavv: specifically, Gochizo-holding hands. (Here, I'll confess I didn't take a full catalogue; I'm writing this at work, and it was the Gavv hands I thought coolest.) I'm an absolute sucker for the "show this year's collectible to the audience" hands/accessories. The Gochizo are molded to the hands, and the Gavv hand that most surprised me is holding a Gochizo mounted on the Gochi-Speeder, so you can pose him setting it into the sword. Looks like we also get closed and open Gochizo hands.

The Gochizos, which are fused to the hands, are a different color from the hands, albeit not Gochizo colors. This leads to one uncomfortable thing about Gavv: his array of different hands don't match in terms of silver tone between the Valen pack-ins and his originals. Seems one is clearly black-painted-silver, the other molded.

I'm liking the series a lot, but I'm not yet sure if I like it enough to invest in Figuarts. Also, I'm unclear on the difference between the KRAF and this Kamen Rider Action Figure Gavv. The former looks like it has better painting. Is it a middle ground between So-Do, this retail like, and Figuarts?