[Tokumonkey]

Rider Kicks Zi-O and the Build Armor showed up today. The base figure is... okay? It's comparable to other retail figures. There's no paint on the back side of the figure, or the Jikan Girade. He comes with a single swappable hand. He does not have the jointed hands from the past several Rider retail lines, but I don't consider that to be a great loss.

One of what I'd considered to be the upsides of retail figures has been "well, at least they don't require stickers." That all changes here, with three stickers, all for the chest of different sides. Athough most of the back of the armor is unpainted, the thighs at least have some color.

The Armor Time gimmick, allows more movement than I would've imagined. The most surprising element is that there's still some worthwhile neck articulation with the mask in place. The masks for Zi-O and Geiz are separate pieces, so it's not restricted by that. You *can* plug the shoulders into the upper arms for a more cohesive look (or stand-alone mode), but they can be unhooked to allow for surprising freedom of movement. Even with the armor on, the elbows can do a nearly 90-degree bend. Everything on the armor can be unhooked from everything else, so movement is really pretty good.

Getting stand-alone armor mode to hold together can be a little challenging. If you can manage it, however - and if you squint - you can display Zi-O and Geiz Build Armor next to each other.

I dunno how deep I'l go into this line. The size means it can't even serve in my Rider display as a rough stand-in until the Figuarts version is released.

I think there's something I absolutely hate about the design of Zi-O as concept that's kind of crystallized by these. With Decade, you had the hero taking on the forms, powers, and movesets of previous Riders. With Zi-O, previous Riders are abstracted down so that Build is just "the one with the drill" and Ex-Aid is just "the one with the hammer."