[Kamen Rider Die]

OPEN YOUR EYES
FOR THE NEXT FIGURE-RISE



Hey, I built a Kamen Rider Faiz kit today! This isn't a super-thorough Kurona-style review, but I do have some thoughts to share.

Mainly, I almost completely hated building this kit. It's easily the most unsatisfying build I've done yet, with a mixture of frustrating stickers (both amount and application); lack of stability in construction; accessories and options that exist in an uncanny valley where they're sort-of nice to have, while being wrong enough to go unused; and ten pounds of instructions in a five-pound bag.

But! But.

Let me get into those complaints first.

--"TEN POUNDS OF INSTRUCTIONS IN A FIVE-POUND BAG"--

Like, here's the two-step process on building the torso:



Oh my God, fuck you. That is an absurd amount of overlapping steps, enough that they probably deserved more than a half-page. (The arms are just as bad, with a weird Do These Five Things At Some Point And In Some Order unhelpfulness.) I get that certain parts of Faiz, like incorporating the Axel gimmick, need some complexity. There's a part of me that weirdly appreciated how much extra work I was getting out of this kit, in a mixture of thriftiness and masochism. But the instructions treat building this beast with the same level of detail as building a beginner-level kit like W, and that's nuts. Nearly every part of the instructions have three to four things happening at once, and that's totally unnecessary. Just add a couple more pages to the instructions! Let this goddamn thing breathe!

--"ACCESSORIES AND OPTIONS THAT EXIST IN AN UNCANNY VALLEY WHERE THEY'RE SORT-OF NICE TO HAVE, WHILE BEING WRONG ENOUGH TO GO UNUSED"--

It's really two things, if I'm being honest. Most of his Faiz Gear is frustrating to sticker (the phones) and build (THE PHONES), but the end result is neat. The biggest offenders are the Faiz Edge and the Axel Form.

The Faiz Edge is all-silver with one sticker on the hilt. In a kit with a billion accent stickers and red plastic, why is the blade of the Faiz Edge left silver?! They included two different sticker options for the phone, but left nothing for the goddamn sword? So dumb. Basically makes the Faiz Edge a worthless addition.

Axel Form is the biggest offender, though. Here he is:



I mean, because I barely remember Faiz (a show I watched two months ago), I was pretty jazzed at how this thing was coming together! The chest panels rotate up, the chest looks pretty cool, the Faiz Axel watch-or-whatever looks good... I was digging this addition to the kit. So nice of them to throw this mode in!

Then I got to the second-to-last page of the instructions, the thing that tells you how to put the Faiz Axel on his wrist, and there's a little note: "Painting is required to recreate the Faiz Axel form." Wait, what?

And then I realized OH SHIT AXEL ISN'T RED. They give you all the pieces to make Axel Form, they have you apply the chest stickers as the second thing you build, but you'd need to paint every red line white if you want it to be accurate. All of the extra steps, and they're wasted. Super fun to realize at the end!

--LACK OF STABILITY IN CONSTRUCTION--

I can't move his right arm without it disengaging from the shoulder. Moving the chest panels to rotate them pops them off, every time. The tiny silver pieces on his pauldrons like to pop off about half the time I move his arms in or out. It's not like it's a disaster, but there's just enough frustration in posing him that I try not to spend too much time posing him.

--FRUSTRATING STICKERS (BOTH AMOUNT AND APPLICATION)--

Scroll back up to that photo of the chest instructions. It takes sixteen stickers to do the Axel chest, a thing you can't even use unless you opt to paint the model kit into only that form. A big chunk of those stickers need to go slightly underneath plastic. The head and chest have several stickers that are very thin and need to curve, literally the two worst attributes for stickers. Several accessory stickers go on top of raised details, making sure that the sticker bubbles and looks unsightly up-close. Applying the stickers is a bummer, and I don't remember feeling that way about Ex-Aid or Genm, who had way more stickers. These, there're less, but they take twice as long to apply. It sucks. It sucks so bad.

But. But.



Oh my God, I love how it looks. It's so pretty. It makes the SHF Faiz (an older figure, to be sure) look like hot garbage:



And the FRS Faiz cost so much less! There's a term that gets tossed around for some recent Transformers: mini-Masterpieces. The Masterpiece line is the ultra-high-end collector line, with ridiculous engineering capable of making a real car look like a cartoon robot man. What's been happening lately is that the main line toys, the ones you buy at Target or wherever, they're executing some of those engineering tricks with less parts and for a third to a fourth the cost. This FRS Faiz looks like a goddamn Seihou to me, but a fraction the cost. That's insane.

Equally insane is how my emotions swung wildly in this process. (Inoue would be so proud!) I was so mad at Bandai when I was building this tiny man, and I was so happy with them when he was done. The most gorgeous FRS I've put together yet, and one I'll cherish as long as I don't remember what I went through building him.