[Den-O]

"Do it Ejji! Henshin!"

800 years ago 4 alchemists created the Greeed. Incapable of human emotion and consumed by craving, the Greeeds sought to consume the world of man. But before they could they were sealed away by the first OOO, the king. In the present Eiji Hino was minding his own business as a part time security guard when Ankh managed to break the seal on the Greeed, releasing them back into the human world. Still craving to be whole, nothing could stand in their way without the power of the King. Though still incomplete himself, just a disembodied hand, Ankh stole some of their Core Medals and the OOO Driver looking to find a human pawn. Handing the Driver of the king and the Core Medals over to the hapless Eiji Hino, Ankh allows Eiji to become Kamen Rider OOO! What began as a begrudging alliance would spawn one of the greatest and truest friendships in Kamen Rider history, as the Greeed Ankh supported Eiji the Kamen Rider. Anything goes it's coming up OOO!


Packaging
Bucking the tends of this toyline, Ankh comes in the smallest box the line has seen yet. About 1/2 the size of normal Seihou packaging. Ankh and the majority of his accessories are in the top clamshell while another underneath holds several part sprues of cell medals. Seihou packaging as a whole has rarely changed in the years since this subline debuted, so there isn't much to comment on aside from the size change here.

Main Figure
This will be a rather short review, for the obvious reasons that this figure amounts to a forearm and a hand and doesn't really do terribly much. Ankh is a lavishly painted and detailed update of Kamen Rider OOO's trusty and cantankerous partner Greeed. The character has made several appearances in the Figuarts line, most recently with a Seihou of his human form. But for his disembodied hand form this is now the third attempt Bandai has made. And it excels in many ways that the others didn't. In my gallery below you'll see some side by side comparisons of the 3, but for now here's a breakdown.

The original Figuarts Ankh was erroneously labelled as "Unkh" and included as a first run bonus accessory with the original OOO TaToBa combo. This now ancient accessory included a personalized Ankh Tamashii Stage and the arm itself but that was it. No additional hands or accessories. This original Ankh is also notorious for being very incorrectly colored. Primarily being metallic Green & Red with no gold trim or detailing to speak of. Bandai's second go at Ankh consisted of a full blown accessory set. Including a Tamashii Stage arm, as well as the Ankh Arm itself, it also came with several different expressive hands including one that held several Ice Pops and one holding the TaToBa set of core medals. This was a huge step up from the first release. The Seihou attempts to to be the all purpose Ankh we've always wanted.

As I mentioned at the start this Seihou Ankh, is a lavishly detailed figure/accessory. As near as I can tell, every detail of the design is present at this 1/12 scale. And that's largely the biggest improvement on it's predecessors. I should also mention that this figure features some soft goods in the form of cloth strips tied around the base of the arm and flowing out from the back of it. Size wise it's about the same as the other two, just a hair smaller than the 2nd Ankh, and functionally it operates on a basic wrist peg. The last two featured ball joints cast in clear plastic which are bound to crack and break as time goes on just given the nature of clear plastic. The Seihou instead opts for a peg style wrist, with the peg extending out from the arm and each hand having a recessed hole to plug over it. Thankfully the wrist joint can swivel and has single hinge while the hand can still spin independently thanks to the way it's designed. So we get plenty of range out of Ankh even if they didn't exactly reinvent the wheel with him or anything.

The one big selling point of Seihou Ankh is that the peg hole on the back of the arm is meant to not only accommodate the included tamashii stage adapter, but also a Figuarts elbow joint. But seemingly the only real intention with that is to use it with human form Ankh. The hole isn't deep or wide enough to allow you to plug it onto Seihou OOO himself and OOO elbow joint is notoriously fragile as well. Frankly most figuarts have rather difficult forearms to remove if not intended to. So despite this being a cool feature, it's severely limited to interactions with only one other figure really.

Accessories
To differentiate itself from the older releases, Seihou Ankh changes up the accessories quite a bit:

5 - Alternate hands. That gives Ankh some alternate options for various expressions. Standard he comes with an open hand attached. But the additional hands allow him to specifically hold each of his other included accessories and of course there's a pointing finger hand as well. The one thing I don't get is why it doesn't come with a closed fist. There's some decent variety here, but I really would have liked that closed fist.

1 - Ice Pop. Rather than having three pops molded in between fingers on an extra hand like the last Ankh release, the Seihouincludes a singular pop that slides into a hand specifically made for it. Which sort of defeats the purpose of having it as an accessory separate from the hand, when it can only be held by one hand designed to hold it.

1 - Cell Phone. As Ankh tends to use a phone somewhat often, he comes with one here. Though sparsely detailed it's a fun little extra. Again there's really only one hand that can hold it so it probably would have made sense to just mold it into a hand. Neither of the previous Ankh's included an accessory like this, so that's a plus.

2 - Sets of Core Medals. One set of TaToBa medals molded together, and one set of TaJaDor. Again, these are very nicely sculpted and painted at this miniscule scale. But they also have small tabs molded into them allowing Ankh to hold them, that only work with the one hand included for them to tab into. Making the point of them being a separate accessory from the hand itself, moot. I appreciate the effort, but it just seems silly when they are only meant to be held and are 3 fused together medals.

4 - Sprues of Cell Medals. Each of these plain gray parts sprues contains 25 Cell Medals on it. That gives you a grand total of 100 Cell Medals. I appreciate that these are included I really do, but absolutely think this was the wrong choice on Bandai's part. 100 teeny tiny accessories for the collector to cut off the sprues and easily lose? No thanks. I included a couple of photos of them on the sprues but have absolutely no desire to remove all of them and guarantee that I lose a chunk of them in the process. Instead you'll see I included a few photos in my review of the cell medal piles that came with the old S.H. Figuarts Greeeds. I feel like an updated sculpt of the medal pile would have been the superior thing to do.

1 - Tamashii Stage Adapter. This small peg adapter is made to plug into the back end of the forearm at one particular angle and the arm isn't supposed to turn on this peg. You'll need to rotate the peg itself on the end of the arm to move Ankh.

That's a pretty good chunk of stuff, but is it really better than what the last Ankh came with? It honestly feels like those Cell Medals may have just been included in order to inflate the price. Making what should have been a pretty cheap accessory set, something that instead works out to about $40 USD before you pay international shipping for it. This should have been a 2500 yen set tops. Ultimately the last Ankh may have been just fine.

Final Thoughts
As I said before, is this really better than the last Ankh? In terms of accessories I'm not really convinced. Functionally I'm not totally convinced either though. While the cloth goods and extensive paint apps are all well and good, this still doesn't feel like a big enough leap to warrant the price. I think perhaps a premium color release of the last Ankh with more sturdy materials for the joint would have worked just as well. But as a big OOO fan and of the Ankh/Eiji relationship in particular I'm more than happy to own it. Especially given how this arm can interact with the human form figure. But Shinkocchou Seihou Ankh may not make sense as an upgrade for all collectors necessarily.