I got a pair of Busou Shinki last month! I bought it from a specialty store in Greenhills that does Japanese imports. These two were bundled together since their equipment combine.
First up is Tigris. Her primary armor configuration is basically to have most of her stuff attached to her back as a large jetpack, while she carries a huge sword up front. I suppose the idea is that she charges forward like a powered-up lancer. It looks bad-ass and all, but I'm kinda disappointed in this mode because the backpack design is kinda simple.
In contrast, this second mode has an extreme amount of part-swapping. Tigris swaps her legs for the large jets that formed her backpack, and swaps her arms for the claw and plating parts. It's lighter and uses less parts, but I feel it's more interesting in terms of showing off the design space of the toyline.
Here we have Vitulus, designed to provide long-range cover fire. You can see here that she has a lot of big guns. In her primary mode she's riding a small, well-armed hoverpod. All in all, a relatively interesting mode.
Vitulus can also just ride the large gun separately. It's okay for what it is, but this mode blurs the line from armor to vehicle, to "part of a fortress playset".
As I mentioned, these two are a pair since the armor parts join together. In this case, it forms some sort of hoverbike vehicle. The idea is nice on paper but the parts feel a bit as if they were just mashed together.
A large mecha mode! It's somewhat oddly proportioned, but it's okay -- just okay.
Overall, I like Tigris and Vitulus. There's a lot of different modes, a lot stuff to do. True, some of the modes can be funny looking, but the variety makes up for it. Busou Shinki have a lot of small parts, so you can't absently manhandle them like you would a Transformer; you have to be careful and give attention to your Shinki. On the upside, they look really good on a shelf. I'll be getting more of these.
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