Casshern & Friender
Casshern is a legendary anime character from Japan, created by Tatsunoko Productions in 1973. Yes, Casshern and I are the same age. The story follows Tetsuya, an android with a human mind, who becomes Casshern to fight against robots that have taken over the world.
More recently, Casshern is part of Infini-T Force, a team of various Tatsunoko heroes.
The toy we are looking at today was first announced for release in 2015, and at that time it was a partnership with BU Toys and Miracle Productions. Now, through various company changes, it is finally released from Icarus toys.
This sample was provided for review by Icarus Toys.
The box is nice, with a fantastic illustration on the front of a flip-up cover. Inside you can clearly see all the parts in a plastic tray.
Casshern stands 20cm tall and is made out of diecast metal and plastic. The chest, waist, legs, an some of the feet are metal.
The toy has two different heads, each with a removable faceplate.
At 20cm, it’s a bit bigger than your standard 6″ scale. It’s more in line with something like a Play Arts Kai, which is maybe 1/8 scale? The articulation is good, but not as dynamic as a figma or Figuarts.
The neck is on a ball joint at the base of the head, and again at the chest. The shoulders are on ball-hinge joints, with a shroud that covers the gaps.
Elbows are double jointed, but there is no bicep swivel. Wrists are on ball-hinge joints.
There are ball joints in the torso and waist, providing movement in all directions.
The hips are on ball joints which connect to an inner-leg piece that rotates separately from the outer metal leg. The knees are double-jointed, and the feet have ball-hinge joints, ankle rockers, and a toe joint.
Casshern has a lot of variant hands, and changing them can be difficult. It requires a fair amount of force to remove the hands, and repeated changing can cause the wrist joint to loosen up.
Casshern’s pistols attach to the side of the hips, but the connection is really loose. I’ve actually never seen him use the pistols as weapons, but rather he seems to use them as boosters. Nevertheless, Icarus toys has provided pistol-holding hands. While he can hold them, they look a little silly with the white pegs sticking out the side.
Casshern is great and all, but I’m really all about his sidekick, Friender.
Friender is also made out of diecast metal and plastic. He’s fully articulated and just looks awesome.
The leg joints have clicky detents, but the other joints are just friction based. Friender holds a pose well, but there’s only so much you can do with a dog figure.
Friender’s mouth clicks open and closed ever so slightly. The head, neck, and torso joints also move.
An extra set of metal feet are included that have sharper toes. The effect is so subtle that I did not bother swapping them out, especially in light of the difficulty I had swapping out hands on Casshern.
The weakest point of this set is the generic display stand. It’s similar to a Tamashii stand, and it uses the same “claw” type system to hold the figure in place. I would have much rather had peg holes for the figure as it would have supported it better.
Really, it’s the combination of the two figures together that make this set worthwhile. The two just look so good together.
