Athena God Cloth

Originally thought to be just the spoiled grandchild of Mitsumasa Kido, Saori Kido was destined for a much greater role on earth. She was in fact the reincarnation of the Goddess Athena. Amongst the enemies that Athena faced, Hades proved to be one of her fiercest opponents. In order to fight the newly-awakened Hades, the Bronze Saints had to cross the many layers of hell in order to deliver the statuette of Athena to Saori. Soaked with the blood of the goddess, the statuette has the ability to transform into Athena’s God Cloth.

Don’t worry Athena, I got this!

Turns out I don’t got this, but I did soften him up for you.

Though Saori Kido/Athena has previously been released in the Saint Cloth Myth line, fans have been waiting quite a long time for her to don her God Cloth in tiny toy form.

That wait came to an end last December, with this release. However, it has been increasingly difficult to pre-order the proper Saint Cloth Myth line and the EX line from Japanese retailers. However, thanks to Bluefin Distribution, we can get these toys stateside; though we have to wait a bit longer for them to reach us here in the States. So after the slow-boat trip to the US and ground shipping through the snow-mageddon that has hit the Midwest, I finally have the Athena God Cloth release in my hands.  Then I had to delay my review yet again due to an issue I had with the toy, which resulted in me having to get a replacement to finish the review with. I will get into that a bit later.

So let’s jump into this much-anticipated release

Beign the release of a God Cloth, this Athena comes in a big ol’ Saint Cloth Myth Box that lacks the window box style of the Saint Cloth Myth line.

The Object Mode for Athena resembles the statue of the Goddess Athena that resides in Sanctuary.  As far as I can remember, this Cloth did not have an Object Mode in the anime. As it turns out, the Object Mode for this toy is based of a design from the manga.

This is one finicky Object Mode to put together. The arms come off fairly easy and getting the skirts to align with the indentations at the base is quite the challenge. I found the best way to put together the figure is to first get the skirts plates in place. Then you use one of your hands to grasp the figure around the skirts. Then with your free hand, you attach the hands or whatever other part of the figure you happened to knock off while putting the skirts into their place. 

Another nitpick I have with this figure is that it seems pretty impossible to have the figure hold the shield at the top, like we see in the promo pics. Trying to move the arm to the top of the shield will cause it to pop out of the socket. 

But once you do get the figure together, it looks pretty darn impressive.

At the base of the stand is “Athena” written in Greek.

From behind we can see how the shield is held in place: a multi-jointed clear arm that attaches to a beige piece that connects to the back of the shield.

This is such a beatiful Object Mode!

Underneath the skirts is a second set of smaller skirts that are attached to the frame of the Object Mode.  These smaller skirts serve no real purpose in the Object Mode, except to occasionally get in the way of your putting the Object Mode together. But these pieces do come into play for Athena’s version fo the Cloth, so let’s jump to that.

The Cloth goes onto Athena in a similar fashion to how it attached the plastic frame to form the Object Mode. However, there are a couple of differences.

First, Athena requires a boob job in order to slip into the chest armor. There is a second set of boobs included for her, which are smaller and thus allow the chest armor to fit over the toy.

Also, this time around you use the smaller skirts, which were attached to the inner frame of the Object Mode and not seen. This is to allow the plastic “cloth” of the dress to show from under the metallic colored skirts.  There are also a few other difference between how this attaches to Athena and her God Cloth: The lack of the purple base atop the plastic marble base, the use of a clear holder to support Athena’s legs and two small pieces that were used as bicep guards on the Object mode become the lower part of the leg armor.

So you end up with a fully armored character that looks very similar to the Object Mode of the Cloth.

Overall Athena looks good in her armor. The only real nitpick I have with the fit of the armor on the Goddess is that the helmet looks a little loose on her head.

But you can alleviate this issue by simply displaying her without her helmet.  

Athena uses the Saint Cloth Myth Female Saint Body. So you get all that good articulation for this toy.

Besides the standard female Saint articulation, Athena has articulated hair pieces on the side. These pieces of hair have sockets that attach to ball joints on the sides of the head. 

For those wondering, Athena is not Naked. She is wearing some undergarments that just happen to blend in with her skin color.

The Athena for this release is slightly taller than the one that was used for her in her regular clothes. So perhaps Athena got taller during the run of the show, or Bandai needed to make her taller in order to accommodate the armor that had to go on her body. Odds are the correct reason is the latter.

As for metal content, Athena is pretty light on it. But that is to be expected with an armor as massive as this one.

This time around, I highlighted the metal content in the pictures.

All of the leg armr is metal, exept for the lower leg armor.

Articulation in the lower half of the body is limited by the massive amount of armor and skirts around the legs. However, it was a nice surprise to see that Athena can stand up on her own. Despite the figure being back heavy, the stand is not necessary to keep this Goddess upright. 

This possible thanks to the lower body also being heavy, thanks to the lower leg armor and the two sets of skirts.

As for the upper appendages, you can move the arms substantially due to the combination of the highly articulated figure and shoulder pads that can move out of the way of the arms.

The wings have a hinge on them, allowing them to move laterally. The wings also house a set on wings on the inside, which can be raised up.

The inner wings have a ring at the end of the inner wings which goes around a rod in the body of the outer wings. This allows the inner wings to move up in a majestic manner. Since the ring on the inner wings is made of a soft plastic, it can break very easily. Be careful when moving the inner wings up and do not try to raise them very high. Due to the softness of the ring, the toy will not give you a signal as to when you have moved the wings up too high.

So that you guys know why this review was delayed, let’s move on to things less depressing.

Athena comes packed with a few extras

3 faceplates

Also included are 5 sets of hands, which I didn’t take a picture of because there is nothing inherently special about them.

Two separate tops for the staff. The anime version.

The manga version.

Athen can also hold her shield up. The beige colored piece, that attaches the shield to the clear arm that is used to hold the shield on the stand, is used as the handle for the shield.

All in all, the Athena God Cloth makes a great display piece. But as an action figure, it falls a bit short in the action department.  The beautiful armor of this toy makes it is hard to get a wide variety of poses from it. But I am glad that Bandai has finally given us the Goddess Athena in her ultimate form.

This release marks the last “essential” release in the Saint Cloth Myth line. With Bandai shifting the focus of the proper Saint Cloth Myth line to Saint Seiya Omega and the new Saint Seiya CG movie, it feels like an era has come to an end. Sure, Bandai will probably release some more Web Exclusives and continue the EX line for the original series. While I am sad that we are at the end of the road for the regular releases based off the original show, my wallet will thank me. So you can expect me to start reviewing some of the older releases in the Saint Cloth Myth line and begin filling in the gaps for the characters that have not been covered on CDX.