Wyvern Radamanthys

Wyvern Radamanthys of the Celestial Fierce Star is one of the top ranked soldiers in Hades’ army. He is also known as one of the Three Judges of Hell and even commands part of Hades’ army.

As one of Hades’ most loyal and trusted subjects, Wyvern is a major antagonist of Athena’s Saint’s during the Hades story arc.He even effectively thwarts several of the Saints’ plots to take down Hades.

So how does this important commander of Hades’ army fare in his EX Saint Cloth Myth representation? Let’s find out!

The box for this release is similar to box for the EX Gemini Saga. Bandai has forgone the Pandora Box box with the outer sleeve that features the product information and pictures; this used to be standard for the EX SCM releases. Instead we now just have the product information and pictures printed directly onto the box.

The Wyvern is a mythical reptilian dragon creature with two feet. The Object Mode of Radamanthys’ Surplice certainly looks the part.

I really like how unique the Surplice Object Modes are. The dark colors and creepy designs make these armors look like they were ripped right out of the pits of hell.

Now let’s see how the armor looks on Radamanthys.

The design of the EX Surplice is somewhat faithful to the one we see in the anime. Like many of the other EX releases, the EX Wyvern Radamanthys has a midsection that is too slim and a chest that is bulkier than it should be. Also, the colors are a bit off. The purple trim is a bit too shiny and prominent on the toy. Also, much of the armor should be dark lavender. Instead the armor is predominantly black.

Don’t get me wrong. The fully armored EX Wyvern Radamanthys certainly looks great. There is a lot of great detail on the armor, like the wyvern face on the chest.

The EX line launched in 2011 making several promises. One was that EX versions of the Saint Seiya characters would be better looking than their previous releases in the regular line. On that count, the EX Wyvern succeeds.

While the EX version does have its issues staying true to the anime. It still looks a lot better than this character’s previous release.

The EX Radamanthys is more faithful to the source material and much less goofy looking.

Having not looked at the original Wyvern Radamanthys, I had forgotten just how off the colors were for that release.

As for accessories, the figure comes with 4 faceplates so you can vary his expression. That’s a lot of unibrow for your buck!

We also get 9 hands and a holder piece to keep your extra hands safe.

Besides the fists and open hands, we get 1 right hand for holding another extra that comes with this set, which is an energy spear effect part.

Another feature that the EX line heralded was that the characters would be very poseable, even in their armors. The body of Radamanthys has the usual Saint Cloth Myth EX body articulation.

The mobility of the figure, however, is very restricted when you slip the armor on. The figure cannot perform a good Athena Exclamation pose, due the restrictive nature of the shoulder pads and also because the shoulder joints were slightly loose on my figure.

However, the Athena Exclamation is not a move Radamanthys could pull of in the show. All that really matters is how he can pull of his signature move, the Greatest Caution. He could pull it off well when he was fresh out of the package.  

This picture was taken earlier on, when the shoulder joints were still nice and tight.

These shots were taken after a few days of handling the toy. At this point, the shoulder joints on my figure had begun to weaken and even getting the toy into this pose was a bit of a hassle.

You will notice that the left shoulder is drooping a bit.

The range of motion for the lower body fares much worse than the top. The legs are quite restricted by the skirt armor.

Want to see Radamanthys take a knee?

This is as far as it goes. Yup, it’s pretty disappointing. Granted the wings would get in the way if I was able to make Radamanthys take a lower stance. However, both issues could have been alleviated with a little better toy design. The front skirt just needed an extra joint on the connecting arm to give the legs some freedom to move forward. The wings just needed a swivel to allow teh bulk of the wing structure to be raised, which would allow the toy to take a knee without the wings getting in the way. Needless to say, I was not impressed by Radamanthys’ restricted movement. Heck, even Radamanthys’ loyal subject, Harpy Valentine, can crouch much lower than him.

So at this point, I was thinking, “I guess I will just have to keep my Radamanthys in a standing position.” If only life would be so kind to me. The restricted movement is not the only issue with the legs. Getting ol’ Radamanthys to stand up and stay up can be a bit of a chore. Due to the extra weight on the back of the figure and the design of the feet, I found that it was best to center the weight of the figure on the middle of the feet. Keeping this guy upright meant finding the sweet spots on the feet and hoping the weight of the toy would stay on those spots. If not, the figure would fall forward or back. This issue was not made any better by the fact that the toe hinges on my figure were a bit on the loose side, so you could not use them to help balance the figure. One would think that the claws on the feet would provide extra support and make it easier for the character to stand. But that is not the case; the claws didn’t help one bit with balancing the figure. While I was handling the EX Wyvern Radamanthys, I kept remembering how much easier of a time I had getting the Athena God Cloth, with its skinnier legs and smaller foot surface are, figure to stand up.

Leaving the disappointing movement of the toy aside, let’s check out some positives of the design.

The tail at the rear of the helmet has a bunch of ball joints connecting the segments, so that you can twist and turn the tail as you please.

One thing that I really liked about the tail for this piece over the original is that the tail on the EX version stays together well. With the original release, I would run into the issue of the ball joints popping off.

Thanks to a swivel and hinge at the base of each wing, you can rotate the wings laterally and vertically. The vertical rotation, however, is restricted by the clips that cover swivel at the base of the wings.

Each of the purple wing pieces can also be moved independently of each other, so you can spread them out as you please.

Another plus for this toy is that the plastic is kept to the necessary minimum on this toy. Besides the wings, you can see that there is very little plastic used for the armor. The only other plastic pieces are the clips for the base of the wings, which are not picture because they are on the back.

So all in all, the EX Wyvern Radamanthys release proved to be less spectacular than I expected. Sure it’s the best looking SCM version of this character. However, this time around the EX SCM line fails to deliver a figure with good range of motion or a at the very least a figure that can stand on its own. If you are a big fan of this character, then you no doubt will probaly buy this releases. If however, you just want a cool looking winged specter of Hades, then I would recommend picking up the Harpy Valentine release over this one. That release also has its own shortcomings. But Harpy Valentine was way more fun to pose and handle the EX Wyvern Radamanthys.

Since I know that I probably sound very bitter during this review, I would like to leave on happier note leaving you with some Sweet Chocolate!