Aquila ( Eagle) Marin
Marin is one of the few prominent female characters in the Saint Seiya universe. She is also one of the first characters introduced in the series. When Seiya arrives in Greece Marin, being the only other Japanese person in Sanctuary, takes Seiya under her wing (no pun intended) and teaches him how to ignite the Cosmo that resides within his body. Marin prepares Seiya for his upcoming fight, which will determine who gets the privilege of wearing the Pegasus Cloth. After Seiya triumphs over Cassius, he leaves Marin and Sanctuary behind. Seiya returns to Japan in order to search for his long-lost sister, Seika. Although Marin is separated from Seiya, her wisdom accompanies the fledgling Bronze Saint and serves him well in the battles that follow.
Later in the series, the Pope labels the Bronze Saints as traitors and orders several of the Silver Saints, including Marin, to kill them off for their treachery. After it is discovered that Marin is helping the Bronze Saints, she is tied upside down to a cross in the ocean, and is used as bait to lure out the Pegasus Saint. Seiya arrives and has to witness Marin’s slow death as she drowns in rising water current. It is during this life and death struggle that Whale Moses reveals to Seiya and Marin that they may in fact be brother and sister. The battles with the Silver Saints come to a conclusion as Seiya and Marin defeat them, but the relationship between Seiya and Marin remains a mystery until the Hades Arc. While we are left hanging in that regard, Marin’s fighting abilities are revealed during the fights with the Silver Saints. Marin signature attack is the Eagle Toe Slash.
Being Seiya’s teacher, Marin can also use the Ryu Sei Ken.
The box for Eagle Marin is just like most other Saint Cloth Myth releases: a book-style box.
Thte contellation of Marin’s Cloth is the Aquila, the eagle that carried Zeus’s thunderbolts.
Overall, I was unimpressed by the Object Mode. It is just a big blue bird-shaped mass.
One selling point of the Saint Cloth Myth line is that you can use the pieces of Cloth to either clad the figure in armor or create their constellation. This is one of those cases where the execution of that concept seems a bit sloppy. First of all, the bird does not keep his balance on the stand very well. The silghtest movement in either direction can cause it to tip over.
On the right side, you can see the plastic connector under the shoulder pad.
On the left side, an awkward looking rod protrudes from the chest to meet up the shoulder piece under the wings. This makes for a somewhat messy looking and uneven design.
The base gear for Marin is her training armor.
This gear consists of generic knee pads, a shoulder pad, a forearm guard and an armored sports bra.
Like Shaina, Marin uses the same female Saint body, which has tons of articulation and flexibility. Furthermore, Marin’s high heels are shorter, which gives her better stability than Shaina.
One of the visual hindrances of the figure in the training armor are the serial numbers that Bandai stamps on the back of their Myth Cloth figures. It cheapens the beautifully sculpted body, by making it look like a tacky tramp stamp.
Marin comes with a second chest piece without the shoulder pad. This is so after giving Marin a boob job, you can attach her chest armor.
The design of the armor looks okay. The various eagle shapes on the armor save the design of the Eagle Cloth from being generic female Saint armor.
On another note, the hair color on Marin is not quite right. In the anime it is brownish orange, while the hair for the Saint Cloth Myth release is a chocolate brown. I am assuming Bandai went with a more natural hair color, as orange would have looked a little weird on the figure.
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Chest armor looks pretty blah! Unlike Shaina’s chest armor, there is no design and little definition. It looks like a big hunk of liquid metal from Terminator 2 wrapped around Marin’s chest
Bandai has also included a beautifully sculpted face for Marin, which is one of the figure’s strongest points. It did bring up a question, however, where Bandai came up with the sculpt for her face?
As far as I can recall, we never see Marin’s full face. The most we see is a partial of her face when she puts her mask on Seiya so that he doesn’t die from the poison of Pisces’ roses.
On a smaller, kind of knit–picky note, one of the three hair sculpts for my figure has two strands of plastic sticking up from them. At first I thought they were strands of my hair that fell on the figure, but that was not the case at all. It is actually something that can be easily overlooked and it even proved hard to photograph, which is why I did not include a picture of the defect.
I do like the fact that Marin’s head can move freely, unlike Shaina’s, which was restricted by the hair that draped over the shoulder armor.
Bandai has also included the means by which Marin can don the Cloth that she wears in the manga. These pieces are:
· Two bracelets for the right hand
· Metal undies
· A separate headpiece that is reminiscent of the Anheuser-Busch logo.
While this is a neat extra, I assume most people will display Marin in her anime attire, as that is the one that most people probably remember.
Right out of the box, I had a couple of issues with the paint of my figure. First, the right thigh had a couple of small paint chips where it connects to the leg. This paint loss is the type of thing you would expect to happen after playing with the figure for a while, but not straight out of the box. Second, there was a small paint chip on the inside of the left foot. This grew into a bigger issue as the the bottom of the foot continued to lose paint.
There was quite a bit of paint rubbing between the sash and the abs. By the time I was done photographing Marin, there were a few white specs on her midsection, which had to be cleaned off.
It is kind of sad that these issues occured on a brand spanking new figure, since the Saint Cloth Myth line is known for quality fitures. Marin’s counterpart, Shaina has not had such issues and I have owned her for much longer.
I really like the character of Marin and this release fulfills the need of adding her to the ranks of Athena’s Saints. I feel that some of Marin’s thunder was stolen by Shaina, however, since the figures are somewhat similar at the core. Also, Shaina was not marred by the issues that I experienced with Marin.
Now, for what you all (well maybe some… or maybe just one or two of you) came to see … some tasteful cheesecake photos!
