Dragon Shiryu EX
Dragon Shiryu is the pupil of the legendary Saint Dohko, who trains the young Shiryu at the Five Old Peaks. Receiving wisdom that spans centuries from Dohko made Shiryu a very mature soldier. Also, thanks to Dohko’s training, Shiryu’s body becomes as solid as his mind; his fists becoming powerful enough to reverse the natural flow of the waterfall at Rozan. This feat earns him the right to wear the Bronze Cloth of the dragon. Sure it is kind of stereotypical for the half-Chinese character to wear the dragon armor, but at least it isn’t as racist as G Gundam.
The box for the toy comes with a nice sleeve over it, depictive all sorts of cool poses for the toy.
The box is designed to look like Shiryu’s Pandora Box from Saint Seiya.
The Dragon Cloth Object Mode is nice, compact and fairly easy to put together.
The only issue with it is that the peg onto which the shield attaches to doesn’t fit properly into the tight space it was designed for. The peg will bump against the front of the chest plate, which does not allow the tip of the peg to fit into the hole all the way. So you end up with the peg that is not secured and sticking out. This combined with the fact that the shield is kind of loose on the peg, makes this part of the Object Mode a bit finicky.
Keeping with the extras of this line, Shiryu also comes with a set of broken armor, to represent the Cloth after it has taken a beating from the enemy. Here we have the damaged cloth, resting on the frame of the Object Mode. The broken armor, like the regular armor, looks good in the Object Mode.
Once Shiryu armors up, he looks great.
He is not, however, without flaws.
There is a gap between the two sides of the chest piece in the front. It feels like the design team just went, “Eh. Don’t worry about the fact that it doesn’t close all the way. We are gonna slap another piece of metal over it anyways“. Only the top piece of the chest plate does not stay in place very well, so you end up seeing that gap more often than not.
Next to the original, the EX release looks a heck of a lot better and is way more true to the source material, despite its lanky proportions. Even the front parts of the feet on the EX are the correct color: black. These two figures serve as a great example for just how far Bandai has come along with this line. The Saint Cloth Myth line has gone from more toy-like collectibles to true adult collectible toys.
Once you attach the Broken Cloth to Shiryu, you can better marvel at its damaged state of the armor, since it is no longer confined to the small frame Object Mode.
Like the other EX Broken Cloths, the one for Shiryu looks great thanks to the asymmetrical breaks and cracks on the armor.
The shield is deliciously broken!
With the Broken Cloth, you can display Dragon Shiryu all hurt and stuff.
Extra points go to this figure because for once this armor actually looks like it would in the show. It looks very much like how the armor is portrayed in the Hades Chapter.
Anybody ever wonder how Shiryu’s Cloth is so broken during the Hades Chapter? During the previous chapter, the Poseidon Chapter, Shiryu fights Krishna.
But he takes off his armor, in the usual “I may have the strongest armor of the Bronze Saints, but I need to discard it to defeat you” manner.
So how did the armor get so beat up between its appearance in the Poseidon and Hades chapters?
Anyhow, back to the review. Like the past two broken cloths, you also get a separate set of feet for the character with broken foot armor. This really adds to the overall damaged look of the cloth. Kind of sucks for Seiya, who did not get this extra, since the people engineering the Saint Cloth Myth realized their mistake after his release.
As for plastic content, it is kept to a minimum. Only the covers for the back of the hand armor, the headpiece and the dragon arms are made of plastic.
The same is true for the Broken Cloth.
Articulation is the usual amount of articulation for the EX line, which is to say a ton of articulation. Shiryu’s minimal armor, allows him to move with very few restrictions.
The shoulder pads are held in place by the Cloth’s dragon arms, which use two ball joints.
These dragon arms holding the shoulder pads are somewhat finicky. However, these arms do facilitate Shiryu’s ability to pull off his signature moves.
The Rozan Shoryu Ha!
And the Excalibur, which Shiryu inherits from Capricorn Shura.
For extras, we have the usual assortment of hands, which have been featured in the review.
We also have 4 faceplates, including two with the eyes closed to simulate Shiryu’s being blind.
Shiryu spends quite a bit of the Saint Seiya series sans sight.
So it is only fitting that you can display this character with his eyes closed. But don’t mistake his blindness as a sign of weakness, in fact Shiryu can be just as deadly when he loses his ability to see.
While this is an awesome figure, I do have a couple of bones to pick with the design. First the headpiece is a bit tricky to put onto the hair. It isn’t overly hard, but still annoying nonetheless. The other thing I did not like about the headpiece is that the front part of it, the part with the dragon head, falls of fairly easily.
Another issue I had was how the arm guard with the shield has a somewhat loose fit over the arm; this results in the shield not sitting correctly or sliding out of place.
Finally, the fit of one of four feet is loose at the part where it connects to the leg. This effectively makes putting the figure into wide stances a bit harder.
The finicky nature of the figure, due to the issues previously mentioned and also the shoulder pads that don’t want to stay in place, make this a figure that you want to find that signature pose to put it into and not touch it very often. However, while this release may not be groundbreaking, it does everything it needs to: it succeeds at being the best articulated most accurate Shiryu in his V2 armor. Plus, like Seiya’s EX release you can display both the Object Mode and the Saint side-by-side, thanks to Shiryu having two complete sets of armor.
Bonus!