Kamen Rider Kiva

Before reading this review I recommend reading the review of SIC Kiva Emperor Form(here) as this volume shares the same fuestle gimmick as the one with Emperor so I’m not gonna elaborate much on that in this review.

Greetings my fellow brothers and sisters in toys collecting. Ghost_XIII reporting in to bring you yet another review. This time around, we are going to look at the SIC Volume 50 Kamen Rider Kiva.

The box is standard stuff for SIC with Kiva’s aesthetics.

Inside the box, everything is laid out on a single plastic tray. You will be getting:

-Kiva
-Kivat
-Flattened Kivat
-Diecast flattened Kivat
-attachment piece for Kivat
-6 fuestle
-Bloody Rose and it’s bow
-two ‘wings’ for Kiva’s leg
-Kiva’s signature ‘metal’ hands(left and right)
-holding things hand(left and right)
-splayed open hand(left and right)

and of course, instruction manual.

Out of the box, you gonna need to choose your Kivat(my preferences is the un-flattened) and install the fuestles to complete the figure.

On the first glance, Kiva doesn’t look like he received much redesign and that is quite disappointing. The redesign is too safe for my personal liking. That aside, the detailing is great as usual. I love how the chains are actual chains and not sculpted in.

Since I already covered the fuestles and their gimmick in the Kiva Emperor review, I won’t be speaking of them in details again as they are basically the same thing except the silver paint job on this version. You will be getting:

Garulu, Bassha, Dogga.

Wake up, Castle Doran, Buroon.

The metal content in this set is INSANE. I think this set has the most metal content in the entire SIC line. Every metallic silver stuff you see on the figure is metal. His shoulder pads, kneepads, wrist cuff and a huge chunk of his right calve is all metal. Needless to say, the chains are metal too.

Moving to articulation, everything is pretty much standard. The arm raise is a tad limited by the shoulder pad though but I don’t mind.

Forward arm raise is again limited by the shoulder pad and the chunky right calve does prevent the knee from achieving a full double jointed bend but its fine on the other leg.

Looking up and down is no problem but looking side to side may be a bit “cluttered” with such high collar.

An Iron Man pose to top things off.

For accessory, Kiva came with the flattened version of Kivat. This is exactly the same as the one that came with Emperor as far as I can tell.

This Kivat is made entirely out of diecast and if I’m not mistaken, this is an initial release bonus item that came with the set thus is why it is in a little plastic baggie instead of having an actual spot on the plastic tray. But again, as far as I know Kiva never got a reissue so I guess you can expect this in every Kiva set.

What Kiva would be complete without his Bloody Rose violin.

It’s nicely made with a creepy head at the end.

And of course it came with the bow.

The holding things hand can hold the bow decently and putting Kiva into violin playing pose is quite finicky.

“THANK YOU…”

The signature Kiva ‘metal’ hands are included and do a very nice job in capturing the essence of his demeanor like in the show.

The main gimmick for this set is the Hell’s Gate opening for Kiva finisher kick. Part swapping is required and checks this out, every one of those removable piece is METAL. If SIC have been using this much metal in their figure, I think they can proudly wear the name CHOGOKIN in their name.

Just attach the wings and voila. I try not to look at the empty slot at the back. Wish something was done to cover that up.

Kiva finisher can be recreated nicely. Slight note, putting back the right calve to its default mode is a big pain in the ass. There is an instruction on the manual on how to loop the chain around the calve but that’s not the problem. The problem is the end of the chain has a clip of sort like the one you can find on necklace where you need to push down a springy part to create an opening for the loop to clip on something. The one on mine is super tight. I took a pliers and squeeze the little tip to flatten it for easier pushing. That kinda helps but it’s still troublesome.

So, should you buy this?

I bought mine for about USD40 and I can see this set goes for a bit higher usually and I think for the dough I paid him, yes, it is worth it. This set is up to standard with modern SIC and I cant rant enough about the amount of metal in this set. The design may be a bit toned down from the usual SIC that I know of but it still looks great. I wish Bandai engineered a form swap gimmick for Kiva as I find the accessories in this set are a bit lacking but granted, that’s practically what he came with in the show. Bottom line, RECOMMENDED(just don’t go too high with the price).

That’s the end for this review. I hope you enjoy it. As always, any comments or critics(positive or negative) are welcomed. This is Ghost_XIII, reporting out :).