Lancelot Albion

Code Geass was the second series to receive an inclusion in Bandai’s then fresh new Robot Spirits line. The sixth Code Geass figure was the Lancelot in its end show Albion incarnation. Although Code Geass had a fair share of cool knightmare fame designs, poster boy Lancelot’s white and gold color scheme really jumped out at me and the nicely animated action scenes from the show didn’t hurt either. I wasn’t a huge fan of the bulky flight pack it gained around halfway through the show, so the compartmentalized version on the Albion was a welcome change.

Albion comes in the standard Robot Spirits box. A single plastic tray houses the figure and most of its accessories, with the remaining housed in sealed plastic bags.

The base figure stands 12cm tall to the tip of its antenna, with very little paint imperfections. The cockpit hump on its back makes it a bit top heavy, but another feature detailed below easily fixes that problem.

Head movement is severely limited, allowing only slight horizontal motion on either side. It’s also important to watch for the cheek horns as they tend to get stuck inside the collar while turning the head.

The leg articulation allows for perfect kneeling action. Combined with the good hip rotation, makes the figure pass the Iron Man pose test with flying colors. Unfortunately, the raised part of the hips dig into the torso and restrict the sideways motion, making it to difficult to pull off the Lancelot’s iconic poses. The joints also could use a bit of tightening as picking up the figure can sometimes cause the legs to bend a little under gravity. Foot articulation is fine and does what it needs to do.

Arm articulation is the normal fare. Rather than have the shoulder armor rotate around the top of the arms, they’re mounted on a separate joint at the top. Normally I don’t like this design choice very much as it occasionally leads to the shoulder armor popping off during handling, but it’s generally not obstructive on the Albion and easily replaceable.

Knightmare frames are generally very small mecha compared to mobile suits, but they have several defining features. The cockpit hump is one of them and has a hatch you can open to slide out the pilot seat.

Another feature is the landspinner system, which consists of a wheel mounted on a movable arm and attached to the ankle. This allows knightmare frames to zip around the ground at high speeds in a manner not unlike the armored troopers from Votoms. This is also a great way to balance the figure on its legs.

The hands are mounted on a standard ball joint and can be a bit of a pain to switch around the first few times. It’s advisable to widen the hand holes just a tad to make it easier. Additionally, for some unknown reason removing the hands allows you to slide the large gold gauntlet off the forearms.

The Albion comes with four standards pairs of hands: closed fist, splayed palm, sword holding and gun holding. The first weapon accessory is a pair of Maser Vibration Swords in their activated form. While the figure does have a pair of removable sheathes on its cockpit hump, the swords can’t actually be stored in them. Instead you get bladeless effect part handles. I would’ve preferred if the figure came with deactivated swords that can be stored inside the sheathes or that the red swords could have their crossguards folded for storage, but that’s a minor nitpick at best.

The second weapon is a pair of non-transformable Super VARIS Rifles: One in normal mode and one in Hadron Cannon mode. This is the one area where the Composite Ver.Ka Albion has a leg up on the Robot Spirits version as that one can change both its rifles between either configuration. Either way, the rifles are nice and big without being too hefty for the figure’s arms. What I don’t like however is the L-like protrusion at the bottom of the rifles’ grip that makes inserting them into the hands far more annoying than it needs to be.

The last knightmare frame feature is the Slash Harkens, which are wire-mounted blunt projectiles attached to the frame’s body. The Albion has a pair on its hips and the tip of its gauntlets. You can pop the prone pieces off and replace them with the launched versions on short bendable wires. The wires and the connections are sturdy enough to support the whole figure so you can have fun hanging it from places as long as you can securely anchor the harken.

The figure does not come with a plastic effect part for its arm-mounted Blaze Luminous energy shield. It’s not a big loss, but the exclusion is a bit odd. It can however use the FELIJA Eliminator accessory (not pictured) that comes with the Robot Spirits Shinkirou, which is that weird looking staff/mop thing that they used to disable not-nukes in the show.

The final accessory is the Energy Wings Propulsion System. You attach them to the cockpit hump by removing the plastic piece behind each sheathe meant to represent the wings in their folded form. The wings mount via a single rotating joint and the energy part is made from soft transparent green plastic. Even with the wings on, the landspinners can keep the figure standing upright, but obviously you’d want to mount it on a stand. As this is an older Robot Spirits release, it lacks an adapter part for the Tamashii Act Stages but any pincer-type holder you have will do nicely thanks to the Albion’s slim waist.

Annoying hips aside, this is still a great figure and worth tracking down if you like the design. Although the figure is nearly 4 years old now as of this writing, it had a reissue near the end of 2010 so it’s not too rare right now.