Pegasus Seiya EX
Pegasus Seiya is the protagonist of the show Saint Seiya (hence his name in the title of the show). Pegasus Seiya is an orphan who at first wants nothing else but to find his long-lost sister. He joins Athena’s fight, however, to stop the Gods and mortals that would threaten the earth.
Seiya, the star of the show, and Dragon Shiryu were the first two releases in the Saint Cloth Myth line, in 2003. Nine years later, the Saint Cloth Myth line has come a long way, even evolving into the EX line, which aims to remake the older releases in the series with better sculpting, articulation, and detail.
The armor for this version of Seiya is the Revived Cloth. It is also known as the version 2 (V2) armor because it is the second one to appear in the TV series. After the brutal battles at the 12 Houses of Sanctuary, the surviving Gold Saints offer their blood so that the Cloths of the Bronze Saints may be revived from their broken states by Aries Mu. Equipped with sleeker, stronger Cloths, the Bronze Saints are ready for their next battle. In the anime, the Revived Cloths make their debut in the Asgard Chapter.
In the manga, however, the Revived Cloths make their appearance at the beginning of the Poseidon Chapter, since the Asgard Chapter was an anime-exclusive story arc (that’s a nice way of saying filler).
The EX line trades in the book-style box of the Saint Cloth Myth line for a box with a sleeve over it.
On one side of the sleeve there is a shot of Seiya performing his signature attack: the Pegasus Ryusei…
Hey that’s the Suisei Ken! What an odd choice for the super-cool, Photo-shopped action shot, considering anybody who has watched the show probably has the stock footage of Seiya performing the Ryusei Ken engraved into their mind.
Maybe Bandai was trying to downplay the fact that there will be no effect parts for the Ryusei ken in this box. For those who want the Ryuseiken effect parts, Bandai will be releasing them in along with some backgrounds for the low, low price that Tamashii web exclusives are known to go for.
The actual box is made to looke like the Pegasus Pandora box, in which Seiya stored his armor.
Although Seiya has less armor than the Gold Saints in the line, he comes with a whole mess of stuff:
-Two sets of armor
– four faces
-Five sets of hands
Object Mode
Any guesses on what the Object Mode for Pegasus Seiya’s Cloth is?
Of course, it is a Pegasus. It looks good, is easy to put together, and is tight. Most of the pieces stay where they should.Only the arm guard on the tail moves a bit.
Body
A seemingly odd choice on Bandai’s part, they decided to make Seiya’s knees and upper thigh are a darker color than the rest of the body, which at which makes the figure’s un-armored body look a little mismatched.
Seiya sports the Saint Cloth Myth EX body, with 30 points of articulation. Want Seiya to take a knee? No problem!
There are two main differences between Seiya’s body and that of the EX Gold Saints. The first is height, since Seiya is a teenager and the Gold Saints are older. Seiya is only 6 1/2 inches tall, whereas the Golds Saints are over 7 inches tall. The second difference is that Seiya’s midesction is thicker than that of the Gold Saints. This was done because Seiya has no armor that goes over his midsection. He would look pretty rediculous with the waist that was used for the Gold Saints.
Overall the Pegasus Cloth looks good on Seiya and lessens the color disparity between the the two types of red used on the body.
The only parts that could have used some improvement are the shoulder pads. At first glance, they look pretty huge and out of scale with the figure, much like the shoulder pads for the EX Leo. Also like the EX Leo, you get used to them after spending some time with the figure. The shoulder pads use the same great connection system that the other EX figures use, allowing them to move all over the place in order to accommodate the motion of Seiya’s arms.
While I could get over the somewhat-oversized proportions of the shoulder pads, the plastic base of the arm connector under the shouderpads really bothered me. It is the same color as the rest of the joint system, and it looks pretty ugly from the side of the shoulder pads. Nothing like a little plastic peeping from underneath the shoulder pads to throw off the metallic look of the armor.
In order to truly appreciate how far Bandai has come, you need to compare this figure with the original release.
The EX version is a little better, no?
Not only does it look better, but it also moves tons better thanks to the EX body, which is fairly unrestricted by Seiya’s light armor.
Broken Cloth
In Saint Seiya, Cloths are study armors that protect their wearers from bodily harm… that is in theory. In the show, however, these things get broken so often that one wonders why Mu doesn’t just give up on repairing them. In order to recreate Seiya’s Cloth in the damaged form, Bandai has included an extra set of armor.
At the end of each story arc, the Cloth become pretty destroyed and sometimes even non-existant. Even breaking the Seiya’s Pegasus Cloth, however, could not destroy his unwavering loyalty to Athena.
Saori-san!
The amount of detail that Bandai put into this asymmetrically damaged cloth is really spectacular.
It is even better than the previous Broken Cloth release. It should be noted, however, that the design for the broken Cloth of the Pegasus Seiya EX is not a design from the show. It is too damaged for how it appears when Seiya makes his first appearance in the Hades Chapter, and it is too physically-present, as Poseidon obliterates the crap out of it in the previous story arc.
The Broken Cloth can also be fitted onto the body of the Object Mode.
The Broken Cloth looks good enough in Object Mode. Since it does share the Pegasus body with the regular armor, however, it looks a little odd seeing some parts that are broken and others that are perfectly okay, like the wings, neck and face, front legs, etc.
As I mentioned with the regular Object Mode, the arm guard on the tail fits loosely over the tail piece. With the broken Cloth it become more of a nuisance, as the weight imbalance of having a chunk from one side of the armguard missing will cause the armguard to swing towards the heavier side and the momentum will carry it to rest upside down.
The great thing about having both a broken Cloth and a regular Cloth is that this is one of the rare chances where you can display both the armored Saint and their Object Mode, without having to buy a whole other figure.
