Sagittarius Aiolos

Sagittarius Aiolos is one of the 12 Gold Saints of Athena. His power is said to be the greatest amongst the Gold Saints, rivaling that of Gemini Saga. He was even to be the next leader of Sanctuary, replacing Pope Arles, but things did not go as planned.. Aiolos stumbled onto the Pope’s plot to take Athena’s life. Using his body as a shield, the injured Aiolos flees with the infant Athena and attempts to escape Sanctuary. Then while trying to flee from Greece, Aiolos faces Capricorn Shura and his razor-sharp Excalibur technique.

ATOMIC LIGHTING BOLT!!

He would have totally won, had Shura not used Athena as a shield to keep Aiolos from attacking him.

EXCALIBUR!
Mortally wounded from his fight with Capricorn Shura, Aiolos entrust his Cloth and the infant Athena to a tourist by the name of Mitsumasa Kido.

This sets off the events that will shape the lives of the orphans who would become the Bronze Saints of Athena (and if you have read the manga, the beginning of a very busy period for Kido).

Aiolos comes in the signature Saint Cloth Myth EX box, which is hefty, hefty, hefty. Over the box is a glossy sleeve with product shots and info.

The actual box is printed to resemble the Pandora Box of Sagittarius, complete with a baby Sagittarius with his little bow.

The armored Aiolos looks pretty great.  

He is slimmer, sleeker, and all around better proportioned than the original figure, even with the appendix (which is how the original is set up in this photo).

 The fit of the Cloth on this figure is also superb. The headpiece fits flush against the hair, looking like a headpiece should, unlike with the Appendix, which looks like padded boxing headgear by comparison. I think the head sculpt on this figure is actually better than the one for the Appendix, which has much softer features on the face.

The EX Sagittarius is for the most part an accurate representation of what it looks like in the Anime… for the most part. The first liberty that Bandai took with the design for this Cloth is the wings. While gorgeous looking, the way in which they spread out make them look organic, which is a step away from the metallic, armor look they have in the anime.

The second liberty, which makes a little sense, is that the headpiece is silver.

In the anime, the headpiece and the skirt armor are a lighter shade of gold, which Bandai was faithful to in that the skirt armor stayed faithful to in the skirt armor. Then, for some reason the decision was made to make the headpiece silver.  
HEADSHOT

Nitpicking aside, this is a great figure. Even suited up, you get functionality from most of the 30 points of articulation of this figure thanks to Bandai’s re-engineering of the Saint Cloth Myth armor. The EX armor has much more flexible connection points for the shoulder pads and skirt armor , which allows the hands and legs of the figure to move with less restriction, which was sometimes an issues with the older figures in the original line. 

The fit and finish for the cloth is great. One issue with this cloth, however, is that the pieces that clip to the back of his armguards can sometimes pop off when they touch the armlet on the biceps.
    
My major disappointment of this figure is the fact that Bandai used a substantial amount of plastic for the armor.
Besides the wings which are all plastic, the other parts of the Cloth that are plastic are:

• The little clips with the wings that go on the feet
• The majority of the lower leg armor (only the top part is metal)
• The small pieces of the skirt armor
• The waist armor
• The headpiece
• The hand covers
• The clips on the back of the arm guards
• The small, inner shoulder pads

Wow! That is a long list of stuff, some of which could have easily been made of metal.

As for extras, Sagittarius comes with slew of hands (two of which were made for holding the arrow and one for holding the bow) and several face sculpts.

Oddly enough Bandai included a cape with Aiolos. While this was welcome addition with the other characters, it is lost on the Sagittarius Saint since he never wears the cape.

On to the Object Mode, which is huge!

It is also a beautiful and great representation of this iconic Cloth.

Unlike some of the other Cloths, the Sagittarius Cloth gets it share of screen time in Object mode. Even after his death, Aiolos’ spirit continued to support Athena and her Saints in their many quests against the evils that would look to bring down Sanctuary. It often appears to aid the Seiya when he is facing especially tough opponents.

Since Seiya essentially inherits the Sagittarius Cloth, Bandai has also included a Seiya head for this figure, so that Seiya can have his turn being the Gold Saint of Sagittarius and strike his iconic “gonna shot the villain with this golden arrow” pose.

Did I mention the bow is gorgeous? Well it is.

At first, I was a little unimpressed by the figure. After all, this is the fourth time this character has been released in the past couple of years (if you include the re-issue of the original figure). After I spent more time with it, I really began to appreciate it for the fact that this is the most poseable and accurate version of this character to date. It is also very expressive thanks to the four face sculpts for Aiolos and one for Seiya. Is this figure Perfect? No, but with the exception of some minor issues and inconsistencies with the source material, this is another great EX release.

Although, this EX release, like the Pegasus Seiya EX, left me with a distaste for Bandai’s decision to sell the effect parts for this figure in a separate package.