I'm taking a break from Star Wars for a bit. I'm getting caught up on some Samurai movies I've been needing to watch. At any rate, I wanted to build some kind of Samurai custom, so I bought an Articulated icons Undying Ronin. It was 50% off on their website.
https://articulatedicons.com/collections/frontpage/toysThe cool thing about these figures, they are almost knock offs of marvel and GI JOE characters. Like the Temple guard is basically Silver Samurai, the white Ninja can become Storm Shadow with a couple of decals. The modem Ninja can be made into a snake eyes with a custom head swap. If you really wanted to you could make either the Ronin or the red Samurai into a 6" GI Joe Bushido They're pretty cool.
From the online reviews I've seen, these figures are plegued with quality control issues. As soon as I got it out of the package, I dropped him in hot water. I don't care about loose joints, but if they break that's it, end of story. He comes with two heads, samurai and Ninja, Kabuto with two ornaments; antlers and a "U" shaped one I dropped somewhere, and two mask types. Weapon's are, two katanas, a club, a bow and arrow with quiver and a spear
The figure is excellent! No major issues. The hands tend to fall off, and the ornamental crests for the helmet (Kabuto) don't stay on, or won't go on at all. That's about it, non issues for me really. I'm a customizer. In fact I am making a custom figure out of it.
Which leads me to my next purchase of the day. Usagi Yojimbo volume one. I had a Usagi Yojimbo figure as a kid, and I remember seeing him on a couple episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. I shrugged off the notion of a comic featuring an anthropomorphic rabbit, I thought it would be along the lines of Duck Tales or something like that. It's actually really good. Those who are unfamiliar, the story is about a Ronin named Miyamoto Usagi Yojimbo. Miyamoto is named after Miyamoto Musashi, The best swordsman in Japanese history. Usagi means rabbit, and Yojimbo means bodyguard, also it's named after Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. His Master Mifune (named after the actor who played in many of Kurosawa's films) is killed during a Feudal battle, Usagi cuts off his master's head, and buries it so it isn't used as a war trophy. Upon returning his whole army is slaughtered. He spends his remaining years as a wondering Ronin making whatever money he can as a bodyguard. The stories are very familiar, they are adaptations of samurai movies and legends. They're really neat stories. Now I know why they use animals as their characters, I guess seeing animals getting decapitated and dismembered is better than humans. Also it's all in black and white, which is cool , most of the good samurai movies are in black and white, plus the blood would probably make it too graphic for kids, maybe not too graphic for kids, but their parents. At any rate it's a good series.
