I think it’s fair to say this is the main reason most would have picked up the set. Take the beautiful armour of the Gold Saints from Saint Seiya and apply McFarlane Toy’s edgy sensibilities and you’d get Garo: a striking bestial knight.

Putting the armour on first involves dismembering and decapitating the Kouga figure and then attaching Garo’s limbs, head and armour. Getting the Garo head on is a little tricky as the instructions omit one step. You’re supposed attached a neck piece (this can be found on the bottom tray) to the head before attaching both to the torso.

Attaching the head to the neck piece took me a long time as it wasn’t immediately obvious to me which was the top and which was the bottom of the neck piece. On top of that, the fit wasn’t too good.

However, the difficulty I had putting it all together was quickly forgotten once I set eyes on the completed Garo.

Beautiful.

The figure stands 17cm tall and is articulated at the neck, chest, waist, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles. It should be quite a posable action figure but it isn’t. The problem is the ball joints at the shoulders and hips are limited laterally. The set includes the Makai sword seen above (as well as an extra right hand for Kouga to grip it) but there aren’t many cool swordsman poses you can pull off.

The other problem with the Kouga figure is the proportions. The figure seems to be missing a chunk of its trunk.

Deal-breakers? Hardly. But considering the effort Bandai took to get the face sculpt right, these shortcomings are disappointing.

Most fans would have picked up the set for the Garo form but the Kouga figure is noteworthy as well. I’m taken aback by how closely the figure resembles Kouga’s actor. This is surprising because Bandai generally doesn’t bother nailing the likeness of actors for its toys. Its Souchaku Henshin line is a sterling example.

Someone picky might point out Konishi Ryousei (*), the actor portraying Kouga, is a little girlier than the figure but considering this is an action figure from a 3800 yen set rather than an expensive statuette, Bandai really should be commended for making the effort to get it right.

(* I’ve seen the name romanised as Ryousei, Hiroshi and Hiroki on the web. According to the Japanese Wikipedia, he changed it from Hiroki to Ryousei earlier this year.)