Robot Damashii Arios Gundam

Height: 12cm to top of head in MS Mode, 21cm long in Mobile Armor Mode.

Articulation: 27 points total- double-jointed neck; 6 points each arm: triple-jointed shoulder, upper-arm swivel, hinged elbow, ball-joint wrist; Mid-torso hinge joint; double-jointed waist; 5 points each leg: ball-jointed hip, thigh swivel, hinged knee, ball-jointed ankle, mid-foot hinge. Various other joints associated with transformation.

Colors: Molded orange, white, black, dark gray, and transparent green, transparent pink, and transparent blue. Painted orange, yellow, red, black, gunmetal, green, and white(hands).

Accessories: GN Twin Beam Rifle, Beam Saber with removable blade, Extra Hands x2.

Release Data: Released October 25th, 2008 in Japan at an MSRP of ¥2500. This item is no longer in production as of this review (March 4th, 2010).

Author: RAC

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My first Robot Damashii figure! This was probably inevitable, though getting into Gundam 00 late put it off- as did the possible scale change and the definite scaling-up of the price per figure. Arios was on my short list of Damashii figures to get, primarily because I want the GN Archer to go with it. Still looking for that, but Arios does okay on its own.


The Figure

The first thing I noticed is how little of Arios is made of the softer plastics I associate with MSiA. The only parts I can completely identify as being that softer plastic are the thighs and the forearms. The rest is something harder, more difficult to warp- and I have to assume more fragile. Being a person who prefers play-oriented toys to display-oriented ones, I'm not sure how I feel about that.

The Head

The arrangement of fins on Arios' head is pretty nice-looking, and inexplicably reminds me of the winged hat Ringo wears in the last act of Yellow Submarine. The fins are also all hard plastic, and apparently this early into Robot Damashii Bandai wasn't offering soft-plastic alternatives. They seem pretty thick, and strong enough, but I'm still going to be very nice to them. The neck is double ball-jointed, and while the bottom joint isn't very useful the head isn't really restricted in any way either. It tilts in any direction more than enough to be useful, and swivels in a full circle. Although you may have to exercise some of that tilt to make sure the head clears the collar.

The Arms

The transformation joints make for some non-standard shoulders. The shoulder armor with the large, triangular pieces attached pulls straight up over Arios' head to form the nose of the Mobile Armor Mode. Because of how the arms fold up for this, they're built into the shoulder armor, basically. The biggest hit the articulation takes from this jointing is in the shoulder articulation: the swivel at the shoulder is limited to a 90-degree arc between the at-rest position and being pointed straight ahead. I have to wonder if there wasn't a better way to do that. The arms can only swing outwards about 70 degrees at most as well.

The upper arm swivel is at least unimpeded, thankfully- though it does present a problem. I've had the arms pop themselves loose from the shoulder piece, which reveals a problem with Arios. Most Gundam figures don't use tension and tolerances to keep things like an upper arm swivel in place, opting instead for shaped pegs. That's generally the preferred way with softer plastics, and it seems to me that harder plastics don't take to it as well. But it also holds better than a purely friction-based connection- those can wear down, and that worries me about this figure.

The elbow is also limited to a 90-degree arc, probably because of the requirements of the disc-shaped joints with the GN Condensers. The back of the forearm is one large plate, which you can slide up to reveal two very small and very deep-set submachineguns. Those will probably be a picnic to photograph! The wrist joint and hands are about the only part of the arm I'd recognize as being MSiA-inspired, as they're exactly what I'm used to: ball wrists and socket hands. The range is good, but I'm glad the weapons are light, as the wrists feel a bit looser than I'd consider ideal.

The Torso

Not entirely traditional, but undeniably a Gundam torso. The center orange part of the torso tilts to aid the transformation, though in a pinch you can also use it to add some expressiveness to Arios. There's also the equivalent of side-to-side tilt of the type you'd get from a standard mid-torso joint, but it seems to be accomplished by a joint that lets you rock the hip joints. There's a swivel waist, but you may have to move the rear skirt out of the way sometimes. On the back, you've got part of Arios' nose assembly, which I would be tempted to use as a Zeta-esque Tail Binder. Whether it's intended for that use or not, it's on a nice, snug hinge.

There's only skirt armor in the front and back due to the shape of the thighs, but it's very long. The front skirt is also on two tiny, model kit-style ball joints that plug into the crotch block, and that makes me so nervous. I've had those break on larger models more than once. It means the skirt can't warp, but I would take warping over breaking any time. On top of which, the plate over the left leg keeps wanting to spring back into place after you lift it. Not good.

The rear skirt is on a hinged piece mounted to a ball joint to allow for transformation, but likes to pop off of its mounting place frequently- hard plastic on hard plastic connection, and a shallow one at that. Ugh. I'm also confused as to how exactly it's supposed to sit in MS Mode. The joint's shaped so that it could hang lower if you wanted, which would also get it out of the way of the black blocks on the thighs- but very few photos I can find show it arranged that way, so I'm not sure which way I should jump. There's a tailfin for MA Mode leading off the crotch. It's on a plastic-on-plastic hinge joint with almost no range- a few degrees in either direction and it pops right off.

The Legs and Feet

The MA Mode thrusters hang off of the sides of the thighs in large black blocks. Appropriate, since "block" is what they do. They bump into the waist and/or the rear skirt, depending on how Arios is moving. Combine them with the limited, worrying skirt, and they really help to counteract the excellent hip joints and thigh swivels. And while their range is excellent, those joints are also the loosest on the figure, which sometimes cause Arios' legs to go skating out from under it, particularly when posing it on the slick, glossy surface we use for photography.

The knees are very firm, which I like- but once again, we're restricted to 90 degrees. And I'm not even sure why- it seems as though you could get more range out of those shapes. Though it would help with posing if the thighs weren't so short. The lower legs are interesting to look at, with the giant knee fins and dainty little hollow feet. In preparing for this review I found a lot of complaints that 00 designs tend to have feet too small for the bulk of the Mobile Suit, and Arios mostly falls into that category- I say "mostly" because it is able to stand fairly well. That's largely because the feet have (ahem) hands-down the best suite of joints in the entire figure, surpassing even the neck. Good tilt front-to-back, good tilt side-to-side, and the transformation joint is stiff enough that you can put weight on it. Damn, I wish there was a more flexible figure standing on top of these feet!


Transformation

The tradeoff for the weirdness of Mobile Suit Mode are a smooth transformation and stable Mobile Armor Mode. If you lock the forearm armor pieces into the shoulders first, the nose aligns nicely. The legs take the most wrangling, where you use a sliding track to re-angle the knee-fins and then collapse the lower legs so that the fins off the ankle armor sit flush with the backs of the knee-wings. The two halves of the ankle piece like to pop apart slightly as well, and you have to press them together sometimes to make sure everything aligns well.


Mobile Armor Mode

As often happens to me, I like this more in person than I ever did in lineart form. Arios is basically an arrowhead in shape- which makes me wonder about the meaning of the word "Arios". (If it is a word, Gundam names being what they are.) A very sleek design- from the top. From the bottom it's a mess of Mobile Suit parts, but come on, we're all used to that by now! I can see now that the tight and limited knee joints were intended to keep the wings aligned in Mobile Armor Mode. But the thigh joints, not being limited in this way, mean that the back end is a bit wobbly. Just like every toy of a similar MA Mode ever so it's forgivable, natch. You can also split the nose to use the GN Shield pincer weapon, but of course you lose the stability of the locking tabs when you do, which means the arms can float a bit. A lot of transforming figures are engineered to favor one mode over the other, and I have a lot fewer issues with Arios' MA Mode than its Mobile Suit Mode.


Paint and Deco

Okay, here's one thing Robot Damashii has all over MSiA: the paint is very, very clean. This is especially apparent on the face- where the minute black outlines of the traditional Gundam face are incredibly thin and neat -and on the yellow parts, as yellow paint is always difficult to do. There are only two points of sloppiness, both of which are minor. First is on the hands, where the white paint on the backs is so thick it washes out the detail and is slightly uneven besides. Second are the black lining on the outsides of the shoulder binder/nose pieces where the GN Beam Shield emitters are supposed to be. It's not those applications themselves that are at fault but the orange plastic they're applied to, as you can see the black right through the nose of the ship. It's not Marasai bad, but it could still be better.


Accessories

-GN Twin Beam Rifle

A pretty simple rifle with two thin barrels, plus a clear green fin on top and what resembles a revolver cylinder in the body- presumably to break up the "featureless rectangle" vibe it would have going otherwise. It fits the open hand well enough. It also has an odd gimmick, with the upper barrel being hinged so that the Mobile Armor Mode can use it for strafing. Alternately, you can use it to help make up for the poor range of Arios' shoulders.

-Beam Saber

The hilt is rigid plastic now too, which I think detracts from the feeling of secureness that the blade connection had with late-model MSiA. On the other hand, it's not going to warp. The blade is a really nice, vibrant pink, and the hilt fits in Arios' open hands very securely- moreso than the rifle. I wish there was a place to store it on the figure, though.

-Extra Hands

Only two sets here- fists and open hands for holding the weapons. That's not strictly awful, considering they get the job done, but the rifle would probably fit a bit more firmly in a hand specifically designed for it. And for what these cost, I can't say that a decrease in accessories is appealing.

Closing Remarks

It was kind of foolish for me to choose such an atypical figure as my first exposure to a new line. There's not a lot I can infer about Robot Damashii from Arios, but taken on its own it's decent. Everything it tries to do it does succeed at, but I wish it tried a little harder. Most transforming figures favor one mode over the other, and Mobile Suit Mode's articulation is pretty well restricted to make for a stable and satisfying Mobile Armor. In trying to objectively rate the figure I have to separate it from my feelings and expectations stemming from this line's status as MSiA's successor. And once I've done all that, I think it's safe to call it Very Good.

-RAC