Deluxe DoubleSoul RollSoul MegaMan

Height: 14.5cm (MegaMan); 16cm (RollSoul mode)

Articulation: 14 points total - Swivel neck, swivel shoulders, hinged elbows, post-elbow swivels, swivel waist, hinged knees, post-knee swivel.

Colors: Molded black, blue, light blue; Painted light blue, dark blue, red, pink, yellow, black, fleshtone, blue-green, green, white (MegaMan); Molded pink, clear yellow; Painted yellow, light yellow, dark pink, dark grey, red, black, orange, dark blue.

Accessories: RollSoul Armor, consisting of 7 pieces; Battle Chip for electronic PET Personal Terminal game.

Release Data: Released April 2005 at an MSRP of US$9.99. This item is uncommon as of April 28th, 2005.

Gallery: 7 images.

Author: ExVee

The Figure

I'm sure you all know of Roll. In the original MegaMan continuity, Roll was MegaMan's sister, and as a non-combatant, generally spent time keeping house. This is decidedly not the case in the world of MegaMan Battle Network and the accompanying NT Warrior cartoon adaptation.

Roll is a NetNavi, programmed for NetBattle, and has no relation to MegaMan. In the games, Roll is mainly a support Navi - her Battle Chip deals out a set damage to your opponent, and then restores a portion of your hitpoints. Fairly useful, no? But in the show, Roll has a much better deal. While usually still helping MegaMan out, she's also quite capable of fighting on her own, with formidable default attacks, plus strong Battle Chip attacks. Definetly more than just the token female to be rescued.

In an early episode of Axess, the third season of MegaMan NT Warrior, MegaMan was badly beaten by a powerful DarkLoid, an independant Net Navi enhanced by a Dark Chip. While MegaMan's data was being recovered at SciLabs, Roll was defending the mainframe from attack to buy the time needed to restore MegaMan. Just as Roll was about to be deleted, MegaMan returned and took up the fight. Still outpowered by FlashMan, MegaMan and Roll were again about to be deleted when something amazing happened. MegaMan took on Roll's data, and the first DoubleSoul transformation occured.

For RollSoul, there was obviously some draw from the game. Given Roll's healing attribute, RollSoul vastly increases MegaMan's resistence to attacks, making him able to effortlessly withstand attacks many times more powerful than he could before. If I had to guess, I'd say this was the most powerful DoubleSoul after ProtoSoul.

Since the base figure here is the same as the one included with MetalSoul MegaMan, this review will be formatted a bit differently. For more detailed information on the basic body structure, please see that review. This review will assume you've read the other and are familiar with the design, so it'll mainly cover differences.

The Head

First, RollSoul's helmet is not supposed to have a face guard. This inaccuracy is displayed prominently in the show, not to mention the boxart. But the actual toy helmet even seems to make the fact obvious. What I'm saying is that it doesn't fit. The faceplate makes the helmet very tight to attach, and it does not cover the face correctly, such as MetalSoul's faceplate does. It doesn't make alot of sense, it's not as though there's a single base helmet they're using and just attaching parts relevant to whatever -Soul it's supposed to be. This is a new mold helmet. On the upside, the way it's made and painted, it appears like it wouldn't be a major hassle to carefully cut off the faceplate, a project I may take up later...

One of Roll's distinguishing features are the transparent yellow "antennae" that circle her head. For RollSoul, an extra set are added to the helmet. These are constructed of soft, clear plastic, with a very slight green tint, and are attached to a pair of knobs on the forehead of the helmet. Since these are separate pieces, screwups are bound to happen. In my case, one set of antennae were glued on at the wrong angle, making them irreversably uneven. They're also bent out of shape to some extent by the way they're secured in the packaging.

The Torso And Arms

This is where the differences from MetalSoul become less pronounced. The torso piece is just a pair of hard plastic parts that snap together to make the torso armor. They still limit the shoulder articulation, and are still unnervingly tight when you go to pry them apart. The torso is just about the only place where the base figure is changed, with the light blue stripes down the sides of the body being changed to pink. This is accurate for RollSoul, and it does make for an ...interesting MegaMan.

The arm pieces are a plain gauntlet for the left arm, and a gauntlet, hand, and firing bow for the right. This leads to inaccuracy, too. To start, the bow should be attached to the left arm. Also, since the left is just a gauntlet, MegaMan's blue forearm piece has to be used still. The fist on the right arm is dark grey. Now is it just me, or shouldn't some measure have been taken to make the fists be the same color? Either no hand attached to the right arm piece, or a hand attached to the left. This just looks really bad. The bow is a spring powered missile launcher, which shoots a translucent yellow energy missile a whopping 7 inches. Wow.

The Legs And Feet

The pink stripes continue down the legs. Except for minor molded details, the leg armor is the same concept - single pieces of soft plastic meant to be held in place between MegaMan's knees and his regular boots. These are much more plain than the MetalSoul pieces, with the feet just kind of curving out from the lower legs with no implication of any sort of ankle.

Paint and Deco

Kind of a mixed bag. Some stuff covers well, but has badly done edges, while other parts edge better, but cover terribly. The former is evident in the dark pink over pink bits, such as on the helmet and boots. The latter is the case just about anywhere yellow paint is used. besides which, MegaMan's face is painted more poorly, and all of MegaMan's insignia in the various locations are either smudged, or poorly edged. This definetly needed another pass through QC.

Sculpt gets 7/10

Articulation gets 6/10

Paint and Deco gets 6/10

The only other accessory is again a Battle Chip for a PET, so no review is warranted.

Closing Remarks

Could Have Been Better is the phrase that keeps sounding in my head as I write this review. In concept, I really like RollSoul, and especially in animation. The design is rather unusual, and MegaMan actually looks decently nice with pink and yellow armor. But the compromises that seemed to have to take place to make this a toy really hurt the idea. Still, I can look past some of that enough to just enjoy having a figure of my favorite DoubleSoul mode. Still, just a few small differences and this could have easily been a Good figure.

-ExVeeBrawn, 04/28/2005