mikeszekely

I don't think the more traditional G2 decos are off the table. They might still turn up as Generations Selects or something, especially since I haven't heard much about what Hasbro might be planning for Gen Selects this year. Frankly, I think these Walmart exclusives are going to shelfwarm the way half of Velocitron, all the Beast Wars repaints, and a good bit of Netflix did. ...and, I dunno. I kind of like the yellow with teal tiger stripes Grimlock. But yeah, that Jazz... 🤮

Hah, I guess my phone's autocorrect cut the end off! Yeah, 10% off, so prices range from $360-$585. That makes the most expensive model a bit more palatable if you're not comfortable replacing the SSD. That said, if you are comfortable, a 1TB Sabrent Rocket goes for around $160, which is still double the storage for $65 less.

Today begins Steam's Spring sale. Lots of deals on games, sure, but I feel compelled to point out (what like two weeks after I bought one) that the Steam Deck itself is 10% off.

It's not that I don't want games based on MASK and Silverhawks (and, while I'm at it, Dino Riders, EXO Squad, and SWAT Cats), but I think they'd work better in another genre than beat'em up.

I'm down for this. I actually watched this show as a kid, but have never seen the Troma films. Mummies Alive, Conan the Adventurer, King Arthur and the Knights of Justice, Street Sharks, Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, Gargoyles, Cowboys of Moo Mesa... the '80s and early '90s had lots of good options for beat'em ups.

While I totally get wanting new Legacy or MP toys to look super cartoon accurate, I don't see the appeal of repainting the G1 toys in cartoon colors. I'd really rather they stuck with straight reissues, especially since I don't have a G1 Thundercracker or Hound.

So, Jazz, Cloudcover, and Toxitron went up for preorder (with Toxitron selling out at Pulse already). No sign of Grimlock, though. Weird. I was thinking I'd preorder Grimlock and Cloudcover, but without Grimlock I kind of don't feel like preordering Cloudcover, either. Jazz is too ugly, and while Toxitron is kind of cool I'm not a fan of bad guys that look like Optimus that aren't a mix of black, gray, and teal.

Walmart's smoking something... So, yeah, you guys might know that they're doing some kind of thing for collectors on Thursday. Leaked today are the Transformers they're going to be carrying (I guess that toy Hot Rod and any other Velocitron releases were canceled?). The theme is G2, but... Well, first up we have Toxitron. Toxitron isn't actually G2, though. He was a planned repaint of G2 Optimus for the Universe line before being canceled. Despite the original toy being canceled, this is actually the third toy that did get released, the first two being a Botcon set that redecoed Animated Optimus, and the second being a TFCC figure that was a redeco of Combiner Wars Optimus. Next up, we have Cloudcover. Cloudcover isn't only not a G2 character, he's not a character period. Or rather, he's a brand new character, based on a hand-painted Ramjet that was maybe going to be a planned G2 release. Or not. He's kind of pretty, and I'll probably pick this one up, but I do kind of wonder why Ramjet's mold has been used like four times now but there were never any repaints of Thrust or Dirge. Also up we have G2 Jazz... whom I remember looking a lot different than that. Despite (the original) G2 Jazz looking awfully similar to G1 Jazz, I probably would have bought a repaint in that deco. Or a Stepper/Ricochet repaint. But this all-orange Jazz, who is apparently based on concept art for a planned G2 repaint, is an eyesore. Finally, we have G2 Grimlock. Or, at least the box for him. Yeah, that's probably not the G2 you were thinking of, that basically swaps all the gray plastic for blue. Like Jazz, this is apparently based on concept art for another potential repaint that was never made. My first reaction is, like Jazz, to be mad that we're not getting the actual G2 Grimlock. But a yellow dino mode with teal tiger stripes? I mean, the more I think about it, the more awesome that sounds...

Better than my Target. Tons of Bumbleswoop, some Studio Series Bumblebee Arcees, a lone Wheelie, a Leo Prime. That's it. I also swung by Walmart today. I don't know if they're better or worse... they have more inventory, but it's about 70% Legacy Arcees, 20% Legacy Jhiaxus, and 10% random crud like those YuMe plushies.

If Legends would have been more of a thing when I really started collecting I'd have gone all-in and never thought twice about MP. There's definitely an advantage to the smaller figures, but I think the aesthetics of the current NewAge and Magic Square offerings are already ahead of early MP offerings. But I think I already had maybe 60-70% of the G1 cartoon cast before Legends was more than just Iron Factory, and I just didn't bring myself to start over.

I don't know if it's because I never felt like starting a Legends collection on top of my mainline Hasbro collection an my MP-scale stuff, the fact that my MP-scaled stuff is getting pretty close to complete, or the that I just don't feel like spending $150-$200 a pop on the MP stuff in this economy, but I found it hard to get too excited over the TFCon stuff. The only things that really caught my attention are MMC showing off their Hot Spot and finally admitting that they're doing Devastator after Defensor. Here's hoping they do Abominus, Predaking, Computron, Superion, Menasor, Piranacon, Raiden, Liokaiser, Road Caesar, and Landcross, too. Preferably in that order.

It's not bad. I think they originally went for $120/each a few years ago. In TFSource fashion, they marked it up before they marked it down so it looks like a better deal that it actually is, but yeah, it's still a pretty decent deal. The only thing I'd caution is that I think the DS Seekers are probably better figures at this point, especially if the robot mode is your main concern. They're just a pain to transform. That said, I bought the MT Seekers when they first came out, and while I definitely think the DS ones were better I didn't think they were so much better that it was worth replacing the MTs.

You don't need to join Facebook anymore, just a Meta account. I know, that sounds like splitting hairs, but the gist is that you use the Meta account just for the Quest, not social media, so while Meta will know what you're buying and playing (in other words, exactly what Sony gets whenever you buy from the PS store) they're not getting all the personal info they'd get from a Facebook account.

I have both the old Deluxe Bumblebee and the old Deluxe WFC Prime (I have the FoC Prime, too, but my daughter played with him and I think he's missing a part or two now). I'll be doing some comparisons, because I'm in for all three. I wish they'd have done Megatron, too. I'm assuming the main draw of these new figures is going to be scale; I remember the old WFC Bumblebee being kind of huge.

I dunno, as much as I dislike Meta as a company, I bought a Quest 2 figuring I could use it for both untethered and PC VR... and then never played a single PC VR game. Sure, the Quest 2 isn't the most powerful hardware, but not being tethered to anything turned out to be a bigger deal than I thought. If the PSVR2 gets Steam support and a better library on the actual PlayStation I'd maybe consider it, but mostly I'm hoping that Meta makes a comfier Quest 3 with some of the better PSVR2 features, like eye-tracked foveated rendering.

Oh, I didn't know this was available on PSVR2. I have the Quest version, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. I'd say it's one my my top three or four favorite VR games. The others contenders, BTW, would be Beat Saber, Walkabout Mini Golf, and Superhot VR. I have no idea if any of those are on PSVR2, though.

I have to second @Tking22's suggestions- REVIII, Horizon, and GT7. Because... The problem, my biggest problem with PSVR2, is that you cannot use it to play the games for the original PSVR. You can run the games on the PS5, but you need the original PSVR hardware, which in my opinion was a huge mistake. I don't know if there were technical hurdles or what due to the different controllers or whatever but this means that stuff like the Transformers VR game that just came out did so on a platform that was already dead, players with large PSVR1 libraries can't sell their old units to defray the cost of the new one, and the new one's starting with a pretty limited library. That's kind of a kick in the teeth for a headset that costs more than the console it runs on, and more than the technically inferior but more user-friendly Quest 2. Everything I've watched and read about the PSVR2 is glowing praise for the hardware with a wait-and-see attitude toward actually buying one.

Studio Series Gamer Edition. War For Cybertron Optimus Prime (Amazon Pulse) Bumblebee (Amazon Pulse) Barricade (Amazon Pulse)

It looks better than Rise of the TMNT.

Yeah, I have a 1TB drive on the way. It just won't be here until next week. I also have a 1TB microSD card. I thought I'd just use it to add to the Steam Deck's storage, but I'm starting to think that using it to dual boot Windows might be a better choice.

Well... my Steam Deck arrived. I dunno if it's because the 64GB unit uses eMMC or what, but I was honestly appalled at how slow the thing is to cold boot from a totally powered-off state. Fortunately, once it's up and running it seems responsive enough. My first impressions were that it was noticeably heavier and thicker than the Nintendo Switch, but it feels pretty ergonomic and once I was playing a game I didn't really notice the size anymore. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do too much with it. When I ordered it Valve was saying it'd take 1-2 weeks for delivery, and it turned out to actually take about 4 days, so it came much faster than I expected. Sounds like a good thing, but the SSD I ordered won't arrive until late next week, and 64GB is really too small to do much with. Some games I own wouldn't fit even if it was the only game I installed! I did install The Messenger on it and play it a little. The good news is that Steam Big Picture mode has come a long way, and it works pretty great on the Steam Deck to really make it feel like a console OS. Proton seems like it's doing its thing just fine under the hood and I was having a good time with it. Things started to get a bit iffier when I decided to poke around in desktop mode. In Valve's defense, I didn't spring for their official $90 dock when I had a perfectly good hub already, but with the hub trying to use an external display was a frustrating mess that would cause odd aspect ratios and rotated screens on both the external monitor and the built-in display, and even then only on battery power. If I plugged in the AC adapter the Steam Deck would stop outputting to the external display. So, I was forced to squint at the Steam Deck's little screen, but I was otherwise able to navigate the desktop (KDE, for the Linux gurus in the audience) with a mouse and keyboard. Of course, the whole purpose of using Desktop mode is to use programs outside of Steam, and that's where I figured I'd try my hand at running some emulators. I tried using a program called EmuDeck that's supposed to automate the process of setting up the emulators, and it's even supposed to use a tool add your ROMs as non-Steam games within Steam so that you can launch and play them from Big Picture mode without going into Desktop mode. I say supposed to because, while it did download some emulators, it mostly made a mess downloading Retroarch, every imaginable core for Retroarch, and several standalone emulators on top of that, then threw up parser errors when I tried to get it to register the handful of test ROMs I'd copied over. Long story short, I think I'd have been better off just downloading a standalone emulator or two and adding it to Steam manually. Or, maybe go one step further and setup a bootable microSD with something like Batocera, or maybe even Windows for the utility of running other PC games that aren't SteamOS compatible. I will say that at least it seems reasonably powerful. I was able to get Metroid Dread running smoothly in Yuzu on it. Anyway, if you want the TL;DR summary, it'd be this- check the games you want to play to see how well they run on the Steam Deck (and don't always trust Valve's own ratings, because some stuff they say is unsupported will actually run with a little tinkering). If you have enough compatible PC games you want to play, then go for it. It's a nice piece of hardware. But, if your primary intent is to emulate retro games there's probably a better option for you. And, if you do decide that you want a Steam Deck, make sure you're comfortable replacing the hard drive, and if you're not, consider spending the extra cash on the 256GB or 512GB models, because unless you're just into retro-style plaformers and smaller indie games 64GB is totally inadequate.

Regardless of whether they're good or not (they're objectively not, but so niche I find them appealing anyway), we still have to combine them to finish up this series. Ok, up first we have Kenzan on top in the same configuration we had for DaiKenzan, Jinbu in his jet mode but with this legs turned around and bent at the knee, and Ganoh in truck mode from the waist up, except his arms are turned 90 degrees, and robot mode from the waist down, with the addition of his shin pads turned down into massive feet. Once Jinbu is plugged into Ganoh, his nose and wings fold down, then Kenzan attaches to Jinbu at multiple points. Kenzan's kabuto fits over his lighbar, then the helmet folds down over his had and the sides fold out to become shoulder pads. And this is GoKenzan. GoKenzan works fairly well. His arms and torso are a little too long, and his torso is pretty thin when viewed from the front, but Ganoh makes for a very stable base. He does have a very large backpack, though... honestly, I don't think that these triple combiners work as well as using just two, like Energon did. Best case, the middle guy is pretty flat and you've got a ton of backpack. Worst case, the proportions are way off because you've got too much going on in the middle. But I digress. As was the case with the Shinobi Swordbot team, the leftover kabuto fit together, and all of the Samurai Swordbots' weapons combine. This time, Ganoh's weapon is in its folded position, and Kenzan's swords connect to tabs near the joint. A thin peg on the pommel of Jinbu's sword plugs into the hole in the 5mm peg/foam sprayer on Ganoh's weapon, and the whole thing is a big spear. Ganoh and Jinbu's combined kabuto are a less convincing weapon, but the spear is a noticeable improvement over whatever the Shinobi Swordbot Team's weapons combined into. GoKenzan has no head or waist articulation, we'll get that out of the way. His shoulders swivel, and with the shoulder pads able to hinge up and out of the way they can ratchet over 90 degrees laterally. His biceps swivel, and his elbows ratchet a little over 90 degrees. His wrists swivel, and due to how they transform, they can bend upward. His fingers and thumb are also hinged at the base and fold into his palm. His hips ratchet forward and backward a little under 90 degrees, but only about 45 degrees laterally due to the wheels on his hips. His thighs swivel, and his knees bend 90 degrees. His feet tilt up, due to transformation, but as they're just friction joints his feet are going to be the weak link when trying to get GoKenzan into dynamic poses. As for his accessories, you can plug the combined kabuto thing into one hand. For the combined weapon, you slide the combination of Kenzan and Ganoh's weapons into the port on his hand, then feed Jinbu's up through the bottom until it plugs in. Rotating up just like the Shinobi team, Jinbu goes on top, Ganoh in the middle, and Kenzan moves to the bottom in his DaiGekisou configuration. Ganoh curls up and actually makes the bulk of the torso. Jinbu is thinly draped over the top, with a good bit spilling onto the front. Then we add the kabuto to make GoJinbu. GoJinbu almost looks cool from the middle up. The proportions are pretty decent, as long as you again ignore the massive backpack. And while Kenzan's kabuto made for kind of a minimal change, Jinbu's blends very well with his wings and nose to give the appearance of a jinbaori, a kind of surcoat that a high-ranking samurai would wear over his armor. What does GoJinbu in is the legs; Kenzan's thighs are simply too thin, and they simply look inadequate to the task of holding up all that mass. GoJinbu uses the same spear as GoKenzan, but at least Kenzan and Ganoh's kabuto look to have a more deliberate combination. GoJinbu gets a full 90 degrees of lateral range on his hips, and he trades wrist articulation for ankle swivels, but otherwise articulation is pretty much the same. Practically, you'll have a harder time keeping him balanced in dynamic poses than GoKenzan, too. But I ran into some other problems with GoJinbu. Namely, I had a hard time getting his accessories into his hands. I think, due to a bump out around his thumb, the peg holes that are his fists are simply too tight. Ultimately GoJinbu is ok, but for practical reasons I prefer GoKenzan. Shuffle everyone one more time, so that Jinbu is on the bottom, Kenzan the middle, and Ganoh the top. Attach Ganoh's kabuto to form GoGanoh. GoGanoh definitely has the coolest looking top. Ganoh's kabuto looks awesome as armor, and I'd argue that Jinbu looks better as pants than Kenzan. Like the others, he's pretty top heavy, but his mass is more distributed through is upper body than condensed into a backpack. Unfortunately, some of that distributed mass is Kenzan's hips sticking off GoGanoh's lats, so he can't bring his arms all the way to his sides. GoGanoh has the same combined spear, and a decent-ish combined kabuto gun. GoGanoh's articulation is the same as the other two, minus wrist and/or ankle swivels, although you have to move the kibble from Jinbu's arms and nose or they'll impede his hips. Posing him is challenging again due to be top heavy, but he's got a few extra issues. First, Jinbu's got a bit of play between ratchet clicks, and the loosest friction swivels of the bunch. His legs had a tendency to turn inward when I didn't really want them to, like he's pigeon-toed. Second, and far worse, the connection between Gahon and Kenzan is terrible. Without his kabuto to help pinch them together, the slightest manipulation can cause Ganoh to disconnect from Kenzan. Oh well, at least he holds his spear pretty well. That said, he can't hold his gun at all. His fists are too low to his forearms. It's ok, though. There are 5mm ports on GoGanoh's forearms, and the kabuto weapon can plug into one of them as a shield or an arm cannon. Use your imagination. If you read my review of the Shinobi Swordbot team's combined modes, this is a lot of the same; the best configuration winds up being the one where the leader is on top. GoJinbu's skinny legs throw me off and he has trouble holding his weapons, while GoGanoh looks impressive but has the most trouble standing and wants to fall apart due to a weak connection between Kenzan and Ganoh. Maybe that's for the best, though? The Go combiners represent the triple combination gimmick of the show better than DaiKenzan or DaiGekisou, who don't even appear until the final episodes. And GoKenzan and GoGekisou are kind of the "default" combinded modes, with the other four being more like gimmicks. Should you invest in these guys? Probably not. As I've noted many times, they're not particularly good toys. Even, as @tekering helpfully pointed out, when compared with contemporary Transformers of the time period. They're simpler figures with a very specific target demographic- Japanese elementary-age boys. However, that can be seen as a feature. Takara wasn't trying to make toys that could appeal to both kids and adult collectors. They weren't beholden to Hasbro's rigid pricing structure. And with no need to appeal to international audiences they absolutely revel in their Japanese nature. They're so extremely niche within the larger Transformers brand that I can't help but adore them. Are they serious collectibles? No. Will they make a great diorama? Nope. Do they kind of look like dollar store junk next to your War for Cybertron and Legacy figures? Absolutely. But GoKenzan, GoGekisou, and Optimus Exprime on a shelf alone have a certain charm, representing one of the most unique but brief moments in Transformers history, an obscure but kind of cool footnote to the much more popular Transformers Prime line.

I don't think that MP-13 is a fair comparison, given it's a figure for adult collectors and Transformers Go is aggressively targeted at elementary-age (Japanese) boys. Thrilling 30 is more fair, but even then I'm seeing with stuff like Legacy vs Earthspark or Studio Series vs the non-Studio Rise of the Beasts toys they invest more in even mainline toys when they expect more nostalgic adults than kids will buy them. The best toys to compare to these Go figures is Transformers Prime. In fact anything we got in the West under the "Beast Hunters" sub-brand was released in Japan as part of Go, and the Predacons were the antagonists of the cartoon. And even by those standards, the Swordbots are probably the worst figures in the Transformers Go line.

The final Samurai Swordbot (and at this point, the final Swordbot period) is G03 Ganoh. With the Shinobi Swordbot team it was their leader, Gekisoumaru, who was slightly taller than the others. I was a bit surprised, then, that Ganoh turned about to be the tallest of the Samurai Swordbots. And... well, he actually doesn't look too bad. Sure, his head's a little small, his arms and torso are a little short, but he actually looks like he has a torso! That's an upgrade! And while I complained that Jinbu didn't really look much like a samurai, and that's technically true for Ganoh as well, there are some aesthetic choices, especially in his head, that make him look like a sōhei, a Japanese warrior-monk. He does, sadly, have hands for heels, huge feet, and massive shin pads. Sacrifices are still made to the gimmicks. But on the whole, Ganoh might be the best individual figure out of all seven. Sure, that's not necessarily the highest hurdle to clear, but when the alternative was another Jinbu or Sensuimaru I'm pretty pleased. Ganoh comes with a fairly rubbery spear with drill-like points on both ends, and of course, his kabuto. Ganoh's head is on a swivel, no tilt. His shoulders are ball joints that swivel and move laterally 90 degrees, plus the ball joint is on a hinge that'll get you and additional 60-ish degrees before the hinge causes his side to un-tab. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 180 degrees. No waist swivel. He has to use his ratcheted combined mode joints for lateral hip movement, but two things are working in his favor. One, they're not as high up his back as they are on the other Swordbots, so it doesn't look too unnatural. Two, because of the wheels on his sides he's limited to about 45 degrees. That's kind of enough, I think, and it prevents him from moving the joints so far that they break up the illusion of his robot torso. For forward/backward hip movement he's got ratchets that'll go 90 degrees. His thighs swivel just above his ratcheted knees, which bend 90 degrees. No ankle pivots, the red parts of his feet can tilt up and down. Ganoh's kabuto can plug into his fist to be a gun-ish thing, same as the others. His spear is weird, though. See, it doesn't open, and even if it did the fist holes don't go the whole way through, so he can't hold it the way you'd expect him to hold a spear. Instead there's a 5mm peg in the middle, set at a right angle to the shaft. It looks weird to have him hold it, but what are you going to do? Well, you could store it on his back, for one. You can bend the shaft at the joint in the middle to make a V-shape, then use a pair of angled slots to tab the spear directly to his back. I think that actually looks pretty cool! If you want to store his kabuto you tab it into slots higher up on his back, then you use tabs near the joint on the spear to hang it totally folded up from a notch on the back of the kabuto. It shouldn't surprise anyone when I say that Ganoh's transformation is pretty simple. His head tucks in, his arms curl up and then use flaps on the sides of his body to swing back behind his torso. His legs turn 180 degrees at the thigh swivel, tab together, and then swing back 90 degrees. The last thing you gotta do is lift his bumper, tuck in his crotch flap, then put his bumper back down. Surprisingly, it's not just Ganoh's robot mode that's pretty good. His truck mode is decent, too. The cab is convincing, and I can pretend that the exposed thigh is like a fuel tank or something. The shin kibble isn't ideal, but again it almost passes for purposeful. My biggest complaint is the big hands/heels on the back of the truck, and the gap between the lights on top. The gap actually serves a purpose, though. Ganoh's weapon becomes an integral part of his fire truck mode. Specifically, he's an airport crash tender. See, with it folded in half you can use tabs near the drills to plug it into his shin pads at the back of the truck. The 5mm peg he used to hold the spear in robot mode sticks out over the front of the cab, and it's meant to be a foam sprayer. Works for me! Although, you may wish to have Ganoh carrying his kabuto in truck mode. To do that, you have to shift the spear backward, using tabs closer to the joint to plug into his shin pads. Then the kabuto uses a pair of tabs to plug into slots near his head. And, while no longer a convincing crash tender, I still don't hate this mode. With the drill bits hanging off the back like a tail and the kabuto sitting on the front like a head, he looks sort of like someone built a Triceratops Zord out of a fire truck, and I honestly dig it. At this point, I should still point out that Ganoh is a decade-old toy with engineering that was pretty dated even then. Objectively, he's got a great toy. That said, if you were going to get one just one Swordbot this is the one to get, as he's got a solid robot mode, a solid alt mode, and even with his kabuto pulls off a better look than Optimus Exprime's "dragon" mode. Oh, one more thing. Now that we've looked at all three Samurai Swordbots, I had a thought. They'd have to completely eliminate the combination gimmick, but I think Hasbro could make convincing Legacy Samurai Swordbots with a few retools of existing figures. What do you guys think?

I'm having kind of a rough week, but I did want to finish up Transformers Go. So, we looked at the Shinobi Swordbot team, individually and combined. We looked at Optimus Exprime, and his combined modes, which necessitated that we also looked at Kenzan, the leader of the Samurai Swordbot team. So what we need to do is finish off the Samurai Swordbots, and we're picking up with G02 Jinbu. I gotta be honest, I'm not really seeing anything samurai about Jinbu. I've heard it suggested that his head is supposed to look like he's wearing a samurai helmet, but I don't see it. He looks like a wannabe Conehead to me. Like Kenzan, he's give me a lot of that "weird Chinese transforming toy I found at Big Lots" vibe. Also like Kenzan, he's suffering from a distinct lack of torso. From the back his wings are kind of hiding it, but there's nothing really behind the cockpit on his front. There's the combiner hips, partly visible from the front, and they're pegged together onto the landing gear. I guess that makes him a bit more solid than some of the others, but as we'll see it creates it's own problems. Oh, and he's doing that thing where they use the combiner hands for heels again. Notice, in my pictures, the molded detail on the front and back of his thighs. I didn't realize this until much later, but apparently Jinbu is misassembled at the factory. What you're seeing as the front in my picture is actually the back, and vice versa. It's not too hard to fix, though, if you happen to buy a copy yourself. Remove the two screws from the lower leg and separate the halves, being careful of the spring and the ratchet in the knee. Be careful to set them aside so you keep track of which one was the right and which is the left. Now, remove the screws from the thighs then split and remove them- you can't just rotate them, because one side is hollowed for the ratchet. What you have to do is take what was his right thigh, then put it on his LEFT hip so the screw is still facing outward. Then you can put his left leg back on. Then put the thigh that was on the left, put it on the right hip, then put the right leg back on. Why does this matter, you ask? As misassembled, his knees bend less than 90 degrees. You're going to need them to bend more than that for combined mode. Moving right along... Jinbu comes with his kabuto and a very long fishing pole. I mean sword. It's a nodachi, but the guard has a bunch of extra junk on it that looks to me like a fishing pole. Jinbu's head is on a swivel, no tilt. His shoulders are ball joints for a swivel and about 60 degrees of lateral motion. A transformation hinge also gives him about 45 degrees of forward butterfly. His biceps swivel, and his elbows bend 180 degrees. No wrist articulation. No waist articulation. Now, his hips are where things get awkward. Because the combiner hips are locked into his landing gear he can't use them to fake any lateral movement. So, looked at one way, his hips can ratchet forward and backward about 90 degrees, but there's no lateral movement. But, there's a swivel above his hip. So, you could turn it 90 degrees, and then he'd have 90 degrees of ratcheted lateral movement, but no forward/backward movement. Regardless. there's a thigh swivel below the hip, and (when properly assembled) his knees bend a little over 90 degrees. His feet, or rather the yellow flaps on the front of his legs, can tilt up and down, but he has no ankle pivot. As you'd expect, he can hold his sword in either hand, and a 5mm peg allows him to hold his kabuto like a gun. It even has one of the more convincing barrels we've seen. For bot mode storage, you can either use one of two angled tabs on Jinbu's back to attach the sword at an angle across his back. If you want to store his kabuto too then you plug the kabuto onto his back using a pair of tabs on the kabuto and the little black slots on Jinbu's back, then use the same slot on his sword into one of the tabs near the 5mm peg on the gun barrel. Jinbu's transformation reminds me a little of Armada Starscream's, in that you're not folding the nose up 180 degrees, you're folding it up 90 degrees then folding his wings up 90 degrees on his back. (Combine that with his shoulders staying exactly where they are and the ability to bend the combiner hips backward while bending is robot hips forward and you've got an excellent Gerwalk mode!) His arms swivel backward on the butterfly joints and tab together to fill in the gap between his wings. From there it's as simple as bending his legs backward at the combiner hips 90 degrees, then using slots under his knee pads to tab onto his wings and unfolding his various flaps. Note that I have his yellow feet folding in, as I think it looks better and I kind of remember that's how it looked in the cartoon. Officially, though, they're supposed to be flipped out. Something tells me this isn't going to be one of @M'Kyuun's favorite jetformers! He comes across as longer and sleeker in the cartoon, but even in the cartoon he has all that leggy undercarriage. He's too gappy, with nothing between his legs. Actually, nothing really holds him together except the friction in his joints that the tabs that go into his kneepads. His arms are just kind of there between his wings. Speaking of his kneepads, it's almost a shame that they just slope up from mid-fuselage. If they were actually a bit longer and stuck up more I'd almost buy them as FAST packs. There is some landing gear that folds out from the nose, but that's about it for jet mode. Well, you can store his sword by clipping it into the gray clips on the back of his robot head. He can carry his kabuto, too, by folding his feet in (if you haven't already) then tabbing it into the slots underneath. Of course, if you thought he wasn't looking too aerodynamic before... I'm not sure which of the Swordbots is the worst... I think, on robot mode alone, Sensuimaru is probably worse than Jinbu, but he makes up for it by having a cool as heck shark mode. Jinbu is sort of a letdown in both modes. As has been the case, I don't actually recommend picking him up. I think he even lacks the obscure Japan-only charm of the others.