Toy Review: SH Figuarts Kamen Rider Birth

Kamen Rider Birth is the secondary rider in the Kamen Rider OOO series. Kamen Rider Birth first debuted on Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider War Core movie and we saw that it was Goto-kun who was using the Birth Driver. This gave the impression that he will continue to be the first user until we were all surprised (or maybe it was just me) when we saw Date as the user.

But whoever is using this Birth Driver, may it be Gotou or Date, the rider has already made a mark in Kamen Rider history. Let's see if that awesomeness that is Kamen Rider Birth transcends onto the SH Figuarts.

The box art is slightly different. Instead of the usual medals and different shades of circles at the side of the box window, these are replaced of the cell medal image and half green/grey design. This is expected. For first time I think, Bandai is marketing this as Kamen Rider and not Masked Rider as it says on the box.

He just came with 5 pieces of accessories. Four hands namely holding and open hands. Lastly is his Birth Buster in normal and cell burst mode. The Birth buster has three entry points for the cell pod. This makes Kamen Rider Birth slightly poseable by maximizing the usage of the Birth Buster.

I see no huge difference between the OCC and the SHF version of Kamen Rider Birth. Taken the fact that SHF design is more refined and detailed than OCCs. But what I can only notice are the obvious joints of SHFs and the orbs surrounding his SHF version have clear plastic parts. That is it. The head sculpt is almost the same as the OCC wherein the supposed lighted visors are just painted in red. So....

To summarize, I have a lot of expectations on the SHF release of Kamen Rider Birth but alas, if you already had the OCC version and you are in a money cache, I say you already have a winner because it has the claw set already. Too bad you have to buy the scorpion set separately.