MG Kamen Rider W FangJoker

Kamen Rider W FangJoker (damn, what a mouthful) is the only form of W that uses Phillip (right side) as a body while Shoutarou (left) is the “mind”. If you didn’t get what I just said, then watch one episode of Kamen Rider W >_>. Anyway, this form is my favorite form and I was actually fond of its design even way before I started watching any Kamen Rider. I was originally gonna get CycloneJoker but I figured Bandai will milk the line-up anyway so I waited until the day FangJoker is released. That day came and it is now here…

Out of the Box

16 Runners. Large sheet of foils. rubber soles. A giant display base (which I end up not using). Awesome bug eyes. I think one of the greatest thing about building this kit is that you can really tell which parts go left and which go right…

BODY

Since this model is bigger than your 1/100 Gundam, the pieces are also naturally bigger. Although for an MG, the amount of parts and sophistication is around that of HG. There’s just enough parts to get the job done. No mechanical “inner frame” because… well, this is not a mobile suit.

ARMS

I bet you can put the arms together in your head just by looking at the photo. I still don’t understand the point of the “bulging muscle” gimmick… it does nothing to enhance the look nor the details.  Notice how I didn’t bother with the hands… more on that later.

WAIST/W DRIVER

The belt gimmick is pretty cool since both drivers rotate in unison thanks to gearing. Other than that… the whole thing was one shiny and colorful mess before topcoat.

LEGS

A lot of parts but the pieces are large and easy to handle. Cue what I said about the arms.

HEAD (HELMET?)

There are enough parts for you to assemble a black and white version of W’s regular head so you should be careful not to mix the internal parts. While they look almost identical, they do fit differently.

FANG GAIA MEMORY

I should not have bothered assembling that little blue dinosaur… it just looks terrible. The Joker memory (not shown) is just one piece.

FANGS

All the fangs are one whole piece except the Shoulder Fang.You have to exchange the cuffs with the regular ones to equip the fangs.

HANDS

Even before I bought the MG FangJoker, I just knew I have to get these hands. If anything, I made sure I was able to get these hands before I even pick up the model itself. I absolutely hate the regular hands that came with the model! It works for Gundam… but damn is it horrendous on a human figure! The regular hands are almost unforgivable since this is coming from a company that spends R&D money on making sure a MG Gunpla’s transformation gimmick is replicated faithfully even at the cost of other aspects of the kit (see: MG ReZEL, Delta+, all the MG Zeta models). Anyway, whoever let those hands passed need to count their sins…

Sadly, I wasvery much disappointed with these B-Club hands too; out of the package, they look like shit (for lack of better diction). They’re cast out of resin (big whoop) and had excess flashes all over the edges which I cleaned off before assembling. While they do come in FangJoker’s color, they do not match the plastic. The white here was a bit yellow and that bugged me too so I fixed that as well. Another thing I noticed about the hands… although it is for “FangJoker Use”, this is a recolored CycloneJoker hand; the pointing finger hand is on the left hand and not the right so Phillip cannot do the “count your sins” pose properly even with this set of hands -_-;.

I primed, painted, and gloss coated the white hands to match the white plastic about 95%+ of the way. The far left white hand is slightly off-white because I accidentally sprayed it with gunship grey instead and was too lazy to fix it >_>. The black hands were fine with just matte topcoat. The quality of these hands are pretty terrible; they do not fit properly on its own, horrible fitment (gaps) and do not hold together well on the model. Damn things kept falling off during the photoshoot. The “pegs” and “slots” to assemble them are pretty loose and useless so I had to use super glue to get them to hold. Really annoying… BUT! I would still take these over the regular hands solely for aesthetic purposes. Having paid over 20 dollars for these, it’s not too wrong to expect something more decent right? I know some resin fanatic out there is gonna argue with me over how the poor quality and terrible fitment is part of its charm and that I am “supposed to” fix it…

HENSHIN!

In an attempt to stay faithful to the actual suit, the white half is GLOSS COATED while the black side is MATTE COATED. While you might be hardpressed to see any difference on the white side, let me tell you… it’s there. instead of “shiny” plastic, it is actually “glossy” plastic. There’s a difference. Also the white side is a lot smoother and not as scratch prone as the black side. It’s REALLY smooth! :D

I think the model is very accurate to the real thing. Even more so than its SHFiguarts counterpart. I especially like the head. Proportions might look a bit odd (legs) at some angle but you will easily get used to it. The whole upper body is just fantastic though.

I really love the matte black! It reminds me of Batman’s armor. I wasn’t sure whether to “panel line” this model or not since it’s supposed to be a live-action suit. Actually, I did panel lined the silver stripe running down the middle of his body.

NOW… COUNT UP YOUR SINS!

Ver. Phillip… sorta.

Ver. Shoutarou

“I said count your sins, damnit!”

“NO U!”

ACTION!

Kneeling looks natural enough. Jodan sokuto geri is not too shabby either.

Testing the joints and all. Joints are smooth and have human-like motion but due to the model’s size, posing is kinda cumbersome. Anyway, KNEE BAZOOKA!

Jodan juntsuki

It should also be able to do all the flashy kung fu poses that you can think of too.

SHOULDER FANG

*KSH! KSH!*

I think I need to learn how to throw a boomerang so I know how to pose a model doing it… >_>

FANG BOOMERANG!!!

ARM FANG

*KSH!*

Considering the placement of the blade, I”m not really sure how practical this weapon really is but…

It still looks threatening ^^;.

Bro fist!

RIDER KICK

*KSH! KSH! KSH!* FANGU!

MAXIMUM DRIVE!

FangJoker’s Rider Kick is so damn hard to capture right on still photography because it’s a continuous spinning kick… Think Spinzaku.

It doesn’t help that I don’t have any proper display base that could hold up this model… aerial shots were hard and risky.

FULL FANG

This is how FangJoker should really look like…

Channeling Soulgain…

Not sure why it wasn’t shown in the series though…

Ever wondered why there is no FangMetal, or FangTrigger?

obligatory original Rider Kick from the Left

Now from the Right.

FangJokers

Comparison to 1/100 and 1/144 Gundams.

PROS AND CONS

Pros

– THEM EYES!

– It looks fantastic; true to the real thing for the most part.

– Simple to build (could be bad to some); not really time consuming

– Large (though it will look out of place next to regular Gundam models)

– Pretty good articulation

– Fangs

Cons

– THEM HANDS!

– Takes some fiddling to get the model to stand in wide poses without falling

– Lots of foil stickers

– seam lines aren’t exactly well covered. Nubmarks are also out in the open.

VERDICT

There’s really not much for me to say about this kit since it is not particularly loaded with gimmicks or does it have as much stuff as a regular MG Gunpla. Still, this is a fantastic model. Some will argue that this is not an MG for various reasons but really, who cares what grade it is? It is huge, highly detailed, articulated, and fun to play with. That is what probably matters the most in a line-up called “Figure-Rise”. The B-Club hands are really not worth the price but that is a totally separate issue and I would recommend staying away from wasting your money on them if you think you can put up with the regular ugly hands for even just a bit (I couldn’t so I forked over the money). This model looks really true to the actual Kamen Rider if you put in the time to either topcoat or paint it. Even if you don’t intend on playing with it, it is still a great display piece. Are you a fan of the FangJoker? If yes, pick this up. If you don’t…

さあ～！お前の罪を数えろ！