For my first review I thought I’d go for something I don’t see reviewed online (in English at least) very often.

For those who don’t know – Saint Seiya is a manga/anime series which features characters aligned to constellations and sworn to protect the latest incarnation of the Goddess Athena. Except most of the time this involves fighting amongst themselves as they get manipulated by others or just for the fun of it really. I can’t comment on the anime series, having only read the original manga, so forgive me if this doesn’t make much sense! Basically, a bunch of cool types wearing awesome armour, ohhh yeeeessss….

So, Taurus here is named for the astrological sign as all the ‘Gold’ (ie. coolest and most powerful) Saints are. Although not one of my favourite Saints, he is very impressive and brings some real heft to the line. As you can see from the box above, it’s pretty huge and much larger than any of the Saints before him. Everything about him screams ‘big’, which is great and as he should be.

The packaging is modelled for each characters Myth Cloth, a giant box they carry around with them containing a Cloth Object – in Taurus’ case it’s the bull of his namesake. I always thought it a bit odd that they had to carry around a giant box with armour on a statue then stop to put it all on, but I may have missed the point!

Inside the box are several (4 here) plastic trays with everything you need to assemble Taurus. Immediately you can see there are a ton of pieces that enable you to build Taurus with his armour, or the Bull Object to hold the armour. The Bronze Saint EX figures also come with damaged Cloth pieces so you can have a set of armour on both figure and object. Sadly you can’t do this with the Gold Saints, due to the sheer amount of DIECAST pieces!

That’s right, the amazing thing here is that most of the armour is made from diecast metal, giving the figure real heft. In the case of Taurus it makes him incredibly heavy, but we will get to that!

This tray contains the cloak and various hands.And this one the base skeleton and chest pieces.

I’ve had varying degrees of ‘fun’ building these over the time I’ve been collecting Myth Cloth. Some are great fun (most of the Bronze EX figures) but some have you wanting to smelt the diecast in the nearest fire (EX Rhadamanthys, the only one I’ve admitted defeat on!). Thankfully due to the larger size the Cloth Object bull was really easy to build. I find the less abstract objects somewhat easier – if it’s an animal then you can guess where the arm and leg armour is going to go, if it’s a wyvern with bits everywhere  then less so!

The object form didn’t take me long at all, the instructions for the most part were really clear and easy to follow, even though they are in Japanese. The pieces are colour coded and it’s usually obvious which pieces are intended for the object form only.

Lovely lovely instructions!

I tried to take a picture of the Object as I built it, but kind of got carried away a little!

 

Taking shape!

Leg armour added.

A pretty good bull likeness I think.

Completed! You can just see the tail at the back. Often when I’m building these parts ping off in all directions but nothing like this happened at all with this one. I have to say it’s an imposing object and one of my favourite builds.

Onto the figure itself! With the Gold Saints you do have the crushing feeling of having to dismantle the object form so you can build the figure, but hey if they included more armour the price would be even higher. I know which I’d pick!

Whilst the object was easy, this was a beast to build because the shoulder armour kept popping off. I found the sweet spot so it sits right now and articulates correctly. Yes, even the shoulder armour is articulated – the key difference with the EX line to the standard myth cloths is that they have a ton of articulation they can actually use as the armour has been carefully designed to allow it to move freely. I’m not very dynamic with my poses here I’m afraid partly because I just didn’t want to be putting him back together again.

As you can see, his arms are semi folded in his ‘Great Horn’ (no sniggering at the back please) stance, his signature move. I say semi, as I couldn’t pull off the Great Horn no matter how hard I tried (seriously that’s enough laughter, I’m here all week).

The folded arms are supplied separately and you can only armour up the gauntlets. The arm socket is just a bit too finicky and kept popping off when I tried to make the pose. I’ll be looking online to see if anyone else has this issue or if it’s just me.

Also included are various head pieces. I don’t remember Taurus being one of the Saints who often removed his helmet, so I was surprised by the amount of hair he actually has. The head is very poseable, and there are various faces you can interchange to achieve the look you desire.

I’m particularly impressed by his helmet. Although it isn’t diecast it’s got some great styling and paintwork. There is even a ‘snapped’ horn from the first major fight Taurus was involved in during the series. I can’t remember which Bronze Saint snapped it, but I have a feeling it was Seiya. Correct me if I’m wrong!

The Gold Saints also wear cloaks on occasion, and Taurus is no exception. I choose not to display the Saints in their cloaks because of the extra space they take up, but they are very nice pieces. Taurus’ doesn’t have the sideways movement of the smaller Gold Saints cloaks, probably because he didn’t actually move much if memory serves so it has no need to ‘flow’. It plugs in the back nicely, and if you choose not to attach it then you can plug a piece of armour instead.

Above are the various head pieces, the shadowy one is modelled for the way the Gold Saints were introduced to add ‘mystery’ and looks really effective. I love the maniacally laughing one, I really wanted to have the folding arms in for that pose as it evokes the manga for me, but alas no.

All in all, I’m really happy with how Taurus turned out. I’m not convinced by the interchangeable arms as they were really tricky to reattach and discouraged me from messing around with arm poses for him, but I’m glad to add him to my Gold Saint stable. For the most part, he holds together well when compared with some of the others and adds some muscle to the crew. He also dwarfs all of them, below are some size comparisons with the short Seiya, and the taller Rhadamanthys.

And finally with the rest of the Gold Saint gang that I’ve assembled (plus Gemini Saga Surplice, I’m still waiting for the day they rerelease him in Gold cloth).

I imported Taurus from an online source. The worst part of these figures is their price unfortunately, especially the Gold Saints with their increased ratio of diecast pieces. You can usually get a fairer deal by preordering in advance and that’s what I did. These are amazing figures that don’t seem to get a great deal made of them in the UK at least and it’s a shame as they are a great, albeit wallet busting, purchase. For me, the building aspect is fun and adds a deal of customisation you don’t get with most figures. It also means I can regularly switch things up a bit if I get bored of how they are looking.

Anyway, thanks for reading and let me know if you have any photo requests etc and I’ll see what I can do! xoxo