S.H. Figuarts Yellow Buster & Usada Lettuce Gallery 2.0

Busters, ready, GO!

TokuNation is finally ready to finish the journey it began nearly 5 months ago. Our Gallery 2.0 retrospective for Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters comes to an end with this final gallery, S.H. Figuarts Yellow Buster & Usada Lettuce!

** As a heads up a majority of this gallery & review will be nearly identical to my Red & Blue Buster reviews.

Packaging
At the time Go-Busters figuarts featured some really creative packaging. And I still think that holds true. Yellow Busters' box featured all the series hallmarks and logos as part of it's design. Right down to the awesome "shades" logo. The metallic reflective cardboard makes it feel premium & stylish, and the stock photos present you with a figure, that while not entirely capable of recreating those poses, can do an admirable job.


Main Figure
Red, Blue, & Yellow Buster of course weren't looked fondly upon. People who hated the show subsequently seemed to dislike the figuarts and felt they were "taking spots" of other sentai that "deserved" release more. You see similar arguments crop up from time to time with MP Transformers. But there was a voracious dislike of that particular season and it's mainline merchandise too. As a show without a collectible gimmick it simply under performed and is most likely what caused Toei to 180 into the goofy silly super gimmick driven stuff we get now year in & out. For me Go-Busters was the last modern show with some true originality to it. I feel the figuarts, while not perfect, do deserve a 2nd glance.

For starters Yellow Buster features some really unique detailing you don't often see on figuarts that aren't based on Showa era characters. You can mainly see what I'm talking about on the boots & thighs of the figuart. The show suits were made of leather rather than traditional spandex or lycra. While this meant they showed wear and tear much more easily, they also really popped on screen. The Figuart captures that perfectly down to the excellently molded in thigh and boot details. Little things that are easily overlooked while the suit is in action that can be recreated perfectly at this scale. Sort of like the fabric folds in old Showa Rider suits. Blue Buster also features a number of pretty nice crisp paint apps recreating the 2-tone silver/red costume right down to the "zipper" down the middle of the suit. The only new unique tooling to this version of the mold are the legs and skirt. Shorter legs to make her the appropriate size, and a skirt to simulate the suit. Unlike the Gokaigers that predate her, Yoko only has the standard skirt. She does not include an alternate with better thigh cuts for posing, so the range of her legs is limited.

Sadly the elbow joints are incorrectly colored black rather than silver & yellow. I believe at the time of release it was assumed it's because that plastic wouldn't take to paint very well, the black does draw your eyes' attention but not terribly so, and the elbows function just fine too, perhaps being a tad bit limited. Yellow Busters' arms are also one of the last sentai figuarts releases to feature bicep swivels. Nowadays that feature tends to be reserved for more armored characters like Metal Heroes or Kamen Riders. Sadly because of the way the torso sculpt bulges forward at the shoulder the arms cant make much use of the swivels. So no, Yellow Buster can not recreate all of her signature poses properly. I've done the best I can to demonstrate what it looks like but this imperfection of the design is probably the one glaring flaw I see in the mold and it persists through all 3 releases.

The helmet is pretty much spot on, though I would have loved to have gotten a nice chrome visor, but I can totally accept the metallic paint we got here. The sculpt is crisp and despite the complaints I often see, the head looks exactly the right size to me relative to the figure. Other details of note include the GB emblem on the belt which is sculpted really nicely, a dark paint wash could have brought out more of that detail though. The left arm features the molded in and near fully painted Morphin Brace as a wonderful scaled counterpart to the real deal. Though non-functioning I always love wrist changers. And to round out the nicer details of the figure we have a really great looking Transpod on the chest straps. (The straps themselves help contribute to the hindered arm articulation)

Overall I still have a great opinion of this figuart just as I do the other 2 Busters. Design flaws and all. Perhaps I should mention though that possibly because of the material the hands are cast in, they can be really difficult to swap. In the case of Yellow buster I finally actually broken one of her wrists while shooting this gallery. despite owning her for 3+ years and having swapped hands numerous times, it didn't happen until just now. Luckily replacements are very cheap to come by now!



Accessories

3 - sets of hands. Pretty standard stuff. Just mirrored sets with no unique poses. Identical to Red Buster.

1 - Sougan Blade. The standard bladed weapon of the 3 main Go-Busters. This is a nicely sculpted and accurate piece. Obviously it's not engineered to have it's binocular form as most figuarts weapons at this scale don't work in that way. It would have been nice if that were included separately.

1 - Ichigan Buster. The 2nd standard weapon of the original trio. It's just as nicely sculpted and painted as the Sougan Blade, though with more paint apps over all. I really dont see why this one wasn't molded with transformation joints, it would've been very simple that happen with it. As is though it's one of the more interesting sidearms out there. Really like it.

1 - Ichigan Buster Special Buster Mode. This is the combined form of the Blade & Buster. The 2 weapons themselves were not engineered to combine so this piece is included instead. I actually don't mind that as it allows you to have extra weapons to display. In much the same way that latter figuarts like the Kyoryuger had 2 versions of their special weapons and you could display both simultaneously.

Usada Lettuce
One of the most diminutive Buddyroids (right behind Enetan) and perhaps the most useless in a combat situation, is Usada Lettuce. And much like his on scren counterpart, the Figuart is kind of useless too. Now that's not to say that he isn't a cool figure. He's just definitely something that only works as a pack in with another figure rather than an individual release. This was the only smart way to get him made. Basically it's like you bought the excellent Buster mold with all of it's accessories again plus Usada as one more giant bonus. There was of course a steep price difference at the time of their release, but prices have plummeted on this 2-pack ever since. Down to around the 3000 yen range.

Usada himself is capable of more motion than you might immediately realize though. His head does swivel, but the joint is very tight and can stick. If you have moved him in a while it's almost as though the paint on the head acts like an adhesive. He can also swing his arms forward and back and his ears can move independently as well. This gives you enough variety of movement to recreate anything he could do in the show, which wasn't much. However nothing else about him is functional. Which sucks. It would have been very easy to sculpt an open chest cavity with a door for you to store snacks for Yoko. But alas that's about all Usada does. It's nice to have him especially at today's prices but people definitely felt burned at the time of release.

Final Thoughts
As always I love these figures. I love that show. I want more. But sadly Yellow Buster & Usada are currently and will likely remain the final S.H. Figuarts from Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters. These 2 are an admirable send off to a line that I treasure.

Part 2:

Usada Lettuce

Very nice gallery! I love the Go-Busters figures and I wish we could have gotten the rest.

THE GO-BUSTERS TOOK THE SPOTS THE GEKIRANGERS WERE SUPPOSED TO GET!
FUCK 'EM!

Anyway, not a big fan of the Go-Buster Figuarts. If Sentai ever got the SS releases, they'd probably be on that list.
...Well, not really, since Sentai Figuarts are kind of a dry well right now and GB tanked, but, yeah. They totally need better figures (I know shoulder articulation can be particularly troublesome, so I don't know if revised figures could let Red Buster do his pose, though).

I love these guys. Hope to get them some day.

You definitely need to! The Go-Busters may not be perfect, but for the prices they for these days they are 100% worth it. I love these figures.

If they were to make Enter's evil Red Buster form, I'd get it.

These galleries have made me really disappointed that we never got Go-Busters adapted over here. There's just something I really like about the look and feel of them.