Toku Toy Box: S.H. Figuarts Shin Kuroto Dan Gallery

"You dare make light of the Game Master?!"

The one and only Game Master returns! And this time in another variation of his wild personality. Deleted by Parad, Kuroto Dan's data was scattered into the Proto Mighty Action X Gashat and seemingly lost. But thanks to Poppy, Kuroto's data was recovered and the game master was reborn, as a Bugster! Now imbued with all the abilities of a Bugster, and begrudgingly joining up with the team at CR, Kuroto has returned to stop Parad, Masamune, and anyone else who gets in the way of his path to godhood!

Packaging
As you've likely noticed the packaging calls out the name of this figures as "Dan Kuroto Shin". And I'm calling the figure "Shin Kuroto Dan". The situation is undoubtedly confusing because of the way in which Japanese naming conventions work, with family names (Dan) given first and first names (Kuroto) given last. And with adding the title of Shin to his name, Kuroto makes the naming convention that much more odd. Arranged with English naming conventions it should look like Shin (New) Kuroto Dan. Hence the way I reference the figure in the review.

Now unlike the other Kuroto civilian release, with a Buggle Driver styled box, this one fits in much more with what we've come to expect of Ex-Aid web exclusives. Though the front of the box does feature an excellent shot of Kuroto rising from his Continue Pipe, the rest of the arrangement is fairly standard. Like most new releases Kuroto's box also features the Tamashii Brand Sticker and blue Bandai Spirits logo.

Main Figure
As one of only of only a handful of characters to have ever received the civilian figure treatment across the S.H. Figuarts line, Kuroto Dan needs to hit certain benchmarks to be a decent release. Takeshi Hongo & Den-O's Hana are so far the only other Kamen Rider characters to have ever received these types of figures previously. Hongo having been released only about a year ago, is really quite the charming figure. Even if it suffers some articulation loss due to it's design as well as some odd engineering choices. Hana was released at a time when the SHF line really didn't have a truly clear or complex direction, and her figure skewed more toward an anime aesthetic rather than a life like one. Current civilian figuarts do a much better job of hitting the likeness of an actor.

So it really does speak to the popularity of Kuroto Dan as a character that not only have 4 of his forms been re-created in this toyline, but now two versions of his civilian identity as well! Today's subject, Shin Kuroto Dan, should not be confused with another release of the character as Kuroto Dan Shin. Though this figure technically represents Kuroto at his return in episode 30, he doesn't begin wearing this outfit or referencing himself as "Shin" Kuroto until the following episode.

Now the figure features an odd mix of intelligent choices and just kind of bad ones. Overall, it gets the look of Kuroto down. His slender and stylish look translates very well to this type of figure. In static poses it looks fairly natural. The legs are sculpted with all of the folds that you might imagine real pants would have, giving them a better sense of realism. But then the hips break up this design with really ugly outward rotating joints. Giving Kuroto very much what people would call a "diaper", though in this case I think of it as a thong. The back of the legs have that sort of Figma style disc look for the knee joints, which I personally hate. The feet are of course the typical long stylish dress shoes Kuroto was known for. They feature a toe bend which can be useful in some posing situations, but ankle tilts that can be severely limited by the cuff of the pant leg in most others. For some reason I've found that the plastic that Kuroto & even Hongo were made of is very stiff and inflexible. So despite there being a decent range in the joints that are present in the legs, I find them annoying to pose, and difficult to angle outward.

Part of the reason the legs have difficulty moving outward is Kuroto's jacket. It hangs down low enough, and provides just enough resistance to keep the hips a bit restricted. The bigger culprit however is the lower half of the upper body. The body is separated into two halves molded like the t-shirt he's often seen wearing. The bottom half is plugged on and hangs down around the waist joint. This limits rotation of the waste and hip movement. The upper half of the body loses part of it's rotations because of the jacket fixed to the sides of it hitting the rest of the body as it moves. The back of the jacket also has a peg hole to use with an included adapter which makes no sense to me, but I'll get to that further below. Overall I find the torso really unfortunate because, had it been designed correctly, you could have properly used a Gamer Driver from another figure with this one. As is, the best I could do was take the removable Driver from Lazer level 2 and rest it between Kuroto's jacket halves.

The shoulders and arms are set basically the same way as Hongo design wise. Shoulder pads set within the shoulder that extend out, with a bicep set within them at an angle. This has, mixed results. You lose quite a bit of the potential rotation in a bicep swivel when it's angled like this. But the real issue is that the shoulder parts rub against each other, there just isn't much room in there, so you wind up with a joint that locks up rather easily. It also inhibits the arm's ability to move across the chest, so you lose a lot of expressiveness there. The arms can move out fairly well at the bicep intersection, and the elbows (with those ugly joints!) work very well as well. For some reason the wrist ball joints are super stiff on mine and just barely rotate. But they work well enough.

Finally, kami da! The likeness of actor Tetsuya Iwanagi is actually pretty great. Though I do not care at all for the default face the figure has out of box. I much prefer one of the other two faces included. This one feels much more like an alternate, but it certainly has his personality and likeness spot on, even if some of the finer details are a bit rough. The head moves pretty well, though the neck joint pulls out really easily, and the neck connector attached to the chest interior is really difficult to move. Overall though I really appreciate the attention to detail here.

Accessories
2 - alternate faces. With 3 options to choose from, you'd think this would be the perfect number of choices. But honestly I think I'd like to have couple more basic options. Between the 3 of them we get one smiling/sure face, one angry face, and one maniacal laughter face. Each is just barely different enough to appreciate though. They each attach to the head via a clear peg system inside the face which baffles me and will most certainly break over time and repeated use.

2 - Gashats. These are very likely meant to be Proto-Mighty Action X Gashats/ As the general black color of them is ambiguous though, they can be whatever you wish really.

1 - Tamashii Stage Adapter. For some bizarre reason, Kuroto has a hole in his back that's larger than a traditional tamashii peg that would be on either end of a stage arm. So it works with literally nothing other than the included adapter. This is completely wacky to me. It makes no sense at all. Just use one of the uniform sizes you already had tamashii.

1 - Continue Pipe. This is the real draw of either of the Kuroto figures. This is the accessory that any and everyone wanted a figure of this character to come with. And it took 6 releases to finally get it. And it's massively disappointing. Is it the logical and sensible repaint of the Figuarts Mario warp pipe? No. Is it two thin halves of plastic that peg together into a hollow prop a figure can stand inside of, not even knee deep? Yes. It's quite disappointing. Imagine my further disappointment that the "continue" label on mine is both applied crookedly and has a big ripple in it from said crooked application. There's a peg hole on the back of the pipe to plug a stage arm into so that you can hold Kuroto more steadily in place as needed.

4.5 - sets of hands. One pair for holding Gashats, 2 open pairs that are barely different from one another, one pair for I guess handlebars on a bike as they aren't open finger types, and one pointing finger hand.

That's a lot of stuff. But the disappointment of the pipe as well as the lack of a Gamer Driver are pretty big let downs to me.

Final Thoughts
As much as I loved Kuroto during and beyond Ex-Aid's run, as much as I desperately wanted this figure, man is it a big disappointment. I really expected better. As the huge fan base ignited by this character continues to drive sales of toys based on him to this day, I expect them to actually be good. As nice as the likeness to Iwanagi is, the pitfalls of the design and iffy accessories are really enough to make this a regrettable purchase. Shin Kuroto Dan is not the god he claims to be.

Part 2
- Continue

No seriously. I loved Dan Kuroto, and this Figuarts embodies every single reason as to why. And yes that includes the continue pipe.

I own the...Kuroto Dan Shin(?) release, and I'm quite happy with him. I prefer the expressions he came with.

Now I need a Genm...

Wow, those faces turned out creepy.

Are you just gonna scroll past without saying "Howdy"?

It's pretty sad this is a disappointment, especially since Kuroto is such a popular character. I guess it's nice to get some proper Gashats, finally?

Still not a fan of these civil Toku-heroes figures. I like Kuroto Dan but I don't need a figure of him.

Doesn't help that I feel this is the worst looking one they did yet. I don’t even think the likeness is that good, although that might just be me?

The "Continue"-pipe is the only thing I liked about this release and reading how royally it sucks - yeah, glad I skipped this.

Love the figuarts!! *evil Dan Kuruto laugh* 😈

While I've always hated this character I'm glad that the actors portrayal got them enough popularity to get this figure. The actor was amazing in what he did, I'll never deny that. Lol. This figure captures almost everything about the character I hated and enjoyed about the actors performance. Great job Bandai.