S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Vulcan Shooting Wolf Gallery

"Bullet!"

For as long as Fuwa Isamu could remember, his past was ruined by the berserk Humagears of Daybreak Town. Holding a grudge against them all because of this, Fuwa dedicated himself to their total destruction as a member of A.I.M.S. However, this was all a plot by president Gai Amatsu of ZAIA, to drive Fuwa to hate Humagears even more as he became a Kamen Rider. With the knowledge of his true past revealed, and both he and Naki free of ZAIA's control, Fuwa is ready to continue fighting free of the anger that drove him. Instead Fuwa will help defend Humagears with Aruto Hiden & Izu. He will realize his own dream, to truly be Kamen Rider Vulcan!

Packaging
While it's hard to say that there have been any real innovations in Kamen Rider Figuart packaging in recent years physically, Zero-One's box did something pretty cool with the black light reactive stripes. Vulcan however doesn't feature that same kind of touch. Zero-One is the only character in show to really be shown in that black light style in the opening though, so I'm not so surprised. The box design itself is very reminiscent of Vulcan's own Rising Impact attack. And I always welcome the annual change in rider box designs, so this is no different.

Main Figure
So Kamen Rider Zero-One really set quite the high bar for the riders of this series. Vulcan builds off that quite nicely as well. A new series always need to start strong and set the standard and two releases in, I believe Zero-One is going strong. The one thing Zero-One really has on Vulcan is the black light reactive parts. Despite being primarily colored white, Vulcan doesn't really have much reactivity to black lights. But that's not really a gimmick of his either, unlike Zero-One. But from functionality and detail stand points, Vulcan packs every bit of punch that Zero-One does.

Vulcan's body is decked out in the same kinds of minute details as Zero-One. From the ground up it's a splendid recreation of the show costume. Much like Zero-One, Vulcan has feet that look an awful lot like actual sporty sneakers and function much the same, leaving the ankles to fully rotate and angle pretty freely back and forth. While toe bends can be easily overlooked, it's a big solid joint with plenty of surface coverage for support. For the legs we get a a really stellar backward bend in the knees giving us the ability to nearly lay the legs back parallel on themselves. Also like Zero-One, Vulcan has a ton of really well defined textured details on the body, though not really the same kinds. Zero-One's raised black textures are magnificent and add much depth to the design, but Vulcan has more of an armored appearance with nicely segmented components. This design looks much more like a suit of armor than Zero-One's more sporty look. One little not I adore is the slight creased folds on the knee joints giving them the appearance of real fabric. The thighs and hips themselves are also fantastically designed. While the hips are of the drop down variety, a kind I don't always like, these really are great and and leave plenty of leeway for posing particularly with that thick raised thigh armor. A similar design to Zero-One but clearly a different mold.

Around the waist is the new Shot Riser! This A.I.M.S driver acts as both transformation device and weapon. About as functional as other recent driver's the Shot Riser is easily removable from the buckle around Vulcan's waist. A perfect fit for the hands included for it, this firearm can also except the same Progrise Keys that are present through out the Zero-One line. Like the Zero-One Driver there's a small window within the Shot Riser that shows the Progrise Key currently inserted, which is a fantastic detail. The Shot Riser of course has the Shooting Wolf Key pre-loaded. Both the left & right hips feature Progrise Holders like Zero-One, which may seem a bit odd given that so far we don't actually have any closed Progrise Keys in the line to use with them. I'm almost certain we'll see some included with future releases.

The upper body is of a similar albeit slightly improved design over Zero-One. We get a complete 360 degree rotating waist joint, a floating upper body that can lean about 45 degrees to either side, and lots of room to arch the back with forward bends that are more pronounced than Zero-One. Vulcan also features some arms every bit as nice as his buddy. While he doesn't have the same kind of low profile shoulder pads as Zero-One, we get lots of play in the shoulder pads thanks to the same slide mechanism underneath. You can take advantage of it to angle the armor up over the main body and stretch the arms outward a bit more. There's a full 360 rotating bicep swivel, double jointed elbows and a great set of wrist ball joints. The arms may not do anything particularly new, but what they do accomplish makes them very solid.

This finally brings us to Vulcan's head. The sculpt is certainly dead on, but I swear every time I look at it, it feels less like a wolf and more like a horse design to me? That may just be me, but still the head looks great, particularly those striking blue compound eyes. However I do feel the neck has a bit more limitation to it than Zero-One did. But Zero-One also has quite the extraordinarily designed neck as well. Even with it's slight limitation this is still a fantastic design that tops off the figure very nicely.

Accessories
Fuwa comes with everything he needs and then some:

4 - sets of hands. 1 pair each for holding either of the included weapons, 1 pair of open palms, and 1 pair of closed fists. The figure comes with another pair of open palms already attached as well.

1 - Attache Shotgun. A powerful sidearm wielded by both Kamen Rider's Vulcan & Jin, this Attache Shotgun is a non-transforming scale representation of the in-show weapon. While it's non-functional it's still pretty great to have it included when Zero-One didn't get his Attache weapon. Speaking of...

1 - Attache Calibur. Intended for use with your previously purchased Kamen Rider Zero-One, this is also a non-transforming Attache weapon, but like the Shotgun is perfectly scaled for it's weapon mode. With it your Zero-One is complete, though in fiction these weapons are really compatible with any of the Hiden, AIMS, ZAIA, or Metsuboujinrai.net riders.

This is really an ideal set of accessories for Vulcan and by extension Zero-One. Between these and the included Shot Riser on the belt, you get everything you need.

Final Thoughts
Zero-One set the bar high, and while Vulcan doesn't raise it any higher he's still quite wonderful. Solid articulation and more than enough accessories are the keys to my heart and my collection. Between these two releases this subline is off to an incredibly solid start and I can't wait to get my hand on the next few releases like Horobi, Jin, and Valkyrie. If you haven't picked it up yet, I highly recommend grabbing S.H. Figuarts Kamen Rider Vulcan now. And if you need a lead on one, I'd recommend grabbing him via Bluefin Brands.

Part 2

Looking good

Hmmm... Man, this dude looks good, but those swing down hips are a pretty big drawback for me.

I really like the look of this figure. I just wish mine wasn’t stuck in the nebulous transit for two weeks. It’s not lost, just delayed, but I really would like it to arrive now.

Also Vulcan may be the only time I actually get an upgrade form for a rider I already have. (Or will have) I definitely love Shooting a Wolf as a design, but I really want Rampage Gatling due to how much I like Fuwa as a character. Aruto May be the main character, but Fuwa is IMO the main rider.

Also I feel like the horse look is because the wolf ears are too close together and thin to be actual wolf ears which would logically be shorter and farther apart and back, but I never got the idea that Vulcan’s head was meant to be shaped like a wolf head so much as just have wolf-like accoutrements.

I don’t see why. They’re not old school swing down Figuarts hips, they’re more like a hybrid of new and old. They drop down, but they’re moulded and engineered like traditional universal hinges rather than the inset, borderline useless ball joints of old.

Maybe it's because I saw this a little after waking up but it looks like the blue on Vulcan's suit is more blue than on the show, if that makes any sense

So they're not floppy messes?

Going off of reviews, nope.

Drop-down hips on Rider figures haven't been floppy like...at all. For the past few years, at least.

Having it in hand, nope.