SH MonsterArts Kiryu Mechagodzilla 3

This is my second-favorite figure of 2013. Kiryu hits on all cylinders: beautiful packaging, terrific sculpt, flawless paint, brilliantly engineered articulation, some great accessories and neat "little extras" in the form of opening panels and articulated thrusters. It's an absolute joy to behold, and (despite a hefty price-tag) does everything it can to make itself a worthwhile purchase.

Kiryu, aka Mechagodzilla 3, aka MSF-3 comes in a beautiful window box. Everything is held tight in a clear sandwich tray as shown. You get: 3 interchangeable sets of eyes, a removable cannon backpack, and a removable dual laser for each arm, complete with an additional knife attachment for each. Everything attaches securely and relatively painlessly, and works as it should. It's enough to get a great variety of looks and poses, combined with his opening chest panels for the Absolute Zero Cannon, opening thigh panels for thrusters, super-articulated tail and a couple of small adjustable thrusters just behind his shoulders.

Kiryu is my favorite Mechagodzilla design, and this figure captures all the great angles and nuances of the suit perfectly. The proportions are awesome, and the sculpt is engineered to work in tandem with the articulation. The figure can most certainly achieve poses that the actual suit could not. There are a couple of spots where tube attachments restrict movement a bit, so be careful around the head and thighs areas where you'll find them.

Otherwise, there are loads of articulation points, and most provide a decent enough range of motion to make posing a joy rather than a chore. There's a piece just above the hips that's unattached (it's where those 2 tubes wrap around at the waist) and floats to allow the waist to have a better range of motion. The shoulders allow movement forward, backwards, out to the sides, etc. I can't explain it all, and wouldn't want to: suffice it to say that he poses as well as you'd possibly want him to.

Kiryu stands about 7" tall and feels solid (there's some metal in his construction". At the MSRP of around $95, he's expensive. But you're getting a quality representation of an awesome character. I managed to catch a VERY fleeting sale on Amazon just before Christmas (it was one of those 10-minute deals) and picked him up for $62 shipped, for which I'm ecstatic. I love, love, love Kiryu and am so thrilled to have him as part of my SH MonsterArts collection...