Just curious... There's something awfully cool about Braves, with their giant super-robot bling and hyperactive gattai powers... However, the truth is that many of these are pretty much brightly coloured bricks, sometimes capable of bending at the elbow, and not much more. Within the original line of Braves (not counting CM's versions) which ones would hold up best to today's standards of posability? At this point, my faves are the Ryu truck brothers from GaoGaiGar... these are pretty nice molds, with a surprisingly wide range of articulation individually (the combiner modes are still bricks). Are there any other Brave figures that match them? zmog
From what I've seen, the most articulated bots are from GGG. Mic sounders has pretty good articulation and Gaigar is decent. Pretty much all the rest are bricks tho
Besides the Masterpeices (Ex and Dragonkaiser) it would be the GGG toys. More specificly the Ryu brothers and Mic. All of the combined modes are bricks though.
In my opinion, the Braves are awesome for their combining rather than their poseability, but hey, I grew up on the old G1 stuff that was very unposeable so it's not like I ever worried about that sort of thing. But yeah, the Gaogaigar Ryu brothers are extremely poseable individual, as are Mic and Gaigar. Big Volfogg is good too, although individually the three who form him aren't so great in that respect. But you can't go far wrong with the Masterpieces or the CMs Brave Gokins. Just remember those aren't meant for play, they're more like poseable display pieces.
Thanks for the info, guys! I have the first CM's GaoGaiGar figure. I couldn't pass up a stylin', near-perfect transformation version of GGG! I hear the newer ones are better engineered though... I discovered Brave Series through GaoGaiGar, so those were the first ones I bought. I've had the Ryu brothers for a while, but I've been picking up some of the older Braves too, and their knock-offs. However, as cool as they are, there is some little part of me that is always a bit disappointed with them. I guess I like to fiddle with my robots, rather than just put them on a shelf forever, and I love to pose them in dynamic ways, so I'm realizing that articulation is a must for me. I've just noticed that Star Silver from the Silverion team indirectly has some great articulation because of the additional jointing he needs to combine into Silverion. If only his shoulders could move too! zmog
Good question. CM's GGG is pretty close to "perfect" actually. I think you can even leave the fists attached in Gao Machine mode,and they tuck out of the way. I usually just remove the extra kibble from Stealth Gao because it looks better without it (mainly GGG's helmet stuck to the bottom. I don't use the hinged arm that holds the helmet in GGG mode either... limits head posability). I figure the DX one pulls it off by being simpler. When it comes down to it, GGG is not one of the harder Brave gattai sequences to pull off in toy form. When I first got the Ryu Brothers and the CM's GGG, I didn't use the instructions at all, because the transformation schemes were burned in my memory from watching the gattai sequence every single episode. zmog
http://toyboxst.inwards.com/rumblizer/view.php?article_key=492 Lots of the things that make it "less than perfect" in terms of the transformation are to make the individual parts look better. Liner gao, for instance, has a big honkin' and visible hinge on the DX version. The CM's version has a removable center piece instead. The Stealth Gao has a cover for the helmet area because it looks silly and toylike to just have a big helmet space dangling under it; again, that's why the DX GGG is a better toy and the high-end CM version is ... high end. ... and I seem to have ordered both the CM's GGG and Genesic GGG last night while in a drunken stupor having just been dumped. Whee.
Ack! Well, if your wallet can handle the strain, those will cheer you up for a while at least. I totally forgot about the removable bit that conceals the hinge in the middle of Liner Gao. That's probably the most obvious "imperfect" part of the transformation. As for the cover on the bottom of Stealth Gao, the problem with it is that IIRC, you can't actually fit the cover on when the helmet's inside. zmog
You need to remove Great Ex's head from Dragon Kaiser's Nose compartment... Snd Exkaiser's head has nowhere to go in Great Ex mode.
But that still semi cheating though theres no explanation for the head change in the animation unlike the parts that have to change in the GGG.
