Garo Kiwami Damashii Zero Part 2

Dreadful initial roll-out fright
A look at all of the accessories and option parts included for Garo Kiwami Damashii Zero after its introduction in the previous posting:



All of Zero's accessories.



The blade parts of Zero's swords, Ginroken (銀狼剣).




Some excessive paint is left uncleaned on certain parts of the swords, but overall, the details and paint work are very consistent and impressive. ^^


The slots beneath the guards to connect to the hilts.


The swords' handles.


Instead of trying to figure out the shape of the connectors to attach to the right side of the swords, it's much easier to just match the parts via their colors - the side with a shade of blue on the handle faces forward. ^^


Ginroken in complete form. ^^


The individual swords' length is 8cm.


Another hilt part is included to combine the two blades to form Ginga Ginroken (銀牙銀狼剣)


Ginga Ginroken in complete form looks like a huge bow or boomerang. ^^


Due to the unevenly positioned pegs on the combined hilt part, the imbalanced look of the two blades is very obvious. ^^;


Ginga Ginroken's total length is 15.5cm.
A massive weapon for a Kiwami Damashii figure. ^^


Two pairs of option hand units are included: open-type hands for posing and open fists for holding the swords.


(Left) Very nice paint work that clearly distinguish the colors between the palms and the back of the hands.
(Right) Sharp claws on the open-type hands are awesome details to view. ^^


Part-swapping to connect the open fists to Ginroken.


With the hand fists attached and slide close to the swords' guard, the split between the guard and the hilt is hidden. ^^
It's a minor but pretty nifty design feature I think. ^^


That feature is not seen with Ginga Ginroken, obviously due to the positioning of the hand when grabbing the combined sword.


Unfortunately for the figure, and for me, when I tried to remove the default closed fists, the tight left wrist joint refused to budge and snapped when I twisted it harder. ^^;
Is this my first incident of having something broken on a completed figure? It might be. ^^; I don't think I'm too happy right now with the broken wrist joint to have a clear mind running down on past similar incidents. The priority now is to get the joint fixed. Luckily, it's not a terribly bad incident, even though the joint is completely broken off as you can see from the image above. ^^; With the right tool, fixing it shouldn't be too much of a problem. ^^


A hole is been drilled into the center of the broken ball-type joint (while it's still inside the wrist) using pin vise with 1.0mm drill bit.


The joint is then "dug out" using the sharp point of a tweezers. ^^
The tool to reconnect the joint to the hand unit is shown here: brass pipe of 1.0mm outer diameter, which was previously used in fixing the broken joints on HGUC Gundam RX-78-2.


A hole is drilled into the center of the left hand's joint area, as deep as possible but making sure the drill bit doesn't poke through the other end. ^^;
A short segment of the brass pipe is cut and inserted into the hole.


(Left) The previous hole made on the ball-type joint is deepened all the way till its opposite end, allowing the brass pipe to be inserted right through it.
(Right) Superglue is used to strengthened the reconnection. The remaining segment of the brass pipe is discarded using a wire cutter.


Test fitting the fixed joint on the wrist.
It seems to be working properly now. ^^
After reattaching the fixed joint to the wrist and tried out its swivel, very gently to not break it again, it became clear to me that the reason behind the joint's initial refusal to move was "initial roll-out fright" XD The joint had been too tightly sealed into the wrist swivel during the figure's production process, making the adjustment of any movement to be impossible. It probably just need a bit of wriggling for the joint to be loosened and be able to move normally, but even that wasn't possible for this figure of mine. ^^; Now that its joint is fixed, the left hand unit moves like nothing ever happened to it. ^^ I was thinking about sanding the interior of the wrist swivel so that the joint can fit properly, but that's no longer necessary after trying out the fixed joint with it.

Giving the production process the benefit of the doubt, the overly tight wrist joint could be just an isolated flaw on this figure alone, which belongs to me. ^^; So, I'm not going to write off the entire figure just because of that problem. The figure itself is very beautiful in terms of its proportion and details. ^^

Giving more time to the glued part of the fixed joint to dry, more images of Garo Kiwami Damashii Zero will be up only in the next posting. ^^