Retro Toy Week: KAAAAANEDAAAAAAA!

File this under "Good Idea, Bad Idea": I wasn't sure if I had taken a look at any old McFarlane toys this year. Then I remembered I had just seen in one of my bins, the Kaneda figure from Akira; and that would tie into last year's look at his motorcycle. (Both were from 2000.)

Then Blogger (which has recently updated it's posting layout and possibly some other nuts-and-bolts nonsense) has been really squirrelly on the picture-loading front. And it didn't help that the first pictures I took came out terrible. Fine, but after all that I really don't like this figure anyway.

Kaneda looks nice: he does have a bit of a mouthbreather look, that actually probably goes with the character. The sculpt and the paint are both well-done: McFarlane called this line "3D Animation from Japan" or such, and it shows. But even with ten points of articulation, almost none of it is useful: neck, waist, shoulders, wrists, mid-thigh and boot-top; all simple swivels. Kaneda also comes with goggles, which I couldn't get to sit properly, and the laser-rifle and powerpack. The rifle and pack are connected by a thin plastic hose, which is fine; but aren't removeable (hmm, maybe you could get the pack off, maybe, if you really wanted.) or adjustable. You can just get the rifle in Kaneda's hand, but he can't even raise it to point it at anything.

Worst of all, like we mentioned back when we looked at his bike, the carded version of Kaneda can't sit on said bike. Like, at all, in the slightest. And frankly, he can't do anything else, either. If you're looking for a Kaneda to sit on your desk and stare slackjawed at you, he's great (again, the slackjaw isn't a dealbreaker, the character wasn't exactly a rocket scientist) but if you want him to do anything else, you're out of luck. McFarlane was well on his way out of the "action figure" business then, and would make increasingly less articulated pieces for the next few years--maybe until he got the Halo license? I don't know, I'm not a fan, but it seems like that's doing all right for him.

I must've spelled Kenada Kanada Kaneda wrong forty times on this post.


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Retro Toy Week: Kaneda's Motorcycle!

What's probably the most iconic fictional motorcycle, and sold without his rider? From 2000, McFarlane Toys and Katsuhiro Otomo's classic manga and anime Akira, Kaneda's motorcycle! There are a couple cons to the bike: it's not 100% accurate. There's a few stickers missing from the front, for example. I'm not positive it's totally to scale, either. The packaging pictures a scene with Kaneda posed on the bike, but the sold-separately Kandea from that series wasn't articulated enough to get anywhere near sitting on it. A later boxed set would fix that, if you didn't mind buying them again. (As usual, the Amazon links are only for reference, and I strongly encourage shopping around!) The front section opens up a little, and the wheels roll, but it doesn't turn at all. It's a tough call, though, if steering could've been added without wrecking the look of the cycle. And it probably doesn't matter, since it's more of a display piece than a toy; little kids shouldn't be watching Akira or playing with the cycle no matter how cool they are.
And make no mistake: Kaneda's bike is super-cool. An old friend once described Akira as including "forty minutes of riding motorcycles and screaming 'TETTTTT-SSSSSUO!'" And he still loved it! If you haven't seen it, or didn't get your own Bike action figure, well, maybe the American version will get figures...no, that's like hoping you'll get sent to the hospital because you'd really like some jello.

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