The Rabbit Haul

I always had a passing interest with the products that Sentinel made, but it wasn’t until they decided to make a character from FLCL that I made me take the plunge. In their RIO:bone line, Sentinel has produced the “green” version of Canti. Here is the review.

Canti (green)

Figure: Right off the bad, I have to comment on Canti’s weight. I’ve never handled anything made by Sentinel, so I didn’t know what to expect. Texture-wise, Canti feels soft and light like a figma, yet squishy at the same time. It’s very odd, but that doesn’t detract from the figure. Though the characters proportions were always fluctuating, Canti looks like he comes from the show. The sculpt is beautiful and purposeful; the lines look real clean, and the joints aren’t obvious. If you’re familiar with plamo, you’ll notice that Canti’s joints aren’t too different from what you can pick up at a hobby shop; I’m surprised with how good the articulation is. How often do you run into a figure that can crouch and crown on the ground? The neck has such an incredible range of movement; it’s incredibly easy to emote that faceless head. There’s something very delightful with the amount of love that went into crafting such a beautiful action figure. There is a slight downside with this though, the ankle plugs into a pvc joint in the foot; these feet fall off more often than I’d like. Despite the seemingly weak joints, the figure still holds up incredibly well on its own. Only the insanely anal people would complain about the lack of some minor paint apps behind the monitor face.

Accessories: If you’re an accessory-whore, the included accessory tray is your wet dream; Canti’s packed with stuff. Because Canti’s built like a model kit, it’s almost implied that part-swapping is involved to a degree. The first thing I’d like to talk about is the iconic leather jacket; you need to pull the arms out, put on the torso portion of the jacket, plug the jacket arms on the shoulder-joints, rip the lower arms (including elbows) from the original ands, then plug these into the new jacket arms. It gets worse. From there, you can put on the leather-strapped wing backpack, the faux-halo, and finally Mamimi’s cat. I must mention, there is a peg on the wing-pack that plugs into the cat’s foot. This is a lot of stuff for Canti’s default outfit. It a shame that one of my elbows doesn’t plug into the jacket arm securely. Do you guys remember the hectic shoot-out scene from episode 5? Well Canti comes with the gear to emulate his look from that moment. Canti’s poncho consists of two pieces that don’t allow too much room for the arms to move. The shotgun, however, has a working pump… that’s unnecessarily insane. On top of the many different sets of hands, there’s even a cardboard box for his head; but this is completely useless without the cleaning apron and various cleaning supplies. To make matters worse, the cardboard box doesn’t secure on the head very well. As a nightcap, Sentinel includes a figure-stand; this requires you to remove a plug from the figure’s back to use. What Canti really needs though, are alternate screens for his face.

Overall: On superficial judgement, I can easily say that Canti is damn near perfect; the figure is really well made. It’s just that it all starts to fall apart when it interacts with its cornucopia of accessories… literally. Despite these, you can tell that there was a lot of love that went into making this figure. I appreciate what’s been done, and I look forward to owning the doomsday-bringing red version of Canti. Now I gotta track down the perfect Haruko/Vespa duo. This figure has its flawed, but they’re minor and I still love it.

Buy It:  Amazon |  BigBadToyStore

CookSux

CookSux owns, curates, and is the head writer of The Rabbit Haul. CookSux also co-hosts The Andy and Harrison Show featuring Harrison and Andy, a podcast that can be found on iTunes. CookSux is a mod at TFW2005 and TokuNation... jeeze, what doesn't he do?

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