Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Kamen Rider DCD & Samurai Sentai Shinkenger

You have seen the introduction on Kamen Rider DCD the other day, and knowing that the toy maker for the series is Bandai, plenty of merchandises are lining up to greet everyone, many weeks before the series debuts:



Since Kamen Rider DCD features nine Kamen Riders from previous series, so apart from his own toys, you get to see gadgets from previous series again, like Kuuga and his Beetle, Ryuki and his Dragon, and Blade with his Sword. Of course they are newly designed for the new series, but the question is, if you already have a bunch of Kuuga action figures when the series was on ten years ago, are you going to purchase them again, even if they are new?

The question is especially relevant in regards to Kiva's merchandises. It will be Kiva's products during its own series versus Kiva's products during DCD. Hardcore fans might end up with plenty (more) of Kiva, Den-O and others with this new series. Will the fans be tired of this kind-of rehashing strategy? Will Bandai's plan backfires and hurt the overall sales of DCD's products?

It's still a bit too early to judge on that I think ^^;

Images from Toysdaily.

On the other hand, the upcoming Super Sentai series is announced as well, for quite a few weeks already I think. Someone did mentioned about it in the comment section of a previous posting, and just like DCD, I wasn't sure if it was official when I first saw it on some forums, so I waited for confirmation.

Now, it's very well confirmed since the announcement of its products is out ^^;


Called Shinkenger, the official name is "サムライセンタイシンケンジャー" (Samurai Sentai Shinkenjā) or "ジセンタイシンケンジャー" (Ji Sentai Shinkenjā). Under the concept of "Samurai", it's easy to associate it with Kakuranger and Hurricanger (one of my favorites ^^), but the suit design seems quite similar to Kamen Rider DCD, with a black stripe across the body, from left to right some more.

But of course they are unrelated in any way XD

The most significant design is of course their masks. Japanese/Chinese characters depicting elements of the Earth are used, with the exception of 天 (sky) for the Pink Ranger. The rest are 火 - fire (Red), 土 - Earth (Yellow), 水 - Water (Blue), and 木 - Wood (Green). For sky, it would make more sense if it's 金 - metal. But I supposed the producer has something else in mind ^^



The concept for their robots' design is animals. The basic five are lion (red), ape (yellow), dragon (blue), bear (green) and tortoise (pink).

Pink tortoise that come from the sky? ^^;

Each animal has a 'tablet' form as well. The gattai has a significant Samurai feel, with Samurai-like helmet, sword and shield. More supporting units are coming up, the three announced right now are red beetle, blue shark (?) and white tiger. The docking concept similar to that of Gekiranger, where part of the add-on always goes to the head, but it's a little more advanced this time, as the ad-ons seems to have their own gattai as well. The beetle, shark and tiger above seems to be able to combine into a bird-like mode.

Interested? ^^

Images from Toysdaily.