Hydra Ichi

Review by SentaiSeiya

I picked up Hydra Ichi a while ago, not because I like him (who does really?), but because I had an opportunity to buy him on the cheap. Hydra Ichi is another one of the second-tier Bronze Saints, like Lionet Ban and Wolf Nachi. Much like those two characters, Hydra Ichi makes his major appearance during the Galaxian War story arc. Ichi serves as the opponent that Cygnus Hyoga faces in the tourney. Once Hyoga defeats the sneaky Hydra Ichi, he pretty much fades into obscurity, save for a couple of small appearances he makes later in the series.

The box for this character is the standard book-style box of the Saint Cloth Myth line.

Mine has “Los Caballeros del Zodiaco” on the top left corner because this is the Latin American release of this toy, which is pretty much identical to the Asian release.

The Object mode for the Hydra cloth is a serpent-like creature.

Now, the Hydra of Greek mythology had many heads. This Hydra, sadly, has only one head. Heck, it only has one eye. Putting aside the fact that the Object Mode does not look like the Hydra of Greek Mythology, this single-headed, single eyed snake creature looks kind of cool.The length of it is also pretty impressive.

On the other hand, this thing is a pain in the butt to put together and keep together. The pegs and sockets on the tail segments require a ridiculous amount of force to snap together, which is not made any easier by the fact that you have to maneuver around the piece of armor that fits over the tail segments when trying to assemble the tail. Also impeding any progress towards putting the tail together are the swivels in the middle of two of the segments which will move at the most inopportune times. This made it not only hard to put the tail together, but also caused me to knock of pieces of the rest of the Object Mode in the process.
Once the tail segments have been connected, you would think that you are safe to handle the figure and move it around. Surely the joints on the tail are secure, after all of the pressure that was used to snap them together… Nope! Not the case at all! All of the time spent on getting the tail together goes right down the toilet because those joints cannot hold together worth a damn! For me this was one of the most infuriating experiences of putting together an Object Mode. This should have been easy to put together, instead it took much longer than I would have liked to spend on such a simple design. It was like putting together a 35 piece puzzle, only to find out that you have to pound in the last few pieces, but doing so makes other pieces of the puzzle fly off.

Okay. Now that I got that out of my system... Let us continue with the review.
This figure is pretty plain and overall it is an OK figure.

Hydra Ichi’s armor is overall a very uninspired design. This Cloth also lacks the shiny finish of many of the other Saint Cloth Myth figures, subtracts from the already negative coolness factor of this toy.

Also, a good chunk of what little armor Ichi has is made of plastic. These pieces are:

• The kneepads
• The codpiece
• Both sets of shoulderpads
• The helmet
• The lower back panel ( not picured)
• The claws( not pictured)

His head sculpt is very accurate to the anime. From his Mohawk to his butt-chin, Bandai did this character right, so you can marvel at his ugly mug all you want.
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As some of you may know, in the Saint Seiya manga all of the Bronze Saints are actually children of Mr. Kido, who fathered 100 children with 100 different women of various nationalities, with the hopes that some of these kids would grow up to be Saints of Athena. Forget Sagittarius Aiolos giving his life to protect baby Saori, Mr. Kido made the true sacrifice in the name of Athena!
With an ugly mug like that, it makes you wonder who the provided the other half of the chromosomes for Hydra Ichi.
My theory is that Mr. Kido got really drunk one night and on a dare from Tatsumi made love to..
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Blade from Puppet Master.

This figure is pretty bare bones with just a couple of extra hands as extras. He does not even have un-armored hands, as this was during the time period when Bandai decided to cut back on the plain fists for the characters.

One pair of hands that Ichi comes with is for holding items, but he does not come with anything to hold. So here he is holding Pandora's spear.

The one cool thing about this figure is that it comes with some awesome claws for his hands and knees.

These claws attach to the armor by removing the corresponding piece of the armor which is held in by a peg. These hidden weapons of Ichi would deliver a powerful venom into his opponent's body.

Watch out Hyoga! Ichi is up to his old tricks again!

As for poseability, you do get some good articulation from this second generation Saint Cloth Myth body.

Overall I would only recommend this Myth Cloth if you can find it on the cheap. Your collection is not going to be hurting if you miss out on this guy.