Kanti

Review by JoshB

It’s hard to believe that FLCL (pronounced “Fooley Cooley”) came out over 10 years ago. It’s a bizarre anime with fantastic visuals and music that has stuck with me over the years.

To go into what FLCL is would take a whole article unto itself. It involves space aliens, puberty, medical machines, robots, guitars and anime and manga in-jokes.

The coolest thing about FLCL is the robot Kanti. He’s very iconic and very cool and he’s one of my favorite character designs.

In the beginning of the series, a boy (Naota) is hit on the head by a girl (Haruko) with a very special bass guitar. This injury causes a portal to appear in Naota’s forehead, in which various robots appear from.

The first robot is Kanti. Kanti is a Medical Robot made by the company Medical Mechanica. He’s got long, lanky limbs and a TV for a head.

When Kanti first appears, he has a red color and aggressively fights another robot that has also emerged from Naota. Once he destroys the robot, Haruko hits Kanti on the back of his head, damaging him and reverting him to a normal green state.

SEN-TI-NEL corp released this all-new toy of Kanti in 2012. There have been Kanti toys in the past, (most famous is the old Kaiyodo ones) but nothing like this. This is a dream realized for many FLCL fans.

The box is large, and beautiful. The clear window shows off the toy just fine, and all around the package design is great. Fans will notice the black (P!) stickers sealing the lid closed. Inside, one tray holds all the parts.

The core figure is really nice. The plastic is great quality with a mix of matte and gloss finishes. Molding is sharp and there are no imperfections in paint or molding.

The head is great, with a clear plate for the face and several separate molded details. The back of the head reflects the damage that Haruko inflicted upon him in the first episode. The clear plate is removable but no other “screens” are included. Maybe this is a feature reserved for the Atomsk mode?

The head sits on a dual ball joint that moves any way you can think of. Be cautious of the silver protrusions on the back of the head, as they aren’t glued in that well. I popped one off and had to add a dot of glue to secure it better.

The shoulders are dual ball joints that can be pulled out from the chest to provide a greater range of motion. The elbows swivel and bend with a dual hinge joint. You can swap any of the variant hands easily by popping them on and off the ball jointed wrists.

There’s a joint hidden in the upper chest that allows it to swivel and bend seamlessly. The back spine has an interesting tab that allows the joint to flex for a greater range of motion.

Each hip has fantastic joints that can pull in and out to provide greater freedom of movement.  Combine this with the hinged knees and ball jointed feet you can do most any pose you can think of.

For the more extreme posts, a stand is included. The stand is similar to Figma stands in both size and function. It’s plain but it does the job, at least in this capacity. To use this stand you have to remove the circular plug on his back. This seems impossible as there is nothing to grab onto, but what you have to do is remove the back panel and THEN remove the plug. Replace the panel only and you can fit the stand peg inside.

Needless to say, so far Kanti kicks ass.

As Kanti is integrated into Naota’s life, he adapts more civilian attire. Somewhere along the line he adopts a bomber jacket, fake wings and a halo made from wire and a circular fluorescent lightbulb.

In order to add these parts, you must remove the head and arms, as well as the plate and plug on the back.

The jacket slips over the chest and the upper arm parts are swapped with the jacket arms. The wings slip over the shoulders and plug into the stand hole. Finally, the halo plugs into the back of the head via a metal rod.

Here is where some small flaws begin to emerge.

The halo is loose on the metal pole, so to keep it from swinging around I added a dot of glue in the hole.

After numerous conversions, the hole that the elbow joint goes into the jacket arm is loose, so it flops around a little. Once again, a drop of glue fixes this.

The big issue is just a matter of poor design. When you plug in the wings to the stand hole, there is no place to plug the stand in.

This prohibits you from doing some of Kanti’s signature poses.  If you have a Bandai Tamashii Stage stand, you can use one of those and use the clips to support the waist that way.

These poses are when Kanti stands atop the burnt ruins of the school house and Mamimi dubs him “Kanti-Sama” or “Lord of the Black Flames”.  She believes Kanti is a deity from a game she plays, and this display does nothing to dispel that. How can you not supply a stand that lets you do this?

Kanti also plays baseball on Naota’s Brother’s team (He is away in America). Kanti is quite good and makes a great replacement.

Shy about the damage to his head, Kanti sometimes wears a cardboard box to cover the missing bits. He can be seen throughout the series gathering the pieces of his head and trying to glue them together.

Later in the series, Kanti gears up and looks like a total bad-ass in a cloak, mouth cover and glasses.  A rifle is also included that has a moveable forestock.

There's also a small cat that Mamimi names "Takkun" after Naota's Brother. It's leg fits into a small peg on the strap of the wings so that it can ride on Kanti's shoulder.

It should be pretty apparent that despite a few minor flaws I really like this toy. Yes, it’s expensive (all Riobot / RIO:BONE products are) but so far it’s the BEST Kanti toy on the market.