Papillon Myu

Review by SentaiSeiya

In Saint Seiya, each God has his/her own army of pretty boys in armor. Hades’ crew is comprised of 108 undead soldiers known as Specters. As one of the Specters that attacked Sanctuary in hopes of taking Athena’s head, Papillon Myu is confronted by the similarly-named Mu. A battle ensues between Papillon Myu and Aries Mu, who are both strong Telekinetic users.

The armor for Hades’ soldiers is known as Surplice. Since Papillon is French for butterfly, the Object Mode for Papillon Myu is a butterfly.

The body of the butterfly looks creepy, like any insect does up close.

The beautiful butterfly wings, however, make the Object Mode a combination of creepy and attractive.

The Object Mode was fairly easy to put together, despite the fact that much of the armor is stored in the abdomen of the butterfly.  Not all of the abdomen is actually made of armor. Much of the lower abdomen is actually made of plastic shell pieces that go over the leg armor used in the lower abdomen; the leg armor only makes up for a small percentage of the lower abdomen.

Besides the fact that much of the lower abdomen is made of plastic shells, there is also another bit of cheating done to make use of all of the armor for the Object Mode. Now hiding parts that cannot be used in the Object Mode is not something new in the Saint Cloth Myth line; usually the parts that end up being hidden are the covers for the back of the hands of the Saint, which are pieces of the toy that were added to make the hands look more metallic. Therefore, I usually don’t mind that those pieces are relegated to the inside or undersides of the Object Mode, where they won’t be seen. In the case of Myu’s Surplice, the covers for the back of the hands were hidden in the butterfly’s body. With Myu’s Surplice, however, Bandai also decided that there was nowhere on the Object Mode to actually put the arm guards.  So they ended up under the stand for the Object mode, in two pegs.

Since nobody was going to see them anyways. I just didn't bother putting them into the pegs.

When Myu dons his Surplice, the creepy factor of the armor diminishes substantially. We now have a pretty boy in pretty-looking armor.

The design of the Cloth is fairly faithful to the source material. However, it is not perfect.

The armor and the figure are a bit bulkier than the leaner-looking Papillon Myu of the show. The chest and waist armor are much more form-fitting in the show. Also while the wings are wonderful looking, they are not organic like the wings of the Papillon Surplice in the show. Obviously Bandai had to make the wings out of strong plastic to keep them from breaking, tearing and flopping around. But I just wanted to point out that in the show Myu’s wings are pretty much oversized butterfly wings.

Nitpicking about the wings aside, they are magnificent to look at. The wings of this Cloth are actually the only reason why I ponied up the money to pick up this release. The Saint Cloth Myth line has its share of Cloths with oversized wings.  However, none of them are made of beautiful see-through plastic like the Papillon wings.

You can even shine light through the wings to get a nice yellow and green light shining through the other side. This makes for a very cool shadow of the figure.

The Joker is on the loose! Quick somebody use the butterfly signal!

As for articulation, Papillon has a ton of it thanks to his third generation Saint Cloth Myth body. Unfortunately, the wings' proximity to the ground keep you from being able to substantially widen his stance or get crazy with his lower half.  While the wings can extend out, they cannot move upwards to alleviate this issue.
This is as wide as I could get the legs to go, due to the wings hitting the bottom of my light tent.

Of course, if you remove the wings, he can take a knee.

However, it would be a shame to display this guy without his wonderful wings. But with the wings on, he can still pull of the pose for his signature move, “Fairy Thronging.” What a weird name for a move.

The plastic content is quite substantial when you count the wings. When you only take into account the actual armor, however, the amount of plastic is kept to a minimum. Only the covers for the back of the hands and headpiece are made of plastic.

Papillon Myu is pretty light on extras.  He comes with 3.5 pairs of armored hands and one pair of unarmored fists.

Also included in this set is a second faceplate.

While it may look the same as the other face at a first glance, it is a bit different. The second faceplate is actually smirking, with is a great expression for a soldiers of Hades that is confident that he will not only defeat Aries Mu, but also take Athena’s life.  You may also notice that Myu’s eyes are a creepy  glossed over/manga-ish design, which is how they also look like in the show.

As an added bonus, Bandai included Papillon Myu’s caterpillar form in this release.  

Yes, the character was actually in this form at one point of the show. He actually starts as a puddle of demonic goo, which then evolves into the caterpillar and makes the progression to the butterfly-armored man.  The caterpillar is pretty good looking and is a decent representation of how this form looks in the show.  The eyes are made of a clear green plastic that is over what looks like silver spheres. These two-layered design of the eyes gives them depth.

The colors of the caterpillar form, however, are a bit off. The purple and orange used for the toy are the same ones use for the Cloth of the toy. In the show, however, the caterpillar’s colors are much darker shades.

Ultimately, Papillon Myu is a solid release in the Saint Cloth Myth line. Sure it’s movement is somewhat limited by the big wings on its back. But it is exactly those wings that make him stand out amongst the horde of dark-armored specters in Hades’ army.  This release is a bit pricier than others because it was relegated to the status of Tamashii Web Exclusive due to the character’s short appearance on the show. So ultimately have you have to decide if you care enough about owning this character and his big beautiful wings. You already know my answer.