Virgo Shaka Myth Cloth Bandai (+ Appendix)

Name: Virgo Shaka Myth Cloth, Re-issue (+ Appendix)
Anime: Saint Seiya
Company: Bandai
Released: March 2007
Added to collection: May 2007

I'm really a big fan of Saint Seiya. It's one of those big 'classics' which played a large part of my childhood, along with Dragon Ball and Doraemon. I've been reading the manga quite a few times in the past 2-3 years but didn't manage to catch all the anime episodes. I preferred the manga to the anime- a general bias that is true for most of the anime/manga.

I used to have an old Bandai gold cloth which my mum got me years and years ago. It was a Sea horse Baian, one of Poseidon's Mariners. The quality of it was totally crap if you compared it to the myth cloth series....but hey, that was more than a decade ago and it was a toy for some primary school kid.

A few years ago (3 years?), when the myth cloth was first released, I thought they were pretty cool but was shocked at the price- NB: at that time, I wasn't a collector of figurines. I didn't buy them but got myself a few of those Bandai Saint Seiya plastic models- the ones which you have to glue together and then paint it yourself. They looked pretty impressive once you painted them- I had the brothers; Phoenix Ikki and Andromeda Jun, and my favourite gold saints; Gemini Saga, Virgo Shaka, and Libra Dokho.

I hardly have the cash and the display space to be a collector of Gold Saints so I only got my first one now since I've been contemplating whether to buy one or not. I bought Virgo Shaka a few weeks ago along with the Appendix. I'm really glad I got the Appendix as well, since the original face of Shaka is totally weird and basically doesn't look like Shaka.

The Appendix comes with 2 heads and a helmet (which are smaller and more realistic than the original), a pair of wings and gold-plated clasped hands for the 'Virgin', and a new pair of shoulder armour. There's this problem with Shaka's neck when you switch the heads- it either becomes too short or too long. See here. So I got that fixed as soon as I opened the box. Another big problem is that one of the leg armour couldn't fit nicely to the Virgin- they didn't file off a piece of metal properly so I had to get rid of it using a screwdriver and hammer. A quality control cock-up by Bandai.

Ok, those were the only 'glitches' in this great figure. Those planning to buy a Virgo Shaka Myth Cloth, get yourself the Bandai Appendix as well because it's definitely worth it, especially for the pair of wings!

I love those beads!


Those hands were a tad bit hard to put on- they kept falling off!






Virgo Shaka meditating on a gold pedestal.



Shaka has opened his eyes! Tenbu Horin!




Must get the Appendix as well for those great wings!