Here is Leo Prime in his beast mode, which is a white lion that continues the same approach of not being show-accurate to the anime and is instead meant to be realistic. While white lions have been somewhat rare, I don't think any of them would look like a mutated gerbil asking if they did it for you like that one dog in a meme. Seriously, the previous Maximals we got had good face sculpt for the beast modes, what happened here? I can forgive the hinges being exposed, near the mane, but that face looks bad. Luckily, the rest of the beast mode looks mostly good, apart from some of the crevices from the transformation and exposed robot parts. The body of the beast mode may be white, but there are textures made to make it look appropriately furry; the same is done for the mane on the head His articulation only has some foreleg movement in the front while also having some subtle leg movement in the back legs. While he's mostly simple in terms of coloring, the claws are at least painted gold.
For a size comparison, here he is in-between Cheetor and Optimus Primal, with the scale being surprisingly accurate for the characters. I've seen size comparisons featuring the likes of their real-mode counterparts, and they match up to what we got in the real world. That being said, while Cheetor looks mostly fine with his realistic beast mode face, the same cannot be said for Leo Prime.
Transformatiion is unique amongst catformers due to the upper torso's conversion. Rather than have the arms remain as arms like it's always the case with the legs, the front portion of the beast mode instead becomes rather different than you'd think; the upper body of the robot mode has an assembly on the back that houses the head and rump/back panels of the beast mode, which swivel and hinge downwards in order to make the proper design traits of the character in question. The torso is unique to the robot mode, and this sort of design makes perfect sense for a more interesting Takara Beastformer. While I'm not a big fan of their Beast Wars shows or the handling of the Mainframe series for their language-appropriate dub, I did like how the new characters in II got a good blend of the more standard engineering while also experimenting with how they can make the robot modes look with the kibble placement. That lion head could easily have been on the torso, but it's on the right shoulder instead! While there is some lion kibble on the back that could be a little less-cluttered, I do at least think it's better than Beast Wars Neo's bullscrap. And while Optimus Primal is pretty much a more original design that helps him stand out from his ancestor, Leo Prime tries much harder to resemble his predecessor's ancestor with the red torso and arms as well as the gray waist and blue hands. Very interesting.
Head sculpt is also in a similar route with how it looks more like G1 Optimus Prime than Optimus Primal's did, though that's because Mainframe deviated from his design. It's got some nice silver paint and some yellow eyes to compliment the blue helmet, and it vaguely reminds me of Classics Prime's head with how it's somewhat stylized. His articulation is standard for the line, with a ball-jointed head, shoulders that move front and back, in and out with a few kibble limitations, bicep swivels, elbow bends, a waist swivel, hips that move front and back, in and out, thigh swivels, knee bends, calf rotation, and ankle pivots. His beast-mode forelegs can hinge downward to manually deploy claws, which do look a little cool if you have some proper angles to take photos with.
His other features include an ability to recreate a static version of his Lion Typhoon when in reality it's the Lio Missile attack that utilizes the cannons rather than have the panels of the mane rotate around like on the old toy. I doubt it'd be a feature the figure would have given how weird Hasbro engineering has been post-Kingdom. Some of those cannons can peg onto the forearms to make arm cannons of some sort if you want to give him some effect pieces. Interestingly, his left chest panel can open up to reveal an Energon Matrix, which is a Japanese-continuity thing that their canon presents with Autobot leaders and the like possessing unique Matrixes rather than there being only one in Western G1 canon (in addition to the Matrix having continuity variants in the Unicron Trilogy, the movies, Prime, etc). It's blast-effect compatible if you want him to make a unique attack of some sort.
A fitting evil repaint of the mold would pop up a few waves later, giving Black Lio Convoy, aka Nemesis Leo Prime, a more show-accurate deco than any of the previous BLC repaints we got from Takara. He also comes with a new gun accessory that splits in two.
For a robot mode size comparison, here he is in-between his fellow Maximals once more, with his height making him taller than Primal though he wouldn't be as tall as Rhinox or Dinobot. It's still a good scale that I also believe is accurate to the Beast Wars II movie where Primal appeared in. So overall, this figure is alright for what it has to offer. I think it does some cool tricks to make it work similarly to the other versions of the character we got in the past, though I feel it does feel a bit cheap, and that lion head could use a makeover at some point, and I don't mean make it look glamourous unless you want to do exactly that, then, by all means, have fun! I feel as though Leo Prime's Ultra Class figure from Takara and possibly the Masterpiece version will be your preferred options, though this is an okay figure, though not as good as Primal or Dinobot for the Maximal Voyagers, and either equal, slightly better, or slightly worse than Rhinox.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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