What makes RID 2001 interesting is how it was depicted in Japan versus the rest of the world. Japan saw this character as Gigatron, who was no different from all the yearly Decepticon/Destron leaders. Meanwhile, Hasbro chose to make this guy our first new-continuity Megatron and treat RID as a separate universe from G1, which I greatly appreciate. This Megatron was a bit more ill-tempered compared to the usually colder incarnations of the Unicron Trilogy, Movie, Animated, and Aligned continuities, which makes the various altmodes he possesses all the merrier. Let's take a look at RID 2001 Megatron!
We'll first begin with Megatron in his robot mode. In contrast to later versions of the character being more or less similar to the G1 version in terms of either design or personality, the RID01 version instead has more in common with the Beast Era version in terms of character designs with the aforementioned ill-tempered personality he has. This design is appropriately evil, and it features quite an imposing presence with the darker colors and the wings on his back. The use of black, purple, and gold is already regally evil, but the silver chest with a teal fade brush, on top of the dark purple Predacon spark crystal, give this guy a true sense of being the emperor of destruction. I know Japan likes calling him Gigatron, and it's something weeboo purists would want to call him, but how could you not want to call this guy Megatron?!
His head sculpt is appropriately sinister, with a mix of chrome ear fins in purple as well as metallic or pearlescent paint for the face, and chrome eyes even though he has a light-piped fin. It's a little soft in terms of facial detailing either due to the paint or more primitive tech. His articulation consists of ratchet joints for the shoulders moving front and back as well as in and out, the elbows, the hips when moving front and back as well as in and out, and for the knees. Each set of ratchets varies on how many clicks they make or how heavy they sound. The neck, biceps, wrists, and thighs are on swivel, and the ankles are on ball joints. Great articulation as expected from an Ultra Class toy made back in the day!
As you just saw, he comes with a set of weapons that can be held individually as blazing melee blades. The same weapons can be combined into a Darth Maul-esque double-bladed lightsaber. They also serve as pressure launch missiles but they work better in other modes.
For a size comparison, here he is next to Optimus Prime in his core robot mode. While Optimus is taller, his engineering is fairly basic compared to Megatron, who went all in with using as many adjustments and techniques as possible to make his numerous modes possible.
This guy has 6 modes, so let's go over the second one he possesses. The gargoyle mode, sometimes called bat mode, has the legs folded away, arms as legs, wings splayed out, and the cannons on the back of the wings. This mode uses an exclusive snout piece that tries to make it pass as a more animalistic face yet is about as successful as the bird beak used on Animorphs Tobias that the Plastic Addict reviewed long ago. This mode is pretty basic really. It requires the tail for further balance.
The third mode he has is a two-headed dragon mode, which utilizes the tiny forearms almost always tucked in the midriff, while the arms become legs for this mode simply by having the forearms rotate and shift down to hide the hands. The tail is in a different position for added stability yet it fits well with the design. The dragon heads utilize articulated jaws and ear pieces that cover the upper portions of the faces while in a lot of the other modes. The forearms have two points of ball-jointed articulation. This is a good mode overall.
Up next, we got the of jet mode, where the tail is used as a cockpit, the cannons are connected to the sides, and the legs become the turbines with added fins from the bottom of the jaws and the knees. The wings being swept back give this an interesting vibe of homaging an evil Batplane design. This mode is pretty decent overall, and it, along with Movie Megatron's MV1 or TLK designs, Energon Megatron, and TFP Megatron are some of the best showcases of how to do a Jet-altmode Megatron.
And this is the transport mode, where the wings are hinged in a more vertical orientation in order to utilize the wheels, and the same is also done for thr forearms as the shoulders are detached from the torso. The missile launchers are added on top and over the torso. This mode isn't too bad apart from.how.much it feels like an alternate build to a Lego set.
The claw mode is probably the most unexpected out of the modes we do come with, what with the way Megatron's limbs are used as fingers while the cockpit/nosecone is now a thumb. You can make as many hand gestures with the arms and legs, between the devil horns, the bird, a thumbs up, the piece sign, among other gestures. You can make use of the spring-loaded codpiece for a gripping gimmick exclusively for the claw mode.
If you thought we'd be done with these modes, oh no we ain't! Just because Galvatron had four extra modes, doesn't mean Megatron wouldn't! They're the same toy after all, and the Hasbro version uses the Devil Gigatron retool meant for a more stable nosecone or animal neck, as is the case with the one-headed dragon or pteranodon mode that looks okay. The mammoth mode has proportions that are comparable to that of a little kid's drawing, especially given how goofy the proportions are on this mode.
He also has a mode of transport for aquatic travel as a hydrofoil, though it has that alien aesthetic fitting purely for a villain like Megatron. I wouldn't play with it in the water because of the chrome and what have you.
And finally, we got the winged griffin mode, which I feel is the strongest of the four new modes, as it looks like a convincingly official mode with thought put into it rather than something the toy designers came up with in order to give it more features than necessary. It's something I've seen with the Japanese G1 leaders like with the base mode of Star Saber's larger portion when he's just Saber, or with a lot of Sentai mecha (especially the ones pre-Zyuranger/MMPR).
In terms of repaints, we obviously have Galvatron as a commonly brought up example, what with the character in RID and the Unicron Trilogy getting a name change everytime he's given a new paint job. It's Hasbro's way of keeping trademarks for both names in check, even if Takara's approach in just not using the Galvatron name in Car Robots, Micron Legend, and Galaxy Force being logical while Superlink used it because look at the design. Very different from how the next time we'd get this approach being Age of Extinction where Galvatron was a name used by KSI while Megatron pretended to go with it before he turned against them. Anyways, Galvatron has an almost inverted color scheme that fits well for the usual recoloring of undead characters, yet he never really died in the show.
Up next, we got Deathsaurus, who is retooled to represent his appearance in the Descent into Evil comic exclusive to BotCon and FunPub. Only 5 modes are shown here because of the neutered bat mode having no snout peace for this retooled head.
And finally, here we have BotCon 2016's Combiner Wars Megatron. Now this guy is based on a canceled retool made by 3H Productions. This figure is based on his appearance in the Dawn of the Predacus and Beast Wars: Uprising stories, on top of being colored like his Transmetal II appearance. His bat mode is retained yet he still lacks the snout for said mode. The hand mode scales perfectly with a rubber ducky that was sold separately.
Let's end the review off with the once fan-made-now-canon Devil Ostrich mode in regular Megatron colors. It's pretty neat but not a mode I'd revisit as often. The back section is confusing to orient accurately. Overall, this toy is a case where while it's batshit crazy as a design with numerous modes, it makes me miss when Megatrons were lnown for being creative with how out there the designs could be, with this one being the best example of the approach Takara and later Hasbro went with. This is a figure I recommend, even if we may see him again in a Generations line to go with HasLab Omega Prime.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ and a half out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No comments:
Post a Comment