Model Kits: Number 57 Armored Puppet Ryuen

Since I decided to devote the bulk of July to finishing a complete draft of the novel I’m working on (that’s Phase Four of my Five Phase Writing Process), it’s occurred to me that writing is one of my hobbies that is the least conducive to writing blog posts. This is largely down to the fact that I don’t really like to talk about my works-in-progress until they’re done and a 300+ page novel has a much slower turn-around than say, a miniature that I painted over the course of a weekend. 

But that isn’t to say my newer hobbies like mini painting and model making are going on the backburner (though they are taking a backseat to writing this month) because over the long fourth of July weekend, I set aside some hobby time for a model kit that’s been sitting in the corner of my living room for a couple months now. I felt like I hit a snag with my writing and my brain needed a break, so why not wind down than with a nice, simple, snap-together model kit? Namely, Armored Puppet Ryuen.

From what I gathered, Armored Puppet Ryuen is an original mech design from Creative Field and part of their Number 57 series. I preordered it on Big Bad Toy Store a while back because it had a cool design (I’m a sucker for robots that have a kind of medieval knight aesthetic going for them) and it seemed similar enough to the Bandai 30 Minute Missions line, which are a blast to build and have terrific articulation and poseability. When I put it together, I can indeed confirm it’s similar to the 30MM lines except it’s considerably smaller and contain a great deal more in the way of option parts. It’s also made in a similar soft kind of PVC plastic, which I prefer over the more rigid, fragile plastic often seen in the old Robotech and Patlabor model kits I used to build as a kid.

The Ryuen kit had parts enough for three different build configurations: a general/basic design, a Soldier mode, and General mode. And I would be remiss not to mention all the different weapon parts (which also have their own configurations you can pick and choose from), parts for the exquisitely detailed display base, as well as spare parts for the different modes and weapons cast in red or a greenish-blue for you to mix and match as you please. As a bit of a sidebar, and while I’m not a review blog nor is this article a review per se, I really wasn’t a fan of his ball-jointed hands. Not because they were made of a softer plastic than the rest of his body (which is fine, since they can hold weapons more easily without fear of breaking fingers), but more so because the wrist pieces they slotted into were open on side and the small, squishy hands kept falling out. Why the wrist pieces couldn’t just have a little port at the end for the hands the pop into like literally every other snap-kit I own, I have absolutely no idea. But I digress.

When I first put him together, I went with the basic Soldier mode build (not deviating from the direction) and stayed consistent with the blue-green parts.

The next day, I slept on it and decided I wasn’t totally satisfied (plus I still needed to see what weapons I wanted to display him with) so I broke out the duplicate red pieces as well as the General Mode bits and did some more tinkering while I was waiting for my laundry to dry. After hemming and hawing over what weapons I wanted to post him with, I think I finally came up with a winning formula. I was so impressed with Armored Puppet Ryuen that I decided to name him the new keeper of my Cigar Box of Unpainted Miniatures high atop the ancient tower of my long dead desktop PC.