Dave's Transformers Nezha Rant Brick Windblade Nezha (sports car) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Cyberverse/Nezha So, weird crossover time. Nezha, or NeZha as he's being anglicized more often recently, is a folkloric figure of significant antiquity in China. He's been portrayed in many ways, but usually he's a bit of a bad boy who later grows up and is responsible...more or less. My first encounter with him was as "Baby-Faced Nezha" in a cel-book of a 1960s Monkey King movie, "Havoc in Heaven." (Gift from a neighbor to my brother back in 1981, I got a woodcut Monkey King book adapting the White Bone Demon story.) Recently, a big budget blockbuster CG animated movie of NeZha has shown up dubbed on store shelves in the U.S. (I've seen it at both Walmart and Target), but there's also a CG animated series that is unrelated to the movie and that has not (to my knowledge) been brought over in translated form. It is this series that Hasbro/TakaraTomy did a crossover with. Using Cyberverse assets, they also made some transforming mecha suits for Nezha and a few of his supporting cast and enemies, and did some animation. There's also toys of a few of the new mechs, including Nezha's. Marketed as Nezha: Transformers (yeah, the baby-faced kid gets top billing), and supported with some transforming toys as well as not-Lego brick sets of some of the regular Transformers cast. The trade dress and design theory are Cyberverse, hence putting this review in my Cyberverse folder, but they replaced "Cyberverse" with the Nezha: Transformers logo. As entirely new toys exclusive to China, they command pretty high scalper rates on the secondary market, but SirToys still has them for reasonable prices. http://sirtoys.com/?q=nezha shows what's in stock, which at the time I ordered mine was just Nezha, some $20 brick sets, and the huge Optimus Prime super brick set. CAPSULES Prices depend on reseller price, not available in mass retail in North America. Nezha cost me $38, and Windblade $20. Keep in mind that an Ultra class Cyberverse toy would run around $35-40 in Japan, so I felt $38 wasn't too bad, especially after seeing Nezha for over $60 most other places that had it. Windblade: Important note, this is not a transforming model, it's a "build two modes" model. Decent designs and generally clear instructions, but the joints are too loose in bot mode. Mildly recommended. Nezha: I like the concept, and it has good articulation, but the design seems to be counting on manufacturing tolerances that Hasbro just can't meet. Certainly not worth import prices unless you're really interested in Nezha stuff. Mildly recommended. RANTS AUTOBOT: WINDBLADE Altmode: VTOL Jet Construction Steps: 127 (Robot), 69 (Jet) Note, while I haven't been reviewing them, I've been building a lot of Chinese brick set robots lately, thanks to Wish.com. Packaging: As often happens with brick sets shipped from China, this was missing its box. Just instructions book and bags of pieces. (The box itself arrived looking rather stomped on, which is fairly normal for Chinese cheap packet mail.) The instructions booklet does not have a parts list or enumerate how many pieces are in the set, and the bags are not numbered. The front of the booklet does hace a zappy callout saying "REASSEMBLE" to make it clear that this doesn't transform once built. The trade dress of the cover is mostly Cyberverse, but with the Nezha: Transformers logo. I took my Microsoft Translate app to the Chinese on the front and back covers for the heck of it. Wind Blade is named as two words in English, and the characters above that do indeed translate to Wind and Blade. The subtitle to the right of the name is "Which, with the variant of gold gang British and Male". Yeah, definitely missing some idiomatic use there. I'm guessing it's a reference to being on Bumblebee's team. As usual, the main logo is too stylized for the app to handle. The only translatable text on the back is the trademark and copyright stuff. There's no company name listed for the bricks, but they have the "O" stud that suggests that it's Oxford (the company that made the Kre-O bricks). Jet Mode: I decided to build this first, suspecting it would leave a lot of pieces out, and then build the robot mode for display. (I was correct, there's loads of leftovers from building this mode.) Instructions were generally clear, I had very few "wait, is that gray or black?" or "oops, shifted by one stud" false starts. Despite hiding a lot of joints inside the fuselage, it's a pretty solid build. The brick quality is good and I had very few problems getting pieces to connect and stay that way. Jet mode is 9.25" (23.5cm) long with a wingspan of 10.75" (27cm). The colors are good, and aside from the cockpit panel lines the colors are pretty much as in the cartoon. The nose isn't as pointy, since they opted to build the nose from curved (fender) pieces rather than a cone. Amusingly, the details on top of the wings use ripoffs of the Nexo Knight shield pieces. The fans don't pivot, but they do spin. http://www.dvandom.com/images/NezhaWindBlade1.JPG (Ugh, now to take it all apart and sort the pieces out again. It does come with a disassembler tool based very closely on the Lego one.) Robot Mode: Again, instructions were reasonably clear. Unlike my experience in building the jet, though, I had a lot of pieces fly off while I was trying to attach something else, often because the force required to get the big ball and socket joints connected was more than the force holding a part together. The kneecaps and back of calf fiddly bits were particularly susceptible, but I had an entire thigh collapse when snapping the boot in place. There were ZERO leftover pieces, other than the copyright-bearing white brick that's not supposed to be in the build. Furthermore, the result is really floppy. The rather heavy wings are supported by Mixel-style ball joints that aren't Lego quality. If nothing else, the joint pieces aren't clean enough...I recommend fully washing all the ball and socket pieces before assembly. http://www.dvandom.com/images/NezhaWindBlade1.JPG is the best pose I could get to stay stable after washing the joints. I might need to work some glue into them instead. 9.5" (24cm) tall when standing up straight, not that it can do that without joint work. I carefully stiffened the shoulders, elbows, wing roots, and hips with superglue (put on a bit of glue, work the joint until the glue has dried). The knees, ankles, and wrists were strong enough just after washing. This allowed me to put her in a much nicer pose without any falling over. http://www.dvandom.com/images/NezhaWindBlade3.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/images/NezhaWindBlade4.JPG Overall: A decent build, but the robot mode clearly suffers from that tiny bit of difference between Lego quality and (I presume) Oxford quality. Worth $20 plus shipping? I suppose, but I recommend doing something to strengthen the joints before assembly. TEAM NEZHA: NEZHA Assortment: E3012 Altmode: Sports car Transformation Difficulty: 16 steps Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: None Epithet/Gimmick: Pilot Figure Function: Protector of the Human World Packaging: It's basically the shape and size of Ultra toys, including Autobot branding and the Autobot group shot on the left side of the tray. In addition to the Autobot symbol, each member of Team Nezha has their own symbol, in this case a sort of stylized wind-fire wheel. (Cosells are Lei Zhenzi, who has a bird badge and appears to turn into a compact car, and Tu Xingsun, whose sigil is a mole or pangolin and who turns into a drill tank.) The card front has show art of the robot mode, while the left side has art of Nezha in and out of his mech. On the back are renders of both modes, a call-out showing the little Nezha figure going into the chest, and the usual legalese but in Chinese. On front, the robot mode is held into the blister tray with four ties. His lance is held on with three ties, the wind-fire wheel with three ties, and the pilot figure is behind the blister. The instructions are folded up inside the blister, under the wind-fire wheel. Robot Mode: Okay, it's a big robot Nezha, including somewhat creepy flesh tone plastic in places (a weird issue also shared by the Street Fighter Transformers). The head is only a slightly robotic version of the kid's actual head, including short pigtails molded as part of the helmet. He carries two weapons, a lance/spear and a wind-fire ring (basically a big metal hoop you can bash people with, entangle weapons, etc). 6" (15cm) tall, mostly red with some flesh tone, yellow, black, and violet. A rubbery fleshtone plastic is used for the front of the armor skirt, the wind-fire wheel, lance tip, and maybe the head. More rigid fleshtone plastic is used for the lance haft, the biceps, elbows, hands, and feet (and maybe the head). Lightish violet plastic is found on the thighs, the panels on the undersides of the forearms (which become doors), and the back panels on the boots. Black plastic is found on the inner faces of the shoulders, the shoulder struts, the torso core, pelvis, wheels, side skirt pieces, and internal ankle joints. The shin panels are clear smoky plastic, and much of the folded up backpack is also clear smoky plastic. It's very dark smoky clear. The chest front, the outer shoulders, the forearms (other than the purple panels), and most of the boots are red plastic. The hair-helmet is painted black with yellow framing lines and strip along the top. The eyes are painted bright blue. There's yellow paint on the molded details of the chest, including a sort of rams-head symbol. The belt buckle is painted yellow and bears the same wheel symbol as his packaging. Both weapons are mostly coated in yellow paint, although some of the tabs are left unpainted. The front skirt is painted red on the lower part, and there's some red on the lower shins. The skirt side pieces are painted entirely dark red. The front of the neck is painted glossy fleshtone. Other paint apps are mainly for vehicle mode, so see below. It could use some black on the lower chest where it's supposed to be the car grille, though. The neck is a ball joint, but there's no waist joint. The shoulders are ball joints on the end of shrugging struts, plus there's a hinge inside the shoulderpad for the upper arm to move forwards and back, a swivel just above the hinge elbows, and swivel wrists. The hips are universal joints, and the front and side armor skirt pieces are hinged to get out of the way as needed. There's swivels just above the hinge knees, and the ankles have hinge and swivel arrangements that let the feet stay flat. However, the boots block most of the range of motion. The hands can old 5mm pegs and are of the partly-open variety so that the weapons can be snapped in. There's a 3mm socket on the lower edge of the backpack. There's tabs and pegs on the inner back that go into slots in the roof, and it's supposed to lock the backpack in place. But on mine, it won't hold, it just pops out again. I suspect what we're seeing is a slight misassembly issue that keeps things from quite lining up. Mind you, this doesn't make the robot mode look bad, tucking it up more snugly and ignoring the tabs works okay as well. Lifting up the front skirt makes it a handle to pull open the left side of the chest, then the right side can be opened up easily on its hinge. This reveals a compartment for the minifigure. The lance is 6" (15cm) long, with a 3mm peg sticking out near the midpoint, and an angled rectangular tab opposite it. This goes into one of the slots in the backpack. There's also two 2mm pegs along the length on the side with the rectangular tab, a couple of centimeters above and below. The wind-fire ring has a diameter of 2" (5cm), and narrows down to 5mm grips in four evenly spaced locations. There's also two angled rectangular tabs on one side, also meant for back storage. There's 2mm holes through the thick parts for attachment to the lance. Minifigure: Okay, a little creepy looking because they made it completely out of rubbery fleshtone plastic but didn't put on quite enough paint in the right places. The legs are just purple (other than bare feet) despite the red top being molded as going down to cover the thighs in front and back, there's no paint at all on the armbands so he looks like he has deformed arms, and there's no yellow paint at all for all the detailing. So...best to leave him inside the chest compartment. 35mm tall, with chibi proportions. Black paint on the hair, eyebrows, eyes (other than the whites being white), and forehead dot. The earrings are green with pink ribbons, the shirt is red, the pants are light violet. It's not very obvious until checking with UV light, but the lotus petal detailing around the waist is also painted pink rather than left unpainted. The head is on a ball joint, and the shoulders are restricted ball joints that are mostly functioning as swivels. Individual hip hinges. The hands can grip 1mm rods, I guess? It fits snugly inside the chest compartment. Transformation: Both arms popped off at the shoulders when I transformed it, and it was very hard to get all the panels to tab together at the same time. Probably more of the tiny misalignments that keep the backpack from pegging down on mine. And despite trying it several times, including reading the instructions to make sure I wasn't doing a minor thing wrong, it still won't quite all fit together. Anyway, mostly a standard "arms up as front fenders, boots fold over to make the rear half (with some panels to close them up), doors on arms, and roof from the backpack panels deal. Getting the shoulder fenders tabbed into the hood takes a bit of massaging. Vehicle Mode: It's the sort of indeterminate muscle car sort of thing that Bumblebee turns into a lot lately. It has some of the gold (well, yellow) filigree patterning around the fenders that makes it feel generally "mythic Chinese". While the red paint on the clear plastic is a bit darker than the plastic, it's not a horrible clash. On the plus side, it lacks the gaps in the rear bumper often seen in car designs, thanks to the folding kneepads. The front grille is a little weird, but it's meant to evoke some stone carving patterns. The ram-horn-like pattern from the chest is present as a hood ornament. 5.25" (13cm) long, mostly red and black with some yellow and violet. The grille section is black plastic, as are the wheels. The roof and windows, including the rear window pieces, are made of dark smoky clear plastic, which is also used on the headlights. The lower parts of the door panels are violet plastic. The rest is red plastic. The non-window parts of the rood and windows are painted dark red, including the top third of each door. There's also red on the violet door panels, but most of the doors are left unpainted purple. There's linked violet paint on the sides to complete the patterns on the sides. There's yellow paint on the fender flames, a stripe across the hood in a shallow V just ahead of the windshield, the hood ornament, and the arch-like shape on the hood. There's no paint on the wheel hubs, but probably should be, to bring out the molded details. It rolls well on the snap-in wheels. There's a 3mm socket and two rectangular tabs on the roof, meant to go onto the back in robot mode. The lance can be mounted on the central socket, and 2mm pegs on the lance go into the wind-fire wheel. The rectangular slots are too shallow to hold the tabs on the weapons. Overall: Too bad these are so culturally linked to the Nezha story, because they'd make a good side line to replace Energon Armor next. But it's a bit of a curiosity worth getting if you can spend the money on it...just not worth trying to go completist on the team. Dave Van Domelen, can't quite fit a Titan Master inside the chest compartment, although one with a shallower faceplate might barely manage it.