Revoltech Tamonten. Godly figure

I recently had this dude arrive in my post box.  It’s an interesting choice of figure I thought and having seen this line advertised on a flyer in another Revoltech’s box, I was most curious.  I like the looks of these guys, and despite me getting him confused for Raijin and Fuujin, who I think guard the entrances to shrines in Japan, I am still pretty happy with this figure.


Tamonten (aka Vaisravana) is instead one of the guardians of the inner section of the shrine, and spawned from Buddhism.  the god of the North.  Anyway, if you are curious have a look at the wikipedia link as it is detailed enough it would seem.  For those gaming fans, you will notice that Akuma/Gouki from Street Fighter has quite a strong resemblance to these guys, which I suspect is not coincidental.

A different box to normal.  I suspect as this isn’t a famous anime character they are playing a bit cautious.  It’s a generic box for these Takeya figures, with a nice ‘natural’ feel for them.  It has the look of a brown paper bag and a feel  like that as well.  The box is going to be the same for the other figures, as it has a sticker on the front about the figure inside.  That is the blue section of the box on the bottom in the photo.  It looks fine, it just means there isn’t anything specific about the one in this box for reference shots.  most of the pictures on the back are of the red multi-armed guy.

Closer shots.

Now for the figure.

Placed in his holding spot, you can see he has a few accessories, a nice halberd looking things, and some extra hands.  Although no little revoltech coin thingy.  I wonder if they have stopped that now?  Been so long since I have looked at a a recent revoltech that I am not sure…


He only comes with this stand, which I will admit I was disappointed with.  No arm for back plugging, so it is just a base for plugging into his feet.

Once out, you can see him like this.  Initial impressions are good as he has excellent sculpting on all his bits, lots of joints, which use the revolver joint and pretty good balance.  They have used a variety of plastic for various parts, so for example, his flowing sleeve bits are fairly hard, yet the fabric on his belt which flows over his thigh armour is really soft, so it doesn’t inhibit leg movement at all.  First off I thought his legs look a little stumpy.  And they are, but not too bad.  The halo (wheel on his back) is jointed by a small revolver joint.  Hmm, makes me wonder how all these religious folks all seem to have halos despite being from different beliefs now.

Extremely well detailed sculpting is all over this guy.  I love the face, it looks so very tengu like and the moustache and eyes add so much to him.  The armour is much the same as well and the paint applications are excellent!

He has multiple joints in his waist and chest area, double joints on his elbows and the ‘fabric’ around his elbows can be rotated to get out of the way.  I love the dragon/monster face biting his belt.

More great sculpting here.  His shoulder pads have little monster faces on them and they have a great gradient of paint colour.  The bronze buckles look bronze, leather looks like leather and the different colours on his sleeve are pretty impressive.

Wrist guards are highly detailed, as are his shins and even shoes!!

More great sculpting.  From his helmet to his halo and the joint for his halo.  This joint uses the usual stand plug for his back.


He does come with another stand though….


Yeeeeessss, that’s right boys and girls, he comes with his very own demon to stand on.  I think it looks really good as well.


Yes, I shall crush all those before me just like how I crushed this demon.  Oh and non-believers as well.

Moving on….

He also comes with a pretty cool weapon.  A trident of sorts and it ahs a nice bit of cloth thing stuff to hang under the blade.

And a mace sort of thing as well that has quite a few details on it.

And this.  I don’t know what this is.    Ooh, a quick google search and it appears it is a treasure hose from which he divulges wealth.  I recommend a quick read of that link as it covers him fairly well. 

That pretty much covers this figure in regards to details and looks.  Awesome sculpting with heaps of detail and great paint work. But I have a few niggles and I am not sure if they are entirely fair…

When I first got him out of the box, I found him a little hard to pose.  The kilt area gets in the way of the legs a bit, however all those pieces are articulated.
My main gripe is really the core concept of Revoltech figures. 
The revolver joint. 

They are ratcheted to a certain extent and the figures are made in parts and then plugged onto the joints.  So you can usually break a character down to their individual body pieces (arm, hand, legs etc) and plug them onto another Revoltech if you so desire.  The downside about this though is the joints shift about in the holes, so to get a certain pose, you often have to get your fingers on the ball of the joint and twist it around (as the joint isn’t strong enough to handle the pressure sometimes) so that the swivel area of the joint can move.  Then you are stuck to having it in the pre-determined ratcheted areas of the joint.  With Tamonten here, it is a little bit fiddly and I found one of the leg armour pieces constantly falling off.  Then as I tried to plug it back again the joint would move, leading to quite a bit of frustration.
and it has a tendency to fall apart…


That and the general ‘floppiness’ that Revos often suffer really annoyed me with this one.  I am not sure whether it is this figure exactly or not.  I suspect not as it really got up my nose with the Tokusatsu War Machine figure. 

Still once I had a bit of play, I found my way around the figure fairly well.  His sculpting stops him from getting some really agile looking poses going, but you can get him looking tough enough.

And with the aid of a figma stand.

And Finally a bit of play with Index.

So the main flaws of this figure are the revoltech joints themselves really.  The sculpting is pretty good, and although it is fiddly at times, you can bust out some cool poses with it.  I am glad I have it and he will take the place of the ‘Invincible Deity’ on my toy shelf with pride!  Would I bother with the other guys in this line?  Hmm, probably not to be honest, although they would look pretty cool together.

Sadly though the fiddly joints of this dude put me off going through the effort with others from this line.  I dread the thought of the guy with 6 arms!! 

Final result?  Not too bad, not awesomely good.  Slightly better than average, but I think Revoltechs may have hit their limit for me.  I have quite a few and from now on will be very choosey when contemplating getting them sue to the joints.