Saint Seiya Myth Cloth review #8: Jabu of Unicorn

Arrogant, cocky, feeling superior to his opponents, yet undyingly loyal to those he believes in... this fella shares my character traits.

Often seen as the `leader` of the B-team of bronze saints, Jabu looked to become one of the main antagonists of the story when you saw the start of the Galaxian Wars, up till the appearance of Ikki. It isn`t until the Lost Canvas that we get to see more of the Unicorn saint when his previous incarnation Yato dons the cloth.

Personally, I always liked this fella, ranking him in my top 5 of favorite saints. The cloth design in my opinion was way more elegant than many of the `chest - belt` designs a couple of the bronzes shared initially.

But what where they thinking when they let him, of all saints, defect from Saori`s side to Artemis`s in the Heaven Ouverture... did ol` Kuru loose his mind????



But onwards to the model. As most bronze saints, the cloth is a lot simpler in design then for example the Mariners. Bronze clothes generally lack upper arm pieces, have simpler leg designs, and not to much `tits and tats` of bits around him. A pattern that also follows the (anime) design of the Unicorn (in the manga, most bronzes have no leg armour, and he has a horned hairband as headpiece), BUT with an option of two headsets included in the box.
The full horned helmet as he is seen in the original series, and a horned hairband like he sports in the manga and as Yato has in the Lost Canvas.

The waist piece is actually a belt with a plate added in front, not a full `robe` as many other cloths have, the rest is pretty standard yet elegant, with armpieces sliding over the forearms, shoulder pieces locking the chest parts together and in place, a hairset for with or without any of the headsets...

I posed the model in kind of a challenging position, sort of `come and get it` look. In order to have him poised in his signature move, the Unicorn gallop, which is a flying kick, one would have to use the stands Bandai creates and of which I ain`t a fan at all.

To assemble the Object, it`s a very basic, standard assemblage, cliking the chest around the middle of the object, putting arm and leg pieces on the legs of the unicorn object `frame`, and getting the helmet on the head.

One would think this is a very `boring` cloth, but actually in my opinion, and not biased by being a `fan` of this particular saint, this is actually one of his fortes. If you look at his object, you can clearly identufy all the pieces as they are on the clothed up model, something not really seen with a lot of later releases where parts tend to get fully absorbed into the frame or hang on somewhere left or right. This ain`t really Bandai`s fault though, one should have a look at the appendixes in the various manga issues and see that some clothes are really complex and not recreatable modelwise, due to having parts `shrink` or `grow` in the drawings between cloth and saint.

I rate the Unicorn saint no less then a 5 out of 5. Because I like the character, yes, but also because I really love the elegance coming forth out of the simplicity of the model, one does not always have to have lot of flashy stuff to actually become a gracious design... bit like the USS Defiant in Star Trek DS9 I suppose, beautiful in his spartan purposeness.