Saint Seiya Myth Cloth review #10: master Crystal

The Crystal silver saint is one of those characters known as a `filler`, someone or something invented for the movie adaption (or in this case, anime) of a book to add some extra plot line, or to give the plot a certain twist.

In Saint Seiya, Hyoga is trained directly by the Aquarius saint, Camus, but in the anime adaption, the Crystal saint was the pupil of Camus, and Hyoga in turn the pupil of the Crystal saint, who trained him to become the Cygnus saint by shattering the Eternal Glacier to obtain the cloth.

His role is rather limited in the series, as apart from some training flashes, he is one of the first to be `turned` by the Kyoko with the hypnotic punch, and attacks the village near Hyoga`s training ground. Reknowned to be both gentle and wise, yet a very skilled and strong fighter, this is actually also the only one we see that shakes of the hypnotic powers by himself, freeing the village and slaying the advisor of the Kyoko in the process after an intense, yet non lethal for Cygnus, battle with Hyoga, before falling himself.



Onto the cloth then. The model is a limited edition from 2007, and I always thought the Crystal saint to have one of the most intricate and special designs in the whole series. His armour almost seems like real crystal fromed around his body, and I can imagine the nightmares the designers must have had to put this into a model.
I do like their solution. They coloured the parts into on oneside the crystal lightblue of the armour, and on the other side in the exact same blue as the armature, giving the illusion of the webbed armour instead of solid parts.
However, this makes it also one bitch to put together, pieces like the headset are incredibly thin and getting them all together with the head and hair pieces isn`t the simplest of things.
Same goes for the cloak, which uses another system then the regular cloths. Instead of two pins that insert into the back, the shulder pads are attached both to the top of the cloak and to the side of the chestpiece, another delicate and `aim right then push` piece to put together.

The set also comes with some nice extras, with faces both `posessed` or not, and two plastic icecones in which you can insert Hyoga to represent him being frozen to the ground by the Crystal saint.

A very nice model, and even though he ain`t one of my `greatest heroes` of the anime, he is one of the most pretty models in my collection now, a very worthwhile model for it`s price, and a definite recommendation for all collectors. Pity it is a bit of delicate work to put together, but I`m giving him a fat 4.5 out of 5! After all, who are cooler then Ice Saints ;)