Saint Seiya Myth Cloth review # 16: Ichi of Hydra

Saint Seiya is full of valuable life lessons. Remember that strange kid in school when you where young? The one with the pale, almost sickly skin-tone, weird eyes and all goofy looking hair? Hopefully you didn`t bully that kid around to much, because before you know it, he might have gone of to lake Holtz in Finland to train and become the bronze Hydra Saint!

Ichi returned to Japan to participate in the tournament for the Sagittarius Cloth. His first fight was against Hyoga. At first he got the upperhand and it looked like he'd beat Hyoga. He even used his Hydra Fangs on him. Then Hyoga explains the similarity of the monster Hydra and the Hydra Cloth. He froze Ichi's right hand but Ichi attacked him using his knees and to everyone's surprise, his knees also have fangs. But Hyoga remained unharmed, and explained that the Cygnus Cloth repelled the poison of Hydra Fangs. Ichi was surprised and he was defeated by Hyoga's Diamond Dust.

The Hydra cloth is based on the Greek mythological monster, Hydra. But due to its minor power it currently only has one head. Yet it is Ichi's main and only know form of attack and defense.

According to him, poisonous claws come from every part of his cloth: the target hit by them becomes paralyzed and slowly dies.

Once they hit the target, the claws come out of the cloth, but new claws grow very fast, giving an infinite supply - exactly as the mythological monster, who if any of the heads were removed, two would grow in its place.

Ichi is one of the so-called `B-Team` of Bronze saints, spending a career in the series on the background, though he has the notable exceptions in being firstly appointed together with nachi as a guard of Santuary during the Hades arc, discovering the opened graves of the demised saint`s, and later in the heaven ouverture having defected together with Jabu (saying this still leaves a sour taste in my mouth) to the side of Artemis.



The cloth itself is like most of the first generation bronze saints not to difficult or intricate in design. It features metal bottom leg, bottom arm and chest armour, and plastic parts for the rest like most cloths in the Myth series, though it is more `full` then for example the bronze bear or wolf cloth, featuring conplete middle armour instead of a belt like set for both the groin as the chest.

And his face and hair is spot on for my part, looking every bit as weird and unhealthy as like he does in the anime...

In the story, the armour has poisonous fangs that retract and extract at will of the wearer of the cloth, and I decided to pose him `all fangs beared`. Both the knees and fists have an exchangeble part to have either the claws in or out, a niece little touch to the model making it possible to show none, some or all for his signature `Mellow Poison` attack.

The character himself never did much for me though, but he is one of the cheapest bronze models available out there and is certainly worth the relative small amount of money he goes around for, I would say a solid 3 out of 5 stars for this model, not a bad piece to have in your collection though it is doubtful he would be the shining star of your set...