KR|Dimness Review #15: Anobiac

Toy prototype details

Name: Anobiac^TM

Subtitle: insectoid bounty hunter

Line: KR|Dimness

Item type: action figure - Nº 11 in the line.

Character details

Name: Anobiac

Classification: insect

Sex: uncertain (the character was originally conceived as a male, but the figure's body frame size suggests that it might have been changed into a female during production)

Home: Tahron

Era: 5 years before Foundation

Affiliation: Dark Legion

Rank: auxiliary warrior.

Background

First appearance: KR|Dimness #2 - Masq-Lor's quest

Brief bio: using the magic of the ancient spirits enshrined in Clavisaur's body, the evil Wordron transformed some of the most savage animals of the jungles near the Ucamur^TM region into his own beastly servants. Grown to a human-like size and endowed with enhanced strength, these monsters fought under the Dark Legion banner as mercenaries. Anobiac was just a flying insect when one of the spirits possessed it and transmuted it into a ferocious warrior, who savoured destruction and death. Even after the Dark Legion's ultimate defeat, Anobiac continued to act proudly as a fearsome and deadly bounty hunter in his old master's name.

Articulation

Standard, excluding hinged abdomen, and with the addition of two ball hinged arms and four ball hinged wings.

Description

Head: insect-like, characterised by a segmented light-blueish hood that surrounds and merges with a black snout. It displays a pair of long, thin light-blueish antennae pointing forward, a pair of fairly large bulbous silvery compound eyes, three smaller yellow eye spots on the forehead and a whitish-jawed Predator-like mouth composed of a two-fanged upper labrum, two mandibles and two maxillae with cutting edges (the latter are flanked by two short black segmented appendages or palps), and a finely serrated lower labium (also flanked by palps)

Body: all her body is characterised by a segmented black appearance and is protected by a number of light-blueish chitinous exoskeletal plates, which act as shoulder guards, rerebraces and thigh guards (we can even get a glimpse of a similar harness-shaped structure on her torso, under the armour), and bear numerous details on their surfaces, such as cracks, spines, small porous warts and tiny hair-shaped appendages. Her slender arms and legs sport three-clawed black hands and feet, with the third claw of each foot pointing backward and down, and functioning as a sort of high heel. An additional pair of arthropod-like light-blueish arms, each terminating in a long bifurcated claw, project from her lower back

Wearables: an orange armour with red details (including a furry collar and a pair of spines projecting from the top of the shoulder guards), two scaly (with some of the scales developing a bit more into spines) orange wrist guards, two scaly/spiny orange shin guards, a spiked orange belt and a red furry loincloth.

Anobiac's stylised armour.

Action feature

In the comics, Anobiac can protrude a vicious dental plate at great speed from her mouth. This whitish chitinous structure lies in a horizontal position and has a row of curved, piranha-like teeth along the edge, resembling a circular saw blade; it also folds bilaterally, helping with the extending/retracting motion she uses to attack her opponents. So, the figure comes with a spectacular alternative head, which displays the open mouth armed with the threatening dental plate out.

Additionally, her back plate carries two sets of posable wings. The leaf-shaped iridescent silvery outer wings function as a menacing pair of sharp blades and, when folded, as a shield for the reduced club-shaped inner wings, which are light-blueish and carry a pair of toothed whitish chitinous structures at their ends. These parts are quite different from the dental plate, each having a series of five vibrating curved blades that in concerted sequential motion resembles a circular saw; although these organs do not fictionally rotate, they actually do in toy form.

Weapons and accessories

Apart from the alternate head, Anobiac includes an intimidating "corkscrew" spear, which consists of a long reddish wooden shaft with a metallic red handle and a pointed, spiral whitish chitinous tip. This weapon is actually never shown in the comics, but it's a quite cool addition in my opinion.

Final thoughts

Character value: ♦♦♦♦ As a collector of the KR|Foundation line prototypes, Zektax was probably my favourite figure. Another insect character has been on my personal most-wanted lists for several years and now it's finally here

Articulation: ♥♥♥♥ The range of motion on the extra appendages is great and Anobiac looks awesome in a variety of flying poses

Sculpt and paint: ♣♣♣♣♣ I know this was a pet project for the folks at PoliganToys, and, indeed, they delivered a figure that makes for a visually stunning addition to the line

Accessories: ♠♠♠♠ The frightening add-ons she comes with should make everybody learn it may not be worth the trouble of fighting with this creature

Playability: ♪♪♪♪ This figure not only gives the Dark Legion a new monster amongst their ranks, but also further fleshes out Tahron's complex biology and perhaps provides a friendly foil for the Murmirians descendants

Overall: ☺☺☺☺ This is another triumphant concept-design made into action figure. I have often thought about how there really weren’t enough insectoid characters produced in the KR line. That's now changed with Anobiac being successfully produced in the Dimness series.