KR|Emergence Review #8: Zourr (Emergence Edition)

Toy prototype details
Name: Zourr^TM (Emergence Edition), aka Robotic-Arms Zourr
Subtitle: claw-swinging warrior
Line: KR|Emergence
Item type: action figure - Nº 7 in the line.

Character details
Name: Zourr
Classification: archosauromorph reptile
Sex: male
Home: Tahron
Era: 3 years before Foundation
Affiliation: Rexodon
Rank: major general.

Background
First appearance: KR|Emergence #3 - The war of all against all: Part II – Rise
Brief bio: hailing from a lake settlement in the Northern Forest, although Zourr was affected by a short-limbed dwarfism that caused him to have disproportionately short arms with limited range of motion, he became a skilled warrior trained in unarmed combat as well as rudimentary weaponry such as staves. Impressed by his strength of will, Bi-Harr recruited him to join the Reptonoid faction as a soldier of fortune while he was still a youth. In order to improve his ability to track down and oppose the mammalian enemies, Loghar designed a special cybernetic armour, from which Zourr would derive multiple abilities. With his years of experience using the powered armour, he became highly skilled in armoured combat and developed a more and more physical fighting style, leading him to reach the rank of major general. Assigned the code name "Tyranno", his eagerness to impress his master often irritated his fellow soldiers, some even regarding him as a bootlicker. Zourr was demoted to brigade general when he was falsely accused of planning a deadly ambush on his unit by sending information to an enemy group. His closest friend, Goln^TM, whose reckless boldness often tested Zourr's by-the-book attitude, was the only comrade in arms who never stopped showing loyalty to him. As members of the Rexodon army, Goln and Zourr got along effectively and formed an evil well-matched duo. In battle, the two showed an excellent ability to synchronise with one another at just the right moment and were eventually praised by Bi-Harr in reward for their team spirit.

Articulation
Standard, with the addition of a hinged upper jaw and a tail, which is a ball jointed separate piece and features two articulation points, two swivels at about one-third and two-thirds of its length. Although there is no biceps articulation, the elbows are swivel-hinged.

Description
Head: similar to an Allosaurus, characterised by light-bluish skin, red eyes (with a pair of short horns above them), and jaws equipped with sharp, serrated whitish teeth
Body: light-bluish scaly skin. While the legs are standard and equipped with large three-toed clawed feet, the arms are very short and have three clawed fingers each. He also bears a massive tail
Wearables: a black armour with silver details, two black calf protectors with silver-studded knee guards, a black belt and a silver loincloth decorated with tons of cyber details.

Zourr's stylised armour.

Action feature
Zourr includes a 3-piece battle gear that can be used to display him in the way he appears briefly in the comics of the Emergence series. The set is composed of a head/chest armour as well as a pair of cybernetic arm armours, and shows a nice steel look with a dark sheen and a worn out quality. The head/chest (and also back) armour resembles the head of a horned, heavily toothed reptile with a gaping mouth, and displays some nice gold details such as the two horns, a crest, a Rexodon symbol (i.e., a reptile skull) on the chest plate and some circuitry/machinery patterns on the back plate. The armour, which sits on the figure's shoulders, is equipped with an opening between the two huge jaws that allows Zourr's face to be seen, and two shoulder-mounted pivoting accessories: a missile launcher with a three-headed missile (whose central warhead is larger than the other two) resting over the left shoulder, and a sight/tracking device with an attached microphone on the other side. The two large mechanical arm attachments, each ending in a swivelling "hand" armed with five long curved, scythe-shaped golden claws (four pointing downward and one pointing upward), simply clip on Zourr's arms after attaching his hands to the respective joysticks. Each arm piece is choke-full with tech-mech details like circuits, pistons, cogs, chains and a black pliable tube that runs from the back armour, while the two large downward-pointing middle claws are hinged and can snag an enemy.

Weapons and accessories

Apart from his technological battle armour, Zourr comes with a black bamboo quarterstaff that has a small silver ulu blade at one end and can be held by the figure's small hands with no problem.

Additionally, two alternate "hands" for the mechanical arms are included. These pieces are quite different from the standard clawed appendages and kind of resemble digging buckets; each bucket is connected to a sort of hydraulic extension of the arm via a hinged joint, and presents teeth protruding from the cutting edge.

Final thoughts
Overall: I like this figure quite a bit, and while the old Tyrannoraptor figure was great, this new version of Zourr alone is epic. He's got all the coolness of the Foundation figure, but comes with an amazing powered armour instead of a canister on his back. He exceeded my expectations completely. It’s a pretty simple Zourr variant, but, oh, so satisfying in the KR|Emergence style. I can’t wait to display this guy beside his buddy Goln!

Rating: ☺☺☺☺ / 5

KR|Emergence Review #7: Fai-Rha (Emergence Edition)

Toy prototype details
Name: Fai-Rha^TM (Emergence Edition), aka Combat Trainee Fai-Rha
Subtitle: adopted heiress
Line: KR|Emergence
Item type: action figure - Nº 6 in the line.

Character details
Name: Fai-Rha (meaning "born to fight")

Real name: Rhadiel Amhalgaard^TM

Classification: human-primivod* hybrid (but she looks completely human)
Sex: female

Relationships: adopted daughter of Lor-Drek
Home: Tahron
Era: 3 years before Foundation
Affiliation: Unnamed Clan
Rank: basic combat trainee.
*Primivods^TM are fictional anthropomorphic marsupials that can interbreed with some other species of mammals and produce fertile offspring.

Background
First appearance: KR|Emergence #2 - The war of all against all: Part I – Breach
Brief bio: during her childhood, Rhadiel was abducted together with her older brothers by her uncle Ir-Ash, and offered to the Unnamed Clan in exchange for recruitment in their army. In Artelon, she was raised under the name Fai-Rha by Lor-Drek, to whom she looked up as her father, and was brainwashed into believing that the Unnamed Clan was a force of justice on Tahron. Under Demo-Rha's care, Fai-Rha was trained in the ways of battle and slowly shaped into a fearsome and lethal living weapon. When Lor-Drek and his soldiers attacked Rokang Tar and were subsequently seized by the Rexodons, she took part in a rescue operation as her first field assignment. Aiming at killing all enemies who threatened her father's life with the help of a robotic dragon built by Ophidok for her protection, Fai-Rha began to question her training when she crossed paths with the Therioms for the first time. After donning armour to conceal her identity, and getting into a fight with a mysterious Theriom officer named Tir-Hing, she learnt of Lor-Drek's villainous nature and, although she was unable to hate him, soon chose to defect to the Independent Warriors. There, Fai-Rha opposed the evil reptilian forces alongside her new leader Bellius^TM, who helped her become a heroic fighter and converted her mecha-dragon into his wearable machinery.

Articulation
Standard, excluding hinged abdomen.

Description

Head: light brown skin, long black (rooted!) hair partly arranged in a high ponytail and in a pair of braids at the sides, green eyes. She definitely looks like a teenage version of her Foundation counterpart. She also sports a dragon-themed silver removable diadem, which is embellished with a few tiger-like red stripes, two evil-looking golden sculpted eyes and a horned, upward-pointing dragon head ornament (similar to an Uraeus) departing from a red gemstone in the middle, while two fairly large headpieces on the sides are shaped like bat wings and are painted in gold on the outside surfaces. This headgear looks best when it’s up on her forehead and it sits there smoothly, since it's moulded on the back to fit snugly in that position. You can also push it down over her eyes and nose where it will stay; however, it doesn’t look quite as nice there and it will come off if you move her around too much. I’m not sure if that position is intended to be an option, though, since in the comics she only wears the headband as a mask briefly during a training session
Body: slightly shorter than the adult characters (only 14 cm, around 5.5"), covered from neck to toe (including the hands, which are equipped with claw-like silver fingertip guards) with a tight anthracite (i.e., near-black or very dark grey) bodysuit, which is marked with light grey blotchy spots and tiger-like stripes (although the irregular edges of these marks actually make them almost look like rips). The suit is accented with two dark-brown leather shoulder strips running from front to back. Additionally, her left thigh wears a dark-brown leather strap with a small bag attached

Wearables: a golden shoulder/chest armour with red details (including a gemstone at the centre of the chest piece and a three-pronged motif at its base), two golden bracelets (ornamented with snake motifs, spiked wrist guards and knuckle protectors), two golden boots (embellished with snake motifs on the shafts, three-pronged shin guards partly covering the knees, spiked calf protectors and clawed toe-caps), two criss-crossed loose fitting belts (comprising a larger studded golden belt bearing an Unnamed Clan symbol, i.e., a light-green snake emerging from an upright, spirally coiled conic dark-green shell, and a smaller dark-brown leather belt with a simple golden buckle, i.e. a rectangular frame with a hinged pin, underneath), a short red high-low wrap skirt, and a short jagged, bat-shaped dark-green shawl/cape.

Fai-Rha's stylised armour.

Action feature

In the comics, Fai-Rha's primary weapons during battles are the grenade capsules that she stores in the bag tied to her thigh. These capsules contain a variety of chemical compounds (including a kind of slimy substance), but the most common use for them is as incendiary/smoke bombs, which produce an explosion and a coloured smoke on impact (in this case, the capsules are packed with a magical explosive powder that is said to be derived from the damaged Disc of Zesakhur). So, to recreate the spectacular explosions from the comics, we get an effect parts set, which can adapt to a variety of figure poses and intense action sequences. The set comes with three translucent flames-and-smoke parts that are rendered in exquisite detail, and can be used separately for scattered burning effects, or stacked to create an even larger explosion.
The package also includes Fai-Rha's robot companion - a heavily mechanised silver&dark-bronze representation of a dragon with lots of cyber details, featuring two pairs of legs, a sort of neural spine sail (which also bears a tailfin and two tailplanes towards the back, resembling an aircraft empennage as a result), a long, wavy skeleton-like steel tail ending with a zigzagged point, and a pair of large bat-like dark-green wings. Its head appears to be a robotic version of Lor-Drek's Spinosaurus-like head, characterised by a long and narrow snout, a large spiked cranial crest, long pointy ears (each ending in a rather long, curved horn), evil-looking red glowing eyes, and large sharp teeth along the edges of the jaws. Each of the four dragon's talons is designed with fine embellishments, such as four large bladed, fierce looking claws in each foreleg and a pincer-like claw in each hind leg. It also features some articulation, which includes one swivel in each leg as well as one on the head and one on the tail, while each wing is articulated via a booster rocket-shaped hinge at half of its length (which allows it to be unfolded and folded up) and can move up and down as well as rotate on a ball-hinge at the base. There's even a Rokang Tar themed dark-bronze&steel stand, atop which the dragon can perch by grasping it with its rear talons. The dragon has the ability to transform into a flight pack that can be worn by Fai-Rha, replacing her standard armour and cape. The tail and the head parts need to be detached, although this is not absolutely necessary: the tail can serve as a vicious whip for Fai-Rha, while the head (replaced by a three-bladed arrow-like missile on the dragon's neck) fictionally becomes a helmet with a full mask (in reality there's an alternate masked head for Fai-Rha). In order to combine the two figures, the hind legs of the dragon are simply placed on Fai-Rha's shoulders and the front legs are turned over her chest. This harness allows Fai-Rha to take off into the air by a combination of natural winged flight, thanks to the mechanical articulated bat-like wings, and powered flight, thanks to the thrusters on the wings and at the back end (where the tail was attached), while Fai-Rha can control the entire system mentally through her helmet.

Weapons and accessories

Apart from the dragon-flight pack, perch, missile and helmeted head, Fai-Rha comes with two hanbō made of reddish-brown wood and adorned with silver (one) and golden (the other) ends, which can be stowed into two loops in her cape.
Additionally, the package includes an alternative battle-ready head for Fai-Rha, which is characterised by a long crew cut (this time sculpted and much shorter than her regular hair) and cross-shaped bicolour (red and white) war paint. There is also a separate portrait depicting her dragon-helmet posed in a different way, with its lower jaw wide open and the upper part in a raised position, so you can see Fai-Rha's war-painted face underneath.
Finally, the dragon's tail is made of seemingly articulated vertebra-like segments, which can expand and contract on command. In the former case, the tail can be used as a whip, whereas in the latter case it can be wielded as a staff weapon, which is another included accessory (in the comics, Fai-Rha can even separate the segments completely and attack with them, and then have them return and form the tail/whip again).

Final thoughts
Overall: I kind of feel like this figure won't be as well received by others as it is by me, since it is simultaneously a Fai-Rha variant and a villain character. Regardless of that, I think this is a beautiful, fun, well designed prototype. She has plenty of awesome accessories, great paint, sculpting, and the ability to have a few different looks. You go girl!
Rating: ☺☺☺☺☺ / 5