Kit Review

Coming soon.

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Upper body

Head.
The eyes are painted, but... they're hard to see since they're covered ;

Break Blade Eltemus - Back section (1/4)

Break Blade Eltemus - Back section (2/4)

Back section

The printed decals on the arms and shield are really nice quality.

Break Blade Eltemus - Weapons and legs. (1/3)

Weapons and legs.

Leftover parts are pretty minimal.

Articulation.

The knee articulation looks a bit lacking... that's because the rear skirt structure gets in the way.

Break Blade Eltemus - So you detach the rear skirt and reattach it shifted over like shown on the right, which frees up room

So you detach the rear skirt and reattach it shifted over like shown on the right, which frees up room to move.
A slide mold solution would've looked so much cleaner — this fix is a bit brute-force -.-;;

Once you fold the skirt out of the way, the knees can move about this far.

The tripod-style feet give it really solid stability,
and the ankle range of motion is pretty wide too.

The waist bends forward and back quite a bit.

The wing-like structures attached next to the verniers on the back move freely up, down, and sideways.

Break Blade Eltemus - A pretty natural kneeling pose (1/4)

Break Blade Eltemus - A pretty natural kneeling pose (2/4)

A pretty natural kneeling pose

Break Blade Eltemus - Standing shooting pose (1/4)

Break Blade Eltemus - Standing shooting pose (2/4)

Standing shooting pose

Break Blade Eltemus - Natural aerial shooting pose (1/5)

Break Blade Eltemus - Natural aerial shooting pose (2/5)

Break Blade Eltemus - Natural aerial shooting pose (3/5)

Natural aerial shooting pose

Together with Delphine, the first entry in the Break Blade series.

Together with the Frame Architect, the base frame.

Cross Frame using the Frame Arms' Frame Architect
- The second entry in the Break Blade series is Eltemus. This kit features a yellow, knight-inspired design and delivers a very similar feel and quality to its predecessor Delphine — it's shaping up to be the most polished lineup in Kotobukiya's catalog.

First off, the yellow molded color, which could easily have looked cheap, actually came out quite bright and fresh. The overall snap-fit is pretty solid, and both joint strength and articulation are really good. Sure, there's that slightly stiff feeling you get with Kotobukiya kits during assembly, and the joints don't feel the smoothest, but at least in terms of joint strength, this kit has absolutely nothing to complain about.

The predecessor Delphine already pulled off some surprisingly flashy and dynamic action poses, and Eltemus is no different — it can pull off far more natural and realistic poses than most Bandai kits. The tripod-style feet in particular have great ground contact and flexible ankles, so it handles even demanding poses really well.

In terms of parts breakdown, rather than going the Zoids or Armored Core route of using an overwhelming number of parts, it achieves a great look with a restrained, Bandai-level parts breakdown. The fact that it shows a genuinely simple yet sufficient parts breakdown for a Kotobukiya kit suggests the gap with Bandai kits is steadily closing. In some ways, the overall proportions even feel a step above your typical Bandai kit.

It's a bit of a shame that the lack of extra accessory weapons limits posing options somewhat, and the mech itself still doesn't have a huge following yet — but the kit itself absolutely deserves praise for being a high-quality release. :-)

Break Blade Eltemus | 2010. 7 | ¥3,500

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.