Thursday, April 14, 2011

Retro Toy Week: Kaneda's Motorcycle!

What's probably the most iconic fictional motorcycle, and sold without his rider? From 2000, McFarlane Toys and Katsuhiro Otomo's classic manga and anime Akira, Kaneda's motorcycle! There are a couple cons to the bike: it's not 100% accurate. There's a few stickers missing from the front, for example. I'm not positive it's totally to scale, either. The packaging pictures a scene with Kaneda posed on the bike, but the sold-separately Kandea from that series wasn't articulated enough to get anywhere near sitting on it. A later boxed set would fix that, if you didn't mind buying them again. (As usual, the Amazon links are only for reference, and I strongly encourage shopping around!) The front section opens up a little, and the wheels roll, but it doesn't turn at all. It's a tough call, though, if steering could've been added without wrecking the look of the cycle. And it probably doesn't matter, since it's more of a display piece than a toy; little kids shouldn't be watching Akira or playing with the cycle no matter how cool they are.
And make no mistake: Kaneda's bike is super-cool. An old friend once described Akira as including "forty minutes of riding motorcycles and screaming 'TETTTTT-SSSSSUO!'" And he still loved it! If you haven't seen it, or didn't get your own Bike action figure, well, maybe the American version will get figures...no, that's like hoping you'll get sent to the hospital because you'd really like some jello.

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