Battle Strike Team Railway Vanguard - Thunderbreak
And we’ve got our final Giant Saver from Railway Vanguard, Thunderbreak. I actually don’t know what animal it’s supposed to be. It’s either a black lion or a kirin, with the horn making me lead more to the later. It’s cool the series starts with all the mecha released. It’s also cool that all the mecha seemed to be designed around the same time, and their combinations seem to as well. I understand why Sentai does it the way it does, but having mecha designed to interact from the get-go has more advantages than not.
The Good: Definitely some cool ideas at play here. Thunderbreak is both the biggest (in single car size) and smallest (in overall length). Definitely less posable than Byakko and Seiryu, but is the only one with a gimmick, having unfoldable guns and missiles. Thunderbreak’s robot mode does a neat bit of expansion and compression. It’s feet aren’t even attached to its legs, but the weapons next to them. Also, that trident is enormous, though is mostly meant for Omega Rail Saver.
Omega Rail Saver isn’t that much different from Giant Rail Saver. It’s almost a Brave-ish combination, with it adding additional weapons more so than forming a new robot like Universe Saver.
I’ll also mention this here, but each set comes with connectors so you can line the trains all up together, except Houou can’t apparently use them, so you can only combine blue, white, green, and black together. Weird.
The Bad: Not a lot of issues with the train or animal modes, other than the floppy robot feet. It’s cool how those floppy feet work when a robot, but they very loosely peg into place. I haven’ had it fall over, but still. Those arms are also tenuous, and it takes quite a bit of work to get them to to look good. It doesn’t help that the trident is very unwieldy. I almost wish it had a lower or second handle so it could hold it better.
Omega Rail Saver gains a lot of issues compared to Giant Rail Saver. The leg equipment isn’t a problem, but the arm ones do add some unneeded weight. The trident is a little hard to get in the hand, and also weighs down the arm. And that shoulder cannon is also too heavy, and puts more stress on that shoulder than it can handle, making it fall down onto the arm proper. It looks fine, but adds serious weight distribution issues everywhere. Not that it’s going to fall over, but it will put stress on the joints and connections over time.
Overall, I think Thunderbreak is fun, but skippable. It’s the least interesting animal, robot, and combination, only really adding the old-timey steam locomotive to a lineup of modern trains. Heatwave and Ironwood are both much more worth your money if you choose to track them down.
