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Embo

March 19, 2011 | By Errex More

One thing that kind of didn’t pan out as expected about the second season of the Clone Wars TV series on Cartoon Network was touting the whole season as “Rise of the Bounty Hunters”. We get it, bounty hunters are cool and stuff, but there were not as many episodes that involved them as you may think.

The one episode that actually showcased some new cool bounty hunter models was precisely the episode titled “Bounty Hunters”, which was an homage to the classic Kurosawa film Seven Samurai.

Now, I love Seven Samurai. I remember that the first time I saw that movie, it was on public TV and that they showed it in an incredibly late time slot. The Clone Wars episode skips the recruiting part of the movie and focuses mostly on the conflict, which makes sense considering that they only had about 25 minutes to do what Kurosawa invests over two hours to accomplish.

Among the most memorable characters from that episode is Kyuzo bounty hunter Embo (even the species name is a reference to the original film, in case you are wondering). Embo is pretty much the Bruce Lee in this ragtag mercenary crew, but what’s more important, his character design translates incredibly well to plastic.

The level of detail is really nice and would allow Embo to fit right in with the more realistic styling of the Vintage or Legacy lines. Embo wears a skewed rubber sash over a real fabric skirt piece, and both pieces have intricate patterns printed on.

The sash kind of gets in the way of the hip articulation, but the overall model is quite functional, consisting of:

▪ Ball jointed neck.

▪ Peg & hinge shoulders.

▪ Peg & hinge elbows.

▪ Swivel wrists.

▪ Swivel waist.

▪ Swivel hips.

▪ Peg & hinge knees.

▪ Ball jointed ankles.

The range at the ankles is slightly restricted because the ball joints go rather deep into the calves, but they still allow for a decent range of movement.

The paintjob on Embo is pretty much flawless on my sample, but I can say that it was uniformly good on each sample I saw at the store. The color palette is probably the only factor that could make this figure stand out as an animated style figure among the more realistic aliens from the cantina or Jabba’s palace, as the colors are slightly more vibrant and in rather unusual hues.

Embo comes with a sweet, sweet armored hat that that attaches on top of his head via a round peg, a bow caster with folding arms and a couple of throwing daggers.

The upper body armor is removable and has a bandolier hanging from it with room for a couple of dagger sheaths and a peg hole to attach the crossbow, allowing Embo to carry all his weapons on him while still having the hands free to impart some kung-fu unto some hapless space pirate, which is something I have always liked on my toys.

To round up the package, Embo also includes the usual Galactic Battle Game extras; a blue die, a game stat card and a silver display base.

Embo is one of the best ever figures to come out of the Clone Wars line, in my opinion. The figure is well equipped and articulated, plus the character design is plain cool. Add to that that bounty hunters are the rockstars of the Star Wars Universe, and you have a surefire winner in your hands.