Bot Reviews: Transformers: Legacy Evolution Voyager Nemesis Leo Prime

There’s a lot going on with this figure, so let’s see if I can break it down without this intro becoming an essay.

So, first, there was Leo Prime, the leader of the Maximals in the late 90’s Japanese-exclusive anime and toyline, Beast Wars II (Pronounced “Beast Wars Second,” oddly). That show’s never been made available over here officially, and it wasn’t even fully fan-subbed until 2016, so Leo Prime’s popularity as a character, and the fact that he’s got a bunch of new toys released in the West over the years, mostly comes down to him having a really cool design, as an Optimus Prime variant who changes into a white lion.

Now, there was a single episode of that original anime in which a black, evil duplicate of Leo Prime was created (and destroyed by episode’s end), and that’s been enough for most Leo Prime toys to get a black repaint into that version, now officially called “Nemesis Leo Prime” in the west.

Those black repaints are usually some kind of exclusive, but this Legacy one actually got a wide release. So, why was I interested in it, especially since I’ve never seen the show this guy’s from?

For one thing, I’ve already got a really good Leo Prime figure, in the form of the Robot Masters version (reviewed here), so a variant version of this new Legacy one was more interesting to me. But more than that, there’s another, more interesting character he shares an appearance with.

So, earlier this year, the Masterpiece version of Leo Prime was also given a black repaint, but that version went by the name “Dark Amber Leo Prime.” Accompanying him was a two-chapter manga special, that told the story of this other, unrelated black Leo Prime variant: In the distant future, at the end of the universe, he was created by fusing Unicron’s essence with Leo Prime’s dead body, in the hopes that he’d be able to help restore that dying universe.

Dark Amber’s a reluctant hero, with a bad attitude, coerced into doing good things by the essence of Leo Prime within him. Also, because he’s part-Unicron, he eats rocks to sustain himself. It’s an interesting, fun little story, and I have a more personal connection to it, as I got to watch it get fan-translated in real time by a moderator of the Transformers Wiki Discord. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2 of the story, in English, and in case those links vanish, here’s the Transformers Wiki pages for Part 1 and Part 2. So, to me, this figure isn’t the guy from that one episode of a cartoon I haven’t watched, he’s the rude edgelord from that cool manga. Plus, he gives me a chance to check this tooling out. Fair warning, I’m just gonna call him DALP (Dark Amber Leo Prime) the rest of this writeup, it’s easier and more fun.

Robot Mode

It’s funny, DALP’s actually a bit short by Voyager standards, coming in beneath the Earthrise Seekers, and the War for Cybertron Trilogy versions of Prime and Megatron.

But you can’t tell, because he gives the impression of size, between his width, and his general stage presence. You can see why this design’s a popular one, he’s Optimus Prime meshed with a kind of Noble Barbarian Knight design, between the lion head on one shoulder, tail on the other, and what looks like shredded pecs and abs sculpted into his chest (along with a raised Maximal symbol on his left side).

And this Legacy version is very good at sending out those kind of dramatic, heroic vibes, even neutrally posed. Uptop, his head’s almost, but not quite an Optimus Prime face, basically just having larger horns, while also subtly altering the lines of the sculpt to manage to read as a different character.

For all the good his sculpt’s got going on, though, he still has a pile of lion parts hanging off of him, grandfathered in through faithfulness to the original design. His folded-up lion forelegs kind of awkwardly dangle off of struts on his robot elbows, there’s a panel of lion hide on his back that doesn’t really lock in, just hangs there on a strut of its own, and the shoulder that doesn’t have a lion’s head on it just has some more folded up hide, though you can unfold the lion’s tail to make it look a bit more deliberate.

Still, damned if he doesn’t try to wear it well, and the whole look comes together better than you’d expect.

The colors are interesting, because it’s clear they worked to try and make the idea of a black repaint not boring, meaning he’s got a lot more color on him than you’d initially think. He’s mostly a mix of darker black, and a couple shades of extremely dark gray, partially paint and partially plastic, with an eye for as much color variety as they can squeeze in under those restrictions.

And in person, it mostly does the job of making sure that his sculpted detail doesn’t vanish, even if it takes a moment to notice most of the color variety, and not immediately be drawn to his sparse bits of non-black color, mainly a bit of silver on his chest, and a little bit of bright metallic blue on his lion nails and robot eyes.

There’s an interesting kind of interplay, too, between the colors and sculpt. A lot of Optimuses do a good job of looking sinister and evil when they’re given Nemesis-type repaints. But this sculpt can’t help but look essentially heroic, and it contrasts interestingly with these colors, meaning it projects the idea of the kind of Dark Knight of Anti-Heroics that DALP was, instead of being an actual villain.

So, for his build quality, it again all comes down to the lion bits hanging off of him. Now, underneath them, the robot at the core is very solidly built. But again, none of the lion parts really lock down or anything, they just kind of hang there, and can feel like they’re in the way, especially those lion-legs. The big X-factor is that both piles of parts on his shoulders don’t actually secure or tab to his body at all, they just kind of plop down on top of his shoulders, on struts that emerge from his backpack. This was probably done to avoid them interfering with his shoulder articulation, which makes sense, but having them tab in, with the option to un-tab them when posing him, would have gone a long way to making him feel a bit more solid. It’s certainly not really that bad, especially by the standards of the designs from that era, it’s just that a few tabs would have gone so far.

On the upside, that unimpeded articulation is actually really good, and I do concede that having his shoulders be able to move so freely does add a lot to the design. He’s got all the modern bonuses, and has ankles, knees, swiveling thighs, a waist swivel, elbows, full shoulders, and a head that, beyond a neck swivel, is on a little panel that lets him look up, or down a bit, for extra edginess. Again, the heroic sculpting really helps out here, it feels like you don’t need to pose him very much to look cool.

For features, DALP’s almost got a bit too many, and they’re a bit mixed, so this might take a bit. Starting with what’s on him, you can flip his left pec open, for a look at a vaguely Matrix-like sculpt inside of him (in the 90’s, this made fans go wild, we were so desperate for G1 shoutouts).

On one hand, there’s now a big peg coming out of it that kind of muddles the intent of the sculpt.

On the other hand, it’s there so you can attach a blast effect to it, for some kind of Matrix Attack (there was a bit in the manga about the Matrix erupting with energy to make him do good things, so it works in that context, too).

The other thing he’s got on him is flip-out claws on the ends of his lion legs, which you deploy after unfolding said legs.

They’re kind of underwhelming, because they’re oddly short, with the legs themselves taking up more space in front of his hands than the claws themselves. This is because the idea of his forelegs folding away, and having articulation to them, is a newer feature here, and older takes on the design had those claws be longer, thanks to them just sitting inside immobile, sculpted legs. It’s a bit of a miss, to me.

Now, for accessories, he’s got a whopping six guns (no relation to the Autobot), which feels a bit excessive.

They’re all sculpted in black, and they all do different stuff. One pair of stubby lasers makes the odd decision of having rectangular pegs for handles, meaning he can’t actually hold them in his hands. Instead, you can peg them onto the sides of his lion mane, for a sideways shooting attack, or unfold a couple panels of fur on the outsized of his arm, and mount them there as wrist-lasers.

When not in use, they’re meant to store under the bit of lion junk on his back, and it’s one of the few times his black colorscheme betrays him, it’s hard to get them plugged in when you can barely see the tabs.

Next, he’s got another pair of even stubbier lasers, with more conventional pegs, that he actually CAN hold in his hands.

They’ve got a more interesting storage space and attack mode: you can actually flip up a little U-shaped panel at the top of his lion mane, peg them into some holes there, and flip the panel away. There’s something mundanely fun about flipping that panel open and shut.

Lastly, he’s got an asymmetrical pair of less-stubby lasers, that he can either hold separately, or peg together into a single, normal-sized gun.

This is the best-looking weapon he’s got, and it’s also a new accessory for this repaint, compared to Legacy Leo. It also means he’s got nowhere to stash it on him, unlike the other weapons. It’s odd to say, but it feels like he’s got Too Many Guns. It’s a tribute to the weapons of the original, but it seems a bit excessive, especially when so many of them are really kind of puny. Most of the time, I just leave the four smaller ones stashed, and have him just hang out with the combined, larger weapon.

Maybe they could have omitted one set of guns, and instead given him snap-on claws, so those could have been lengthier.

That, and I also miss having his lion mane be able to spin like a chopping blade. It was apparently a spring-loaded gimmick on the original, and while the Robot Masters version didn’t have that aspect to the gimmick, you could still unfold it and rotate it, like in the above photo. It’s a thing DALP did in the manga, too, so it would have fit, the same way the Matrix-blasting thing does.

He also lacks any 5-millimeter accessory ports beyond the ones on his wrists, and in his mane, but honestly, he’s got enough going on that I don’t miss them.

Transformation

DALP’s transformation is a bit more complicated than I expected, but not too tough. The abstract is that he does a belly flop, you rotate the lion head and rump pieces on his shoulders back, and on a strut, so they go over his (folded-away) robot head and backside, and finagle his front and rear lion legs, then snap all the bits together, but there’s a lot of little details to making this happen. To his credit, despite seeming like a shellformer, he’s not really much of one, and all of his lion-hide panels tab in without much trouble. The hardest bit is his robot arms, which need to collapse and fold together in a very ornate way in order to tab in beneath his mane, and I once again found the black colorscheme causing some issues, as I squinted into the void to try and find some locking tabs. Still, I’ve got it figured out now, because it’s intuitive enough to recall through muscle memory.

Beast Mode

This is a remarkably clean-looking lion, probably the cleanest the character’s ever looked. I think it really comes down to the color scheme. A big challenge with every version of Leo Prime is hiding his robot parts, and even the Legacy version only does a passable job. But the reason they’re so visible is because they’re a different color from his white lion fur. On DALP, the fact that he’s an all-black repaint means that he can hide those robot parts better, because they blend in with him.

The only immediately obvious bits are on the backs of his legs, and at his pelvis.

Otherwise, it’s a well-sculpted, realistic-looking lion, with those good “dollar store rubber animal toy” vibes, including molded-in fur all across him.

The face is another area where the colors are used to great effect. See, on the original Leo Prime, they didn’t paint his lion face at all, save for his nose, and between the white fur, and empty eyes, the effect was kind of creepy. On DALP, they properly painted in his eyes, and gave him painted upper teeth, to boot, so he looks way better, to say nothing about the dark gray plastic picking out the sculpt better.

Well, I say better, but he has kind of a strange expression, kind of forlorn and sad, instead of, say, fierce. But I’m going to call it characterful, because DALP is the exact right kind of character to have a secretly sensitive side, and have a Big Sad Brood when no one’s looking.

As for the rest of those colors, they did a pretty good job of rearranging his shades of black, so he’s mostly the lighter, grayish shade all across his lion body, with the darker shade being mostly confined to his mane. It’s interestingly simplified compared to his other form. Also, he’s still got those stylish blue nails.

He holds together very solidly in this form, too, and doesn’t feel at all like the shellformer he technically is. The one exception is a chunk of fur on his mane beneath his face, it just kind of dangles there instead of pegging in, but that’s it.

The downside to that solidity is that he’s not very poseable in this mode, especially compared to fellow Modern Big Cats Kingdom Cheetor and Tigatron. His forelegs can really only bend at the knee (elbow?) and not at the body, and can swivel slightly. Meanwhile, his back legs are locked at the knees, and only move at the hips, though you can also use his thigh swivels and ankle tilts. He can also open his mouth, in a way that makes it look like he’s shocked, instead of roaring. It’s a bit of a downgrade by Kingdom’s standards, I must admit.

For features, he’s got a fair chunk of his robot-mode gimmicks available. You can still flip his spiky claws out of his forelegs, though they don’t look like much, and can’t really do much of anything. A gimmick that does look good, though, is flipping the top of his mane open, to deploy those stashed laser pistols.

You’re also meant to attach the other, square-handled set to the pegholes on either side of his mane, for a four-barrelled attack mode that’s always been a feature with the character.

But the solid black coloration, and the stubbiness of the guns make this form a bit indistinct, though, and I’m inclined to just stash the other two laser pistols beneath his back (which seals up when I transform him).

I’ve also found that you can flip those two chunks of fur from his robot forearms (now on his mane) forwards, and plug in all six guns, for an even more extensive attack mode, though it just underlines that there’s nowhere on him to store those last two weapons, which, thanks to their solid black coloration, makes me worry about losing them.

Overall

Legacy has been blessed with a really solid run of well-done Voyagers (Blaster, Jhiaxus, Inferno, Bludgeon and Tarn all come to mind), so by the standards of the line, Nemesis Leo Prime, aka Dark Amber Leo Prime, aka DALP, does come up a bit short, but only by a bit. I don’t number grade this stuff, but if I did, he’d be like a 7 out of 10 in a line that’s been giving us Voyagers that are 9s and 10s. It mostly comes down to his mess of lion parts in robot mode, and his slightly naff assortment of features and accessories, but none of that’s really a figure-killer, and he’s got an essential, solid quality to him, especially compared to previous versions of the design. To compare him to the Robot Masters version, for example, there’s some things the smaller one does better (the claws, the spinning lion mane), but the stuff this larger one does better (the lion mode in general, the transformation) makes it come out ahead, I think. As for this version, it’s still a pretty bog-standard black repaint, but they did as much as they could to add some variety to the idea, and it turns out he wears the colors very well.

If you’re a fan of the short manga that gave him some actual characterization, you either have this already, or are going to get it, but if you aren’t, it’s a solid figure of an oddball character from a fun story (even if that’s not what it’s technically supposed to be), and well worth checking out. And hey, as of this writing, it’s on a clearance sale for really cheap at Hasbro Pulse, so if you’re in the US, it’s a good chance to snag one.

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