Budo

How to be polite and show respect: in the old days of feudal Japan, a samurai warrior would shout "Furasshu kontentsu o hyōji shiyou to shite imasuga, Furasshu puraguin ga insutōru sa rete imasen!" Budo is a martial arts master and a gifted sword fighter. He wears armor used by his samurai ancestors. When Cobra ninjas attack, Budo is ready to strike with speed and skill. Back when we reviewed the Retaliation Budo, we made fun of that text for being too sparse and minimal; now here we are, reviewing the Classified version, and Chris Cocks' Hasbro can't even put that much effort in. We get stats on the packaging - Foot Soldier 2, Bladed Weapons 4, Fisting Hand-to-Hand Combat 2, Martial Arts 3 - but they're too busy printing every redundant warning in two dozen languages to bother telling us anything about this character other than his name. For comparison, in 1988 Larry Hama managed to tell us about four generations of the dude's family and write a poem before informing us of his hobbies. Be better, Hasbro. Budo is one of those rare Classified figures that includes multiple heads. Right out of the tray, he's got a head that's fairly "military," while still fitting the Joe team's lax standards: he's clean-shaven, but his hair is long enough to pull up into a little top-knot, which doesn't seem like it would fit a real dress code. The sides of this head are shaved, so he's just one comically over-styled beard away from being a hipster. The second head has longer, stringier hair, plus a ratty mustache and a bit of a goatee under the chin. Going back to the old filecard, which said Budo liked tinkering on his motorcycle and listening to heavy metal music, this head absolutely looks like that kind of guy. The hair falls to just a bit below jaw level, with a few random strands that are longer for some reason, but it still floats above the shoulders. Budo's gimmick has always been that he wears samurai armor into modern battle, but this is an update of that idea. The armor is samurai-ish, with the small overlapping bits on the shoulders, forearms and waist, but his vest has a more tactical feel, with pockets for ammo clips standing in for the shapes on a samurai breastplate in a cool way. He appears to have a radio sculpted on one side of his chest, which is definitely not a feudal Japanese thing! The kneepads and shin guards wouldn't look out of place on any GI Joe at all, and his helmet looks like a standard military helmet that has had the samurai elements (the neck guard and pointy crest) welded on. It also has a little headset mic sttached to the chin strap, so there's no question that this is something from today, not centuries ago. The major shortcoming of the otherwise-cool Retaliation Budo was that it was basically just one solid color: lots and lots of unpainted red armor. Vintage Budo was better than that, and so Classified Budo is as well. His actual armor is a warm brown, and it's surrounded by black support structures. His shirt is grey, so the arms don't blend in, and the pants and fingerless gloves are green. The kneepads match the shirt, the boots match the armor, and the shin guards add just a little more black. Like the old toy, the helmet is tan and red, with silver for the neck guard. His human name is printed on his vest, just above an emblem of four diamonds which I guess is his family crest or something? The coolest feature, though, can be found on the left shoulder plate: he has a GI Joe logo, but it's the vintage Japanese GI Joe logo! GI ジョ. That's so clever it even gets specifically called out on the back of the box. For an extra flash of color, he has a red scarf that loops around his neck. Budo's accessories include a pistol with a laser sight and extended magazine, a machine gun with a foregrip, moveable bipod, and a sight mounted on a picatinny rail, and what is presumably the family sword he carries into battle. That one sheathes in a scabbard that hangs off the right side of his belt. In fact, between that and the fact his holster is on the left leg, it suggests Budo is lefthanded. Overall, not a bad set of accessories. Oh yeah, he also comes with an entire second set of samurai armor!! Seriously, everything but the greaves sculpted on the front of his boots is removable: the helmet is removable, obviously, but the bracers slide off when you remove the hands, the vest unplugs on both sides so you can get it over his head, the holster can be pushed down the leg and past the foot, and the belt unplugs on one side. Then, because we're not here for a plain body, you can put on new han kote forearm guards, padded with extra protection for the back of the hands and shaped to accommodate his thumbs; the new suneate shin guards are larger and smoother, and just clip on around the lower leg; his uwe-oba belt and kusazuri faulds are a single piece that wraps around the waist, and features two scabbards hanging on the side; his dō cuirass has a bit of a raised collar in the back, and the sode pauldrons are permanently attached to it; he has a nodawa gorget, a separate piece not attached directly to the menpo mask; rather, the mask is of a piece with the rest of the helmet. He even gets a mino straw cape to wear with it all! Obviously you can have a fully modern samurai or a fully ancient samurai, or you can mix and match parts as you like to create your own version. The colors on the alternate armor are just as nice as on the standard kit, though this one reduces the tan in favor of black, and adds more red. The mask tied to his helmet is red with big white oni fangs, and you'll know you have it lined up on the head properly when you can see Budo's eyes though it. TThe modern-style helmet only works with the clean-cut head, while the older helmet only works with the scraggly head - kind of ironic, since the samurai's top knot hairdo, which the modern head hints at, was designed to help hold those old helmets in place. Like all the other Joes, Budo moves at the ankles, boots, knees, thighs, hips, waist, chest, wrists, elbows, biceps, shoulders, pec, neck, and head. The shoulder pads on both kinds of armor are attached directly to the vest piece, so they don't move when you move the arms. The entire thing is PVC, so they can flex if you raise the arms to the side, but move the arms forward or back and they'll look out of place. This is less of a problem for Budo than it was for Cobra Commander, because that's how samurai armor actually worked; it's just that armor on a 6" plastic figure isn't goint to be as mobile as real-life equivalents. The fuedal faulds also prevent the legs from moving as much as they can in the modern gear. As we said, there are two scabbards on his belt, meant for the wakizashi and katana, but he also includes a third scabbard that's separate, and has a molded plastic rope to carry it on his back. This one is a nodachi, a less-famous type of sword (unless you're so much of a weeb that you recognize the story of Miamoyo Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro from the many times it's referenced in various anime and fighting games) that's so big its blade alone is as long as the full katana. This could be worn with the tactical armor, as well, but it looks more correct here. Getting the modern version of Budo alone would have been a good Classified release - detailed sculpt, great paint, suitable updates to make this more than just the old toy made bigger - but getting two sets of distinct armor, and thus funtionally two different figures in one, makes this an absolute winner. -- 07/03/26 Do you like the modern or old style better? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.