I was quite surprised to see this second Commando installment see release already, considering the first wave only started hitting a couple of weeks ago. We've gotten three separate waves of product in the matter of a month, though now we should get a bit of a break until the next Soldier wave appears in March.

Long Range and Kamakura are the next two Sigma 6 members to get the "Tactical Ops" treatment, and while Long Range as a figure was fairly successful, I can't seem to find as many redeeming qualities about Kamakura.

I'm one of the few folks, I think, who wasn't at all bothered by Kamakura's paint scheme. I didn't mind the yellow colors at all, and actually thought it brought some spirit to the figure and made him stand out a bit amongst the others. Even when he got more yellow slapped on him for his second release, I still really loved the paint applications. I'm not sure if any complaints led to Hasbro changing his colors up a bit, but for whatever reason, they did, going with a more blue paint scheme, and once again, dipping into the "liquid fire" realm for his weapon selection.

Like Long Range, Kamakura mostly leaves the Sigma Suit look behind, opting for more traditional martial arts/ninja attire. Kamakura also has sculpted pants rather than cloth ones, but these are a bit less successful than Long Range's, at least in my opinion. His legs manage to maintain an overly skinny look, only exemplified by the fact that he's supposed to be wearing pants. The sculpted detail on his legs is fairly nicely done, and they do look like somewhat baggy martial arts uniform bottoms, but for whatever reason I just don't find the design all that interesting.

The sleek and slim look goes throughout the figure, and I can't really explain it, but it just seems to make Kamakura...I don't know...unimpressive. I don't really have any issues with the core designs, I guess, but his joints just seem overly tight and immobile, his legs are skinny and I just wasn't really able to "get into" the figure as I was posing it for shots. Often as I'm shooting review pictures, I'll get inspired by certain poses or the way a figure moves while I'm shooting, but in Kamakura's case, it just seemed as if he simply didn't want to hold any cool poses or move the way I wanted him to. Is this a terrible reason to write a negative review? Yeah, maybe it is, but I've gotta let some semblance of excitement go into these, and in Kamakura's case, I just wasn't really feeling it.

I really do like his new head sculpt, and as I've said, the ornate design of his uniform is pretty nicely done, I must admit. But something about the figure just leaves me a bit cold. Perhaps he's too much "ninja" and not enough "soldier". This review has been very tough for me to write, because by the look of the figure, he's got plenty of redeeming qualities...I just couldn't find any of them as I was checking the figure out first hand.

Kamakura's colors are pretty nice, even if they are a bit monotone. He's pretty much straight blue with a few black highlights here and there, but nothing flashy, nothing that jumps off the page. He just looks like a blue ninja.

From a weapon standpoint, I continue to have a hard time giving this figure some positive press. I do really love his sword with the removable flame sheath, but that's about where my love stops when it comes to his weapons. He's got a tri-bladed flame "spinner" that hooks into his arm and spins around, thanks to a built-in play action "spinner" in his forearm. Yeah, believe it or not, Kamakura does have a "play action" feature built into the figure in his right arm. Thankfully it's integrated into an existing Sigma Suit port, so it doesn't stand out too much, but he does have a pretty obvious round knob sticking out on the inside of his forearm. It does not limit any movement or articulation in the arm at all, thank goodness, but it's definitely there.

Kamakura also comes with the familiar chain-weapon system that can be used to link various flame weapons that Kamakura comes with, but none of the weapons themselves are especially exciting. Feel free to peruse the Tech Specs portion for more details on them, but they didn't make much of an overall impact on me. It is interesting that pretty much all of his flame weapons can be modified somewhat by removing the flames themselves, which leave you mostly with blunt objects. I was a bit excited originally to check and see if the weapons that came with the first version of Kamakura could be used with these, but to my dismay, for whatever reason, they cannot. I can't really think of a reason why, but the pegs are simply different sizes and the weapons will not work with each other. That would have improved customizability one hundred fold, and might have made a big difference to how much I like this toy, but they just don't seem to take that into account. The result is a set of somewhat strange looking weapons that I just can't really get into.

Kamakura also comes with a nice thick cloth uniform top that blends in with the rest of the figure pretty nicely and adds a bit of bulk to the ninja apprentice. It feels very well made, and it's a nice addition, but I'm not sure it's nice enough to make up for the faults I have.

The end result is a figure that for all intents and purposes should be a cool one. The different design is really neat...the colors are vibrant and interesting...yet when it all comes down to it, I just can't find much to really get excited about. He's a servicable figure, but nothing that really blows me away, and for a fifteen dollar figure, I like being blown away. I can't find much to recommend, to be honest. I suppose, thanks to the colors, he could be used as a COBRA ninja, but honestly, I like the design of the various Storm Shadow figures much more. Not the best effort I've seen here.