The first thing I thought of when i saw this KANOHI up close was the Rocketeer. I don’t know if that was the specific inspiration for this design, but it certainly does look similar to the kind of thing you’d see in the old serial sci-fi movies. It’s the one METRU KANOHI that I actually prefer in the darker color pallete, as it lends it a somewhat period look.

The weapons, on the other hand, I’m not so fond of. The blades themselves look great as wings, and passable as blades, but the handle is buried inside a little wraparound section, so you have to turn the hand flat to attach the weapon. It looks like MATAU is pinching the sword between his middle and ring fingers.

One odd problem with the new ball-jointed neck is that MATAU’s head can’t tilt back very far, so he practically looks straight down when flying. A modification that will help a lot here is to attach his neck socket the same was as NOKAMA and NUJU, which will raise it up one stud height, and allow the super-long eyepiece enough clearance for the head to tilt back almost enough to look straight ahead.

The color scheme isn’t quite as bad as it is on some of the other TOA METRU, but the green is definitely a little more on the yellow side, so it still doesn’t work very well with the blue tint of the gunmetal grey.