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Bandai Turn Boba Fett Into A Ronin This November

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The latest figure to be added to Bandai’s line of Japanese themed Star Wars Movie Realization toys is that of Boba Fett and he’s now become a ronin.

To understand what’s happening here, Bandai hired the respected artist Takeyuki Takeya to re-imagine a variety of famous Star Wars characters in a feudal Japanese setting.

While this may sound strange, there are in fact a lot of Japanese influences at work in the original Star Wars.

From things like the name for Jedi coming from the Japanese word for period drama, that of jidaigeki, to all manner of nods to the films of Akira Kurosawa as well as the designs for a lot of the costumes much of what made Star Wars had a clear and somewhat traditional Japanese twist to it (as you can see below).

With that in mind, it makes sense that you could re-purpose the original character designs from Star Wars into a feudal Japanese setting as part of an interesting cultural thought experiment.

Personally I am just a massive fan of Takeya’s work, so seeing him work on something like this is really great. I already have his Lord of Byston Well figures from a few years back, where he re-imagined the mecha designs from the classic series Aura Battler Dunbine into terrifying looking insects, but these new Star Wars toys appear to be even better.

The two previous figures in this new range were a rather wonderful samurai themed Darth Vader and Stormtrooper.

Boba Fett will join them this November and will cost 9,504 yen.

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