Greetings Tomopoppers! I come to you today with my answer to the following conundrum: what to do with a figure that has met an untimely demise?

You see, I purchased this FLCL Canti action figure off eBay a while back knowing full well that the legs tend to pop off if you so much as look at it too hard... and that's just where the trouble began. One day after attempting to pose the poor fellow I accidentally dismembered him further, so off the toy shelf he went, and into a desk drawer where he sat awaiting his destiny. Then along came a deal to pick up a couple of clearanced Revoltech figures with free shipping (Thanks HLJ!), and the solution presented itself. With a cannibalized robot from some game I've never heard of, a few assorted tools (key among which being my ever trusty Dremel), and absolutely no experience with modding figures, I set out to resurrect the little guy. The results, I'm happy to say, were fantastic.



Anyone who has this figure (or the red counterpart) will vouch for me when I say the articulation in Kiyodo's original design is absolute crap. Post-op, however, Canti can pose with the best of them. The inspiration for this I found via Google, but the pictures available weren't much to go on... so I took the liberty of breaking down some of the process in case this may inspire another person stuck in my position.



Starting from the top, I replaced the neck and shoulders with harvested parts. Revoltech joints come in three sizes, and the Suzuki figure I bought mostly had the medium and small ones. Perfectly sized for Canti.



I used three sections of Suzuki's arms for the upper body- two coming out at a Y for the shoulders, and one right out the top for the neck.



I used another piece from Suzuki's arms inside the head, ensuring a sturdy connection. I also added a hole in his back so I could attach him to a stand.



The arms are self explanatory: I ground off the existing hinge points and drilled straight into the upper and fore-arms for the mini joint at the elbow.

Left shoulder was easy, the revo joint peg fit right into the hole that the original peg popped out of. Right shoulder I had to widen the peg hole and use a small piece of Suzi's arm since it was too loose on it's own. No glue needed though, it ended up with a nice tight fit.



Also, a note on the attachment points: I used a countersink bit to widen the rim of the holes so the joints fit in closer.

You can also see how my Dremel kind of went crazy at times, leading to random scars on the arm (and other parts of the body). And yet, it still looks OK. Yay!



Here's the core of it, using a big Revo joint (the only one in the Suzuki figure in fact). The trick here is to tilt the thing forward. If you look at Canti from the side, the peg isn't facing straight up - it's about 30° forward. Just drill into the chest at an angle, and make sure you don't go too far and end up reenacting that scene from Alien.

This wasn't the hardest part at all, and required no arm section to get the diameter to fit snug. The shoulders were the real bastards. Also, the hips...



This right here is the weakest link. It figures that what plagued the figure from the start would plague it till the end... but Canti just isn't packing enough junk in his trunk to create a good hip connection. The sockets on mine form an inverted Y, but they're so close they collide towards the top, meaning I had to trim down the peg on the revo joint more than I'd like. This, plus my trial and error approach to modding this guy, means the fit isn't very snug - so the legs tend to slip out still. And there's not enough room to use more arm sections... so screw it. They stay on well enough for my purposes.



The legs, on the other hand, work great. No arm section needed for the medium sized joints, I just drilled in and around to make the sockets (with the countersink to recess them properly).



The ankles were a bit tricky because the hole from the original joint was right where the socket needed to be - so as you can see I solved that with yet more sections of Suzuki's arms. Again, no glue needed, just drilled and press fit. I left them exposed a bit because I wanted* to use the mini joints and those need to be a bit lower to look right (*well, I kind of had to use them... that's all that was really left over at this point... but they provide more precision for posing so I wanted to anyways).

As for the foot, I just drilled into them about 15° below horizontal, sort of like how Suzi's feet were... and they work out great.



The end product was so good I went out and bought him a skateboard...





So there you have it - I didn't just fix my broken toy, I actually made it better! And considering I've never tried anything quite like this I think it came out rather nice... and I'm very glad I didn't just toss him out after the mishap (a friend of mine saw these pictures and mentioned he did that very thing with his broken Canti... he's probably kicking himself now for not holding onto it).

Still, this was quite a bit of work, and I think I'll wait until I accidentally murder my red version before giving him the upgrade too. ;)