I previously mentioned in my Titanomachia introductory post that NAOKI decided to go with Kotobukiya for the 1/12 scale kits thanks to their experience with such kits. That’s not saying that Good Smile Company isn’t trying, and this kit is proof of that.
Revealed during Mecha Smile Impact 2023 and yet another deep cut Good Smile Company has made is this kit for the Hyper Red Jack Armor from the rather obscure series Armored Police Metal Jack. And as Brave Series mecha as this thing looks, it’s actually a human-scaled powered suit.
As mentioned earlier, this looks more like a full-blown mecha than an advanced powered suit like their previous MADOX-01 kit. I really can’t say much thanks to my unfamiliarity with the show, but I do like the design, as retro mecha as it looks. The Hyper Red Jack Armor you see here is actually a combination of the inner Jack Suit with the Red Scepter as you’ll see below.
Despite being made in the early 90s, the series has sensibilities of an 80s mecha show, and you can see it with the Red Scepter that has a three-wheeled motorbike mode that the included Ken Kanzaki kit, in the Jack Suit, can ride on.
The Red Scepter can also transform into its flight form called the Jet Scepter and it doesn’t look that much different from the motorbike form other than the obvious wings on the side. You can also see above how the Jack Suit can ride on the Red/Jet Scepter. Now again, the idea here is that the Jack Suit will integrate with the Red Scepter to form the Hyper Red Jack Armor.
Based on these CG renders, I think the combination of the Jack Suit to the Red Scepter would be more of parts replacement, with the Jack Suit providing certain parts and the Red Scepter doing the actual transformation.
On that note, here’s the Jack Suit and I might have to take back the stuff as I said above. As you can see, there are ports and slots on both the legs and the back of the torso as you can see above. The Jack Suit might actually fit inside the Red Scepter, but I don’t expect full transformation. We’ll see.
The more I go through these CG renders, the more I get better ideas about the transformation. Based on these images, it appears that the front section of the Red Scepter in vehicle mode isn’t part of the standard form of the Hyper Red Jack Armor, and splits up to become the J-Bird. The J-Bird can then combine to the main armor in two configurations, and along the Burst Riser, to form the Hyper Burst Riser form. And yes, if it isn’t obvious with these renders, the kit should have good to great articulation despite having some form of transformation feature.
I mentioned during its initial reveal during Mecha Smile Impact 2023 that I have interests with this kit, but not that much to guarantee a purchase. But given that, despite the retro aesthetic, the design looks quite good, we’ll see if I’ll hit that add to cart button on this guy.
MODEROID Hyper Red Jack Armor
November 2023 / ¥8,900
Order via HobbyLink Japan
