Compared to previous years, Good Smile Company / Good Mecha Smile is doing things a little differently for this year’s Mecha Smile Impact. Instead of a single big bang reveal of everything in their development pipeline, they opted to split it between the Winter and Summer. This would not only help maintain recall and excitement for their upcoming products, but it would also allow them to compete with other companies doing reveals around this time.
I have mentioned this several times previously, but while I’m not a fan of chibi-fied mecha, I do appreciate them if they were designed as SD from the get go. Examples include Wataru, Granzort, and more recently, Granbelm. I also appreciate how Good Smile Company continues to delve into these properties with the continuous influx of MODEROID kits based on these properties.
MODEROID Kaiser Fire
This isn’t the first time I encountered this design. In fact, I already have a figure of Kaiser Fire from VS Lamune Knight & 40 Fire from MegaHouse’s Variable Action line. And unfortunately, we all know the stories of quality assurance those figures had. So fast forward several years and I will have another chance of owning a (hopefully) better rendition of Kaiser Fire as a MODEROID kit.
To those unfamiliar, VS Lamune Knight & 40 Fire is a sequel to VS Lamune Knight & 40 where previously released MODEROID kits like King Squasher came from. I’ve yet to catch up on getting King Squasher and Hyper Granzort among other kits, but it looks like here’s another reason to actually pull the trigger on those orders.
MODEROID Ryu Paladin Lord Zephyr
Continuing on the releases from the Ryu Knight franchise, we have Ryu Paladin Lord Zephyr from Lord of Lords Ryu Knight. Unlike other SD-based mecha properties, Good Smile Company decided to sell the MODEROID kits from Ryu Knight in sets of twos, the only exception prior to this kit is MODEROID Ryu Knight Zephyr as seen in the Adieu’s Legend OVA, which is a recolor of the normal Zephyr.
Ryu Paladin Lord Zephyr is the mid-season upgrade of Ryu Knight Zephyr after going through the whole knight-to-paladin class change you often see in fantasy stories. The design is more intricate, and it now comes with shoulder wing panels that you can actually replace with a cloak to recreate its appearance in the manga version.
Much like VS Lamune Knight & 40, I’ve yet to get any kit from Lord of Lords Ryu Knight. It looks like I will have quite a number of kits to catch up on. And that doesn’t include all other kits they have revealed recently so once more, continue watching this space for more of my thoughts on these announcements.
