Last night Kotobukiya hosted a live stream where they built an HMM König Wolf. A straight build, with no trimming of parts, was accomplished in just two and a half hours! We're seeing a big simplification of parts in newer Kotobukiya designs. Different people have different views on this, but personally, I love this. I haven't had the time to build HMMs in a long, long while. The idea of being able to build the HMM Wuf in a day, without having to spend literally all day doing it, is so exciting. This will also be a blessing for customs.

- Build Stream

 Kotobukiya posted a new LABO article that finally introduces the unpainted samples for the Redler Guylos Ver. This includes box art, waterslide images and applied examples, box art concept sketch, and more. In this blog we also got to see a beautiful clear view of the upcoming Redler BC. Many people wondered why the Redler didn't already come with clear colorless parts, and Koto has answered this question: Prices have been on the rise due to manufacturing demands and limitations, and including these parts would've made the Redler even more expensive. The upcoming Redler BC, which'll be a Koto Direct exclusive, will contain these clear colorless parts, as well as be packaged with the Booster Cannon set. The decals will be the same as the Redler Guylos Ver. + Booster Cannon CP.

 The blog also introduces the first online (official) look at the HMM König Wolf box art. We saw pictures of this on Twitter when it was shown at the physical Stand River venue, but this is our clearest look thus far! Wolf is right around the corner, releasing around July 29th.

 During the stream, Kotobukiya announced the upcoming Red Horn Marking Plus! This was an interesting choice, because Red Horn was released as recently as 2020 with a box art and design that have both stood well against the test of time. It seems that the Marking Plus will also be including a brand new sprue, which'll contain the Search Light parts for the head seen in Dark Horn variants. Normally these are part of a much larger sprue, but Koto decided to make a tiny 4-part sprue just for these to better match Katahira's gorgeous concept art (seen in the banner above.) This is a lovely shout out to one of their contributing artists.

 There's a number of other kit rereleases that've been announced through various sources over the past while. Here's what we've got coming up!

 October: HMM Sturm Tyrann (13,500 yen)
 November: HMM Buster Tortoise (4,800 yen)
 December: HMM Saber Tiger Marking Plus Ver. (7,200 yen)
 Firm Release Not Decided: HMM Gojulas Marking Plus Ver.

 We have another wave of Zoids Episodes! In Genesis, this is the episode where we meet Kotona and her Zoid, the Rainbow Jerk. Matu over on Twitter, apparently part of the animation team in the earlier and later episodes of Genesis, gave their perspective of this episode.

- Zoids Chaotic Century Episode 10

- Zoids New Century /ZERO Episode 4

- Zoids Fuzors Episode 4

- Zoids Genesis Episode 4

 A dedicated page has been added to cover the 40th anniversary Traveling Exhibit. This was made primarily to list the goods and keep track of what ones appeared at what intervals, as well as provide names so that western fans can see what the products actually are. It currently has not been updated to include the Fukuoka Venue, but that'll be added soon. It also includes links to the direct site and twitter account, which you can follow for more up-to-date information.

 The Fukuoka Venue has launched as part of the Zoids 40th Anniversary Traveling Exhibit! This venue contains many of the same eye catch pieces, including the elaborate dioramas, character cutouts, and early concept art. The tweet covering this venue (linked at the start) also shows a clearer look at some of the concept pieces. In addition, the Fukuoka Exhibit launched with a wave of new Zoids products (see page 7 ~ 9). This includes Ritz Runstedt from Official Fan Book 2, which is a nice match up for the Arthur standee, and also includes Emperor Rudolph, the Irvine suit from the Zoids Hunter episodes, and so on.

 A video was posted by TakaraTomy for the AZ-03 Murasame Liger. This shows off the gorgeous colors of this kit. The video uses a finished example (custom detailed) but the color shift as the product turns is incredible. If this is in the physical kit, it will be the first Murasame Liger to actually attempt to come close to the anime colors, with former products being straight blue or seafoam. The video also gives us a good look at the chrome plated Murasame Blade.

- Video

 Hobby Japan has announced that it'll be covering the Chogokin Liger Zero CAS units in the August 2023 issue! If you're interested in picking it up, the issue is still available to order on Amazon JP.

 The next wave of Zoids Episodes are up! Since these expire week to week I'm going to limit the number of news posts displayed on the front page to only be what's still relevant, so that the front page isn't flooded with 'video no longer available.' Please also note that I'm posting these once every series has updated, so by the time you see this news post, there's only a few days left to watch some of them!

- Zoids Chaotic Century Episode 9

- Zoids New Century /ZERO Episode 3

- Zoids Fuzors Episode 3

- Zoids Genesis Episode 3

 As we near the end of the story segment, Chapter 6 of Official Fan Book 4 has been added! The Dark Continent War is ending, but as Hermann stands on the battlefield, he has a startling realization of what this vicious fight was for. We have 3 more chapters of this book!

 The Zoids Anime section has received a revamp. This may be a big change at first, but one of my goals was to reduce the amount of unnecessary scrolling required to get to relevant info. The quick links to different sections have stayed, but the DVD info has been moved to dedicated pages for each series. These pages will be further expanded over time to include things like random facts about the series, notes from staff members, opening/ending screenshots, and more.

 The various Kotobukiya twitters have been posting this set of photos showing off what the HMM König Wolf is going to look like out of the box! With white-armor Zoids you're always battling a negation of details as armor lines disappear against the stark white armor, but the extra darker divits in the wolf armor goes a long way to break it up compared to its Tomy brethren.

 The next wave of Zoids Episodes have hit Youtube, but I'd really like to talk about Fuzors! Fans who saw the earlier western release of this series may remember the underwhelming feeling. Fuzors isn't to a lot of people's taste. However, when the series aired in Japan, it had tons of differences, from changes in lighting effects to a copious amount of redrawn frames. Surprisingly, the entirety of Episode 2 was remade to be much darker in aesthetics and theme, really upping the visual impact of this battle. I highly recommend watching at least this one, to see the one episode you might've missed when watching the Western Release!

- Zoids Chaotic Century Episode 8

- Zoids New Century /ZERO Episode 2

- Zoids Fuzors Episode 2

- Zoids Genesis Episode 2

 Zoids Official Fan Book Volume 4 Chapter 5 is now available! In this chapter, Death Saurer watches TV two emperors confront one another as the darker context of Prozen's ambitions come to light. What does this mean for the rise of the Neo Zenebas Empire?

 One chapter may seem like a short update, but don't worry, the next should be up within a week or so. I just wanted to push this one alongside these updates because it was already done.

 With the upcoming AZ kits, an article has been added that provides machine translations of Hobby Watch's interview with Takashi Nakase, one of the leading developers of the Zoids franchise. This interview goes into detail about the choices made while creating the AZ-01 Blade Liger, challenges and goals from a toy manufacturing perspective, and discusses upcoming products! I've also went through and added direct links for some of the interviews buried in magazines and such, so you can now find them directly from the Articles page.

 Zoids Genesis Episode 1 is now available on Youtube! Aside from that, GowTohgetsu over on Twitter posted a nice high-quality image of Ruuji's Village, which has appeared throughout various articles and media relating to Zoids Genesis. In the Twitter thread they also discuss a staff member's perspective of the series and the decisions made for its world setting.

- Watch Zoids Genesis

 Throughout the NJR era, artist Tanimeso was in charge of a wide variety of Zoids art visuals. With the announcement of the Chogokin CAS they posted a Twitter thread showing off some of their art in beautiful digital quality, including the Liger Zero CAS girls, box art, character art, and game art for the old Zoids Dash game (cute and obnoxious platformer fun, highly recommend if you're into platformers), sketches, and more.

 Mercy Rabbit, the key artist for the HMM kits as well as many old Zoids artworks has also started a thread where they share many of their Zoids Generations artworks. Here, Mercy talks about the specifications that went into Midori's design and the history of the Zoid characters and products. Mercy also posted about the old (out of print) Murasame Liger T-shirt, which was a blast from the past! I remember wanting this so bad back when Genesis was airing~

 Customizer SigemkikanZ has been posting more images of high-detailed Zoid customs, including the Murasame Liger seen in the 40th Anniversary Key Visual, the Death Rex that was used in some of the Zoids Wild promotional material, and a shot of Wild Liger and the Death Rex.

 Hey guys! I've been gearing up for a cross-country move happening in the middle of the year, so updates have been quite slow. I've still got some updates being worked on, but they're not ready to push yet, and meanwhile official news is heaping up! So, today we're going to do an infodump on what's been going on these last few months, just to get it all organized into one spot. There's a lot to look forward to!

 Perhaps the most exciting thing to note is the announcement of the Large Zoids Expo 2023!! For those who aren't aware, the Large Zoids Expo was possibly the largest event ever held for the Zoids franchise, and it's now being revived in 2023 for the Zoids 40th Anniversary, boasting to be the largest Zoids event ever yet again. I talked about the former event over on facebook when the traveling exhibit was announced, but to simplify, the event featured tons of products, announcements, prototypes and early concept sketches, Zoids statues, a life-size silhouette cutout of the Seismosaurus, exclusive merchandise, and more. The event doesn't have much information yet, but updates will continue to be posted on the Expo Twitter Account, which has so far been covering the traveling exhibit.

 An announcement video was posted for the event, but not much information is given. However, we do get to see Perfect Human Katayama introducing a full scale CG Murasame Liger as he talks about the features of the upcoming Anniversary kit!

- Announcement Video