Takara Tomy's AMZ Berserk Führer has been getting a lot of coverage over these past couple of months, including being displayed at Yodobashi in Japan. The official product page collects tons of images showing off each form and its poseability, and it seems they've taken some extra steps towards quality of life additions, such as a hangar frame that, similar to Chogokin, allows you to display the unused armor separately. The standard AMZs were shown off at the Tokyo Toy Show. Here are some details from the recent updates.

• It's scheduled to be released in March 2025 for 44,000 yen (roughly $300 USD)
• It measures about 350 mm from nose to tail tip
• It includes a Zoid Core
• Includes a gold pilot figure
• Includes a Hangar Frame (display stand) as well as additional armor frame.
• This is a painted figure / kit
• Die-cast parts are mostly included in the legs to help keep the Zoid balanced
• LEDs are included for the eyes and Charged Particle Cannon

Hobby Watch Interview

 An interview with Nakase, the man in charge of this product was held by Hobby Watch. As always, they never fail to deliver some interesting tidbits about the development process and what went on behind the scenes. Below I'll list some of the details, but I highly recommend checking out the article itself.

• Takara Tomy was planning to start an alloy line around the same time that the Chogokin collab was in talks.
  
  
• The first Zoid in the AMZ series was originally going to be Murasame Liger, but because of the ongoing AZ series, the idea was shelved. Afterwards, it came down to the Berserk Führer or Geno Saurer, but again, with Geno Saurer being involved in another upcoming line (RMZ), Führer became the new flagship Zoid.
  
  
• The Wild Form's eyes are a larger clear red piece that also forms a 'brain' inside the head. Wild Zoids traditionally have their brains inside the Zoid Core, making this purely for aesthetics. However, the team wanted owner's of the AMZ to feel the lore behind wild Zoids, as if they were building them up from their wild forms to their weaponized forms.
  
  
• AMZ is intended to continue as a line even after the second figure, the AMZ-02 Blade Liger. They'd like to explore additions such as CAS units and other Zoids. Which brings us to our next news post...

- Review Video

- Preview Video

 We've now got box art for the RMZ-001 Blade Liger and the RMZ-002 Geno Saurer! This is actually the first RMZ box art we're getting to see, and it sets the standard for what we can expect going forward. A gritty, semi-realism style in the same tone as the recent Monster Hunter collabs. We also got to see a post from the store account of Vivion Blue, showing off a size comparison between the RMZ Geno Saurer and its HMM counterpart.

 An interview with Katayama, one of the lead developers in the Zoids franchise discussed the new RMZ kits. Some key points of the interview include:

• The RMZ line was designed with the idea of being easy-to-collect and assemble kits with a high degree of articulation. They were also conscious of time economy, a common issue for model kit collectors, and wanted to design products that you'd get more mileage out of in that regard.
  
  
• Katayama expressed how he'd like to someday, if possible, be able to release larger figures to anime scale. It's a fun idea.
  
  
• He teased that they're working on something else that'll surprise people, though I'm not sure if that something was any of the stuff thats been revealed since July.
  
  
• He reiterated their desire to eventually be able to line up different scale Zoids in the RMZ series, such as the 1/35 Zoids Wild Series and 1/24 Zoids. These would all be introduced in 1/100 scale, allowing you to see the real size difference between them.

- Interview Video

 Hobby Search has posted a new product interview with Katayama, a major player in the Zoids franchise, and Naito, who's in charge of marketing! They brought up a lot of interesting details about the development of the Realize Model line, and some insights about their choices on it. I highly recommend giving it a read. Here are some of the key talking points.

• Planning for RMZ began around winter 2021. They surveyed fans from all eras, finding an even split of older fans who wanted motorized kits and younger (anime) fans who wanted poseable kits. Though they tried to combine motorized actions into a movable kit they found that trying to do both eliminated the best aspects of both.
  
  
• Geno Saurer and Blade Liger were chosen as the first kits to honor the 40th Anniversary's focus on fans who entered during the anime phase.
  
  
• Realize Models focus on making the kits simple, requiring only the number of parts needed for all of the articulation points. The RMZ Blade Liger has around 200 parts.
  
  
• The series is named "Realize Models" with the hope of bringing fan's dreams for their kits to reality. They want the model kits to closely resemble the anime they remember, expressing all of the gimmicks from the series, while even including effect parts that compliment what people imagine when they think of these Zoids, such as the Blade Liger's blade effects.
  
  
• 1/100 scale was chosen to better suit Japanese residential environment, making these kits small and easy to collect without having to worry as much about space. Compared to 1/72 kits, Realize Models aim to fit several kits in the same amount of space while being able to assemble and even detail them in the same amount of time. Their goal is for RMZ to be assembled in less than an hour.
  
  
• Because they want to keep these kits as affordable as possible, they've currently opted not to include display stands, but they're hoping to release them at a later time.
  
  
• Gimmicks have a focus on being functional even at this small scale, without the need of replacement parts. (The obvious exception being option parts like Geno Saurer's nose guns, of course)
  
  
• They've already planned this line out fairly far into the future, mentioning that they do indeed plan to release kits of the silhouettes displayed in teasers before now. They also hope to release more kits that never got to be made into poseable models.
  
  
• They hope to be able to release something almost every month.
  
  
• Though the series starts off with anime-specific kits, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Zoids, they're also looking to include products for people who got into the franchise through the Battle Story, Games, and Zoids Wild.
  
  
• They've contemplated releasing Customize Parts such as Iron Kong SS's gatling gun, but haven't yet decided if this'll be doable. It would, however, allow them to bridge the gap for anime-specific variants that may not be worth releasing a whole new kit for, but could be sold as option parts. One example given is the Command Wolf Urban Warfare Spec.
  
  
• They mused at someday even dreaming of releasing anime scale Zoids such as Ultra Saurus and Death Saurer, sold as separate parts such as the head or torso. This is not confirmed for the series.
  
  
• Other Zoids that they'd like to eventually release include different scale kits that could be displayed (in scale) alongside the original Zoids, such as Zoids Wild or 1/24. A couple names dropped were Wild Liger and power up forms such as Murasame Liger's evolts.

 A couple days ago Hobby Watch posted an interview with Takashi Nakase of Takara Tomy, a key figure of their Zoids projects. This interview also included our first look at the AZ Death Saurer kit in motion, with a video of its motorized walking features. The interview is full of interesting details, a few of the talking points being:

• When they first started talking about the next kit to commercialize, both Gojulas and Death Saurer were recommended. Ultimately, Death Saurer was chosen for commercialization.
  
  
• The interview contains numerous pieces of concept art in a nice, clear viewing size as well as a photo of the prototype.
  
  
• Advanced Zi will continue as a model kit series, and they're considering many different options. For example, they're obviously looking at popular antagonist Zoids, but also as kits that didn't get a chance to appear in the animes of the past.
  
  
• They've also expressed interest in tackling some of the wind-up Zoid designs, with the idea that they'd be reimagined and released under Advanced Zi as now-fully-motorized kits instead of relying on main spring power.
  
  
• The closing statement included a vague mention of exploring new categories of products, so we'll see what comes later! This is an interesting note since they have a section for various 'brands' on the new website that currently only holds AZ. (This is purely speculative, but it's fun to think about what might come next!)

 After the interview, they posted a commercial of the kit that recreated the classic advertisement from its original release! Just tonight, a Review Video was also posted featuring Zoiko. This shows us more of the finished product and its motorized features, including the Display Mode, and gives us our second look at a size comparison. This new comparison seems to place it at about the same size as Death Saurer (it appears smaller in the video because it is leaning forward for its firing pose.) One thing I quite liked about the video is the inclusion of the old motorized kit, showing off how various sections have been updated in design. This highlighted lots of details I hadn't noticed before.

- Advanced Zi Commercial

- Original Tomy Commercial

- AZ-07 Review Video

 You can now read Part 4 of the long Interview with Tokuyama! This segment goes into the creation of Zoids Wild, and how certain ideas came to be.

 A while back I'd started a project to translate an earlier CoroCoro web article interview with Tokuyama, who has held a high position in staff throughout Zoids' history. With the anniversary, I thought it'd be a good time to start wrapping up that project. Part 3 is now available, with more in progress.

 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.

 During the tail-end of 2022, Figure King, a magazine in Japan, published an issue discussing the currently-ongoing Zoids 40th Anniversary. This included a look at the franchise's history over the past 40 years, along with product lineups from various series, tons of cool concept art (including some never released before), and an interview with two of the current staff members, Yutaka Tajima and Takashi Nakase. We've added a cleaned up machine translation of this article to our Assorted Magazines article. It's a fun read, for those who enjoy hearing about the development process!

 With the prototype reveal for the HMM König Wolf and Redler, there's a lot of hype going around! To celebrate, a page has been created over in Books for the Art of HMM. At this time, it doesn't include the bulk of the book. It does, however, contain a cleaned up machine translation for the interview featured at the back of the book! This roundtable discussion goes over the history of the HMM series, how it began, how each of the major team members got involved, and what to expect in the future. It also discusses the highest-ranking fan requests from recent years, including the Ultra Saurus and Death Saurer!