Available From HobbyLink Japan
By Cacophanus from Mecha Damashii
One of the most epic super robot anime is arguably King of Braves GaoGaiGar. Over the years we’ve received a variety of great toys of the main mecha, from the impressive Soul of Chogokin effort to the more compact Super Robot Chogokin. It’s the latter that this toy falls into and it’s a rather special release indeed.
The original GaoGaiGar was designed by Kunio Okawara and was quite the chunky masterpiece. When it was upgraded in GaoGaiGar Final, it was instead re-designed by Kazumi Fujita. For the observant of you out there, this had very Gundam related overtones. The original Mobile Suit Gundam had mecha designed by Okawara, but its follow on Zeta Gundam instead had mecha by Fujita. It seems history has a habit of repeating itself.
In any case, the updated version of GaoGaiGar was called Genesic GaoGaiGar and it was, if anything, the true as well as original form of what the mecha was meant to be. The design itself was amazing and not long after the release of the anime, the demand for a new chogokin of this Genesic GaoGaiGar was very high indeed.
There were a few attempts but the closest anyone got was with Max Factory’s Max Gohkin Genesic GaoGaiGar. It was a diecast masterpiece for the time but due to its weight, it often had issues with the hip joints breaking. It also avoided recreating the Final Fusion gattai sequence, something the older standard toys of GaoGaiGar attempted.
Fast forward to today and Bandai has finally released its ultimate version of the original GaoGaiGar, recreating the Final Fusion setup in its Soul of Chogokin release. However, before this, Bandai had released practically every mecha from the anime as part of its Super Robot Chogokin line. While these didn’t tend to transform or perform the gattai sequences, the quality of the figures in question were very high.
With beautiful sculpts and modern articulation, they also had a lot of diecast involved. So it was inevitable that we’d get the Genesic GaoGaiGar at some point.
When the Genesic GaoGaiGar did surface, while slightly smaller than the Max Gohkin version it put all prior releases to shame. The detailing and overall sculpt was and still is fantastic. As you would expect, the Super Robot Chogokin Genesic GaoGaiGar sold out in double quick time on its release in Japan. So it wasn’t overly surprising that Bandai decided to do a Premium Bandai release of the Genesic GaoGaiGar in its Hell and Heaven attack colors.
The Hell and Heaven attack is somewhat of a “final move” undertaken by GaoGaiGar and has been a staple move in games like Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 (shown above).
This is what this figure recreates and it does so very well. Like the prior release, this is a very nice toy but the coloring is definitely something fans of the anime will appreciate.
This is a really great toy, so stick around for the review when that goes up.
