Last modified: Saturday, March 24, 2001 8:40 PM
These are some vinyl model kits made by Max Factory a long time ago. They're
prepaints, so I didn't do much except assemble them and allow them to gather
dust. They've been doing that since I built them (before this website) and prolly
have 5 or 6 years' accumulation on them. I decided to show pics of them because
they're neat looking and people seem to buy the kits and not assemble them--
it's some kind of collector's dementia, I think. I also was desperate to show
something different, since my recent endless pictures of swords and shields
are probably getting on the nerves.
As for "The Guyver"... It's a story about a Japanese schoolboy who becomes
a superhero by merging with "Bio-Booster Armor", and fights baddie monsters
called "Zoanoids". There's a big creation story behind it, proposing that we're
descended from aliens, blah, blah, woof, woof... I first saw it as a subtitled
anime movie, "Guyver: Out of Control" (or something like that) and it was pretty
good. Then I saw the serialized anime versions dubbed in English, which seem
to be an excuse for gratuitous gore and overusing the exclamation "Shit!" Interesting
at first, but then really tedious. I think they ran out of interest before finishing
the series. The subject has also been done as two English-language live action
films, "The Guyver" (slapschtick-ish, starring Mark "Luke" Hamill as the bug
detective) and "Guyver 2: Dark Hero" (not great drama, but I liked it). The
costume and creature designs are the high point of these productions. If you
don't have the perspective of history, they may seem like no big deal... Bizarre
monsters are a dime a dozen nowadays. Bear in mind that these guys came out
before Todd McFarlane flooded the toy aisles with his weird vision. Max Factory
did a great job with these kits (approximately 6.5" tall).
These kits are based on the Guyvers and creatures in the serialized animated
version. I haven't captioned any of the pictures because who cares what their
names are? Zerebubus, Vamore, Enzyme, Gregole, Zektor, Droopy, Sleepy, Rudolph,
Fabio... see what I mean? I prolly can't remember them all, and the English
spelling of their names never matched the way they were pronounced in the videos.
Anyway, if you want to see more of this stuff here, I've done a 12" version
of the "Guyver Zoanoid" plus some small
format articulated figures (4") made from castings of these guys.