1/35 scale kit of a high school girl!　Kaiyodo's Shuichi Miyawaki talks about the "ideal plastic model image" behind "35 Gachanen - Hiroshi Yokoyama World - JK Friends! Hobby Industry Inside Vol. 31

Maschinen Krieger," a science fiction work by illustrator Hiroshi Yokoyama, was announced as a Hollywood movie last fall. The original work is neither a manga nor a novel, but a 1/20 scale three-dimensional modeling work originally handmade by Mr. Yokoyama. The work has been developed in the media, mainly in model magazines, and has been made into plastic kits by Nitto Kagaku in the past, and now by Hasegawa and WAVE.
Last year, Kaiyodo entered the plastic kit market with a capsule toy version of "Maschinen Krieger. While it is only natural that the main characters in the series, the powered suits, would be lined up in 1/35 scale, the second in the series includes a figure of a high school girl as "JK Friends". Why high school girls in the world of hardcore military science fiction?　Kaiyodo's representative, Mr. Shuichi Miyawaki, told us the surprising truth.

KAIYODO's ideal is a model with pictorial elements and a model that can bring out the flavor of the prototype.

─ Was the "35 Gachanen" project proposed by the original creator, Hiroshi Yokoyama?

Miyawaki: Every time we met at Onefest, Mr. Yokoyama would say to me, "Executive Director, do the Maschinen Krieger" or "Have Tani (Akira) make the prototype. We had been supporting "Maschinen Krieger" since its predecessor, the serial "S.F.3.D.," and even while Mr. Yokoyama was in court with Hobby Japan, we dared to place a one-page ad in Hobby Japan's ad page saying, "Go for it, Maschinen Krieger. I respected Yokoyama's creativity. So, we are aware of our own position. Of course, Nitto Kagaku, Hasegawa, and WAVE all produce plastic models with beautifully divided parts, but if KAIYODO cannot develop something even better than that, then there is no point in us producing it. Another thing is that I myself am a plastic model enthusiast with a collection of about 40,000 items of all genres, and I am a person who is usually very picky about plastic models. If Kaiyodo was going to go to the trouble of producing a plastic model Maschinen Krieger, I wanted to produce something different. I have been thinking about what "something different" means.
KAIYODO is my dictatorship, a modeling fundamentalist state, and I am like a moderate president. As our catchphrase "ARTPLA" suggests, KAIYODO's ideal is a model with pictorial elements, a model that can express the flavor of the prototype. When plastic models of Tiger tanks and Space Battleship Yamato were released by major manufacturers in the past under the name of "figures," I thought, "That's crazy! I thought, "That's crazy! But the Zero Fighter and King Tiger models sculpted by Akira Tani were arranged regardless of his will. Whenever Leiji Matsumoto draws Zero Fighter or Hayao Miyazaki draws Zero Fighter, the artist's touch always comes out, doesn't it? It is the same thing. In the days of Shokugan, we made figures of Tank IV and Tiger tanks made by Mr. Tani as pre-painted finished products. At that time, they were molded using beryllium alloy and polished with a bamboo skewer, in other words, using the technology of the 1960s and 1970s. We were able to make tanks and airplanes with the flavor of prototype supremacy using local warfare methods, like the Vietcong fighting the U.S. Army with bamboo sticks, so I thought we had an advantage during the Shokugan boom from 2000 to 2010.
However, if we were to develop plastic models, we had various problems, such as whether we could retain the flavor of the prototype in the digital scanning process and whether we could maintain the accuracy as an assembled model. Also, as an individual, I had a strong desire not to be sidetracked and produce a half-baked model. That is why it was difficult for me to respond to Mr. Yokoyama's love call.

──Where did the turning point come?

Miyawaki: I believe that no matter which manufacturer releases a plastic model of the Maschinen Krieger, there are always 3,000 strong fans who buy them. It would be difficult for Tamiya's new products to sell more than 5,000 units, and for our pre-painted figures, if they sell more than 10,000 units, we will be very happy. Under these circumstances, we realized that we could bring plastic models of Maschinen Krieger to a large number of people in the capsule toy market.