"Mechanical but cute"! The "Technopolis 21C" Scunny (made by Aoshima) made my heart flutter! 80's B-Grade Anime Plastic Model Natural History Vol.1

With the 40th anniversary of Gunpla, many people are now looking at nostalgic "old kits" that were very popular back in 1980. However, in the 80's, many robot anime were made into plastic models one after another, and some of the kits were so popular that people were saying, "What the heck is this? and some of them were even released as "what the heck is this?" kits.　Based on this selfish belief, I began collecting plastic models of robot anime that I had seen in stores in the 1980s, but had never bought and assembled. In this series of articles, the author will be assembling these models without coloring them (i.e., assembling them straight out of the box without coloring them, using only glue and following the specifications of the product).
For the first installment, I chose the 1/16 Teknoid Scanny made by Aoshima Bunka Kyozai-sha (Aoshima) from the unique anime "Technopolis 21C" (1982), of which only the pilot film was shown in theaters. Priced at 300 yen at the time, I think it falls into the same frame as the smaller Gunpla.

The "Tecdog Tom" mascot character is included, perhaps because the main body of the "Scanny" is too thin and lacks volume.

Technopolis 21C" was planned as a series in which a human-sized robot called "Tecloid" would team up with a human detective to solve crimes. However, only one 80-minute middle film was produced.
There are three types of Tekroids: Braider, a versatile male type; Scanny, a female type who is good at analyzing information; and Bigoras, a power-focused, hulking type. The voice actress who played the role of Scanny was Saeko Shimazu, who was very popular for her role as Shinobu Miyake in "Urusei Yatsura" (Urusei Yatsura). Since it is a robot, there are no ups and downs in the way it speaks, which was also fresh and cool.

The assembly instructions for this kit. It is good that the kit's settings are described in detail, but there are a little too many words. As shown in the parts diagram at the lower right, the kit consists of three runners.

Most notably, Kazutaka Miyatake of Studio Nue was in charge of the mechanical design. Speaking of female robots, there have been Afrodie A (Ace) and Dianan A from "Mazinger Z" (1972) in the past, but Scanny's functional details, such as the inorganic face like compound eyes and the long exploration probe extending from the head like three braids, create a feminine silhouette, which is It was groundbreaking. The chest bulge opens from side to side. I am not sure of the function, but it looks like a bra with front hooks.
I had seen such a setting drawing in an anime magazine, so I wondered what it would look like in a plastic model. Many boys must have picked up the kit with a sense of excitement inside, wondering how it would look like in a plastic model. I hope so. I was too embarrassed to buy one myself).
Now, in the year 2020, let's open the Scanny kit that was lined up in model stores all over the country in March 1983.

Anyway, all the parts are molded in pink, making me dizzy just by opening the box. It is like cherry blossoms in full bloom. The adhesive sealed in the vinyl had long since hardened, so I used Tamiya cement to assemble the figure.

The probe extends from the back of the head like pigtails. It can be assembled in a retracted state, but the long pigtails are Scunny's charm point. In the case of Guf, it is an important part like the heat rod.

The wrist can be selected between a clenched fist and a flat hand. In March 1983, when this kit was released, the MSV (Mobile Suit Variations) series had just started in Gunpla, and although the number of robot flat hand parts was on the increase, there were no other wrist parts that were this slender.

The inorganic compound eye-like face is quite well sculpted. And if you look at the body parts, the mechanism seems to be bare ...... There seems to be no chest parts, but what is this?

▲It appears that this is the chest part. Right and left, molded separately. Plastic models are good for molding thin shell-like parts. ...... Hmmm, is this by any chance?

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