Sentinel have finally revealed their upcoming Riobot Jehuty figure in all its glory. It’s considerably larger and more detailed than the previous Revoltechs, so this obviously comes with a larger price tag (of 13,500 yen) and will be released in September of this year. That said, this figure will come with a good amount of diecast too apparently so that’s good to know at least. You can pre-order yours here.

After Yamato shut its doors, we heard rumours that Arcadia had bought the remnants of the company out. It now seems that those rumours had an element of truth to them, as we’ll be getting a 30th Anniversary 1/60 scale VF-1J toy in August. Whilst it looks pretty hideous and is no more than a re-paint of an already existing toy, this is still good news for Macross fans. Especially as Arcadia are also still planning to release Nekki Basara’s guitar too. In the meantime, if you really want you can pre-order the new VF-1J here

Over at Hideo Kojima’s Twitter feed, he recently posted some photos of Yoji Shinkawa posing with a large prototype of ThreeA’s new Metal Gear RAY toy. This is a follow up to the equally large Metal Gear REX released by ThreeA last year. Whilst we love Shinkawa’s designs, we were pretty disappointed with ThreeA’s REX toy. It lacked any real diecast and subsequently felt very cheap. In addition, the colour scheme was also completely wrong and all the lightning felt out of place too. No word on price or release date for this new RAY toy though but it will probably be similarly priced to the previous REX toy.

This year’s Shizuoka Hobby Show is under way and as always it has a huge amount of new model kits on display. With Hasegawa’s new Myzr Eta kit (shown above) from Virtual On Force being notable. Bar that, there’s obviously a large amount of new Gundam related kits on the way and it seems the HGUC range seems to be getting a lot of interesting new entries. If you’re curious about the show then both CyberGundam (here, here and here) and AmiAmi (here, here and here) have lots of photos. HLJ also has a nice breakdown too.

A YouTube user by the name of wipp er has uploaded an impressive fanmade anime intro for Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam. Written by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino and drawn by Yuichi Hasegawa, the Crossbone Gundam manga series spans several series (Crossbone Gundam, Skull Heart, Steel Seven and Ghost) and is a direct sequel to Gundam F91 and pseudo prequel to Victory Gundam. The series has spawned some very iconic mobile suits, designed by Hajime Katoki, that have graced several video games such as the Super Robot Wars Alpha series on the PS2, Another Century’s Episode R for the PS3, the G Generation series on various consoles and of course Gundam Extreme Versus for the PS3 and its arcade sequel Full Boost.

It has taken the creator of this animation around two years to complete and arguably has done a fantastic job capturing both Hasegawa’s character designs and Hajime Katoki’s mechanical designs in an animated form. If this video doesn’t get your mouth watering for some animated Crossbone Gundam goodness, I don’t know what will.

Whilst this is not the first toy of Sakura Shinguji’s pink custom koubu from the Sakura Taisen series, this new Variable Action toy from Megahouse looks to be one of the best. Released at the end of September for 7,800 yen, it has a nice sculpt and what appears to be decent articulation too. Sadly, it doesn’t look like it comes with a Sakura pilot figure (though this likely helps to keep the price down). If you are one of those that enjoy pink steampunk mecha then make sure to pre-order yours here.

Bandai are deciding to grace us with a new Super Robot Chogokin figure of Shin Getter-1 this August. At 7,140 yen, it’s not exactly cheap but neither is it overly expensive either. Like the other toys in this line, expect a lot of diecast and an overall excellent sculpt and finish. As for the design itself, its gaming heritage is extensive and was originally premiered in Super Robot Wars 4. Admittedly it was work in progress for the manga and then later for an OVA but Shin Getter has been a staple of Super Robot Wars for as long as I can remember. It’s likely we’ll get the other Getter Machines too, with Shin Getter-2 being notable with its influence on the drilltastic Gurren Lagann, with the Getter Rays and subsequent Spiral Energy being also of note too. Whilst this isn’t the first Shin Getter-1 toy, with the Aoshima figures being really quite something, it will be more reasonably priced and slightly less huge.

Following on from our previous post about a forthcoming E-MF-LZ-00X-2 Layzner Mk2 toy, it turns out in fact that we will be likely getting it as a Soul of Chogokin Spec iteration (something we hoped and suspected). On top of that, it seems that demand is high enough for the suitably bling SPT-ZK-53U Zakarl (shown above) to get the same treatment. What’s interesting about this is that fans wanted continuity from the previous, and thoroughly excellent, Soul of Chogokin Spec Layzner. We wholly endorse this request. No word on pricing or release as yet but once we know more we’ll let you know.

The mighty GX-9901-DX Gundam Double X from Gundam X will be getting the Robot Damashii treatment this July. Sold for around 4,800 yen, the toy looks to be pretty beefy and featuring all the necessary gimmicks you’d expect. No word yet on the GS-9900 G-Falcon but it has been previewed already, so it will likely end up as a web shop exclusive. Anyway, considering the original series was cancelled mid-run it’s nice to finally have a decent toy for the Double X on the way.

We now know that the transforming Vic Viper from Anubis will have its Revoltech incarnation released sometime this May. Like the version in the game, the toy also also transforms too. Considering the very meagre price point, this functionality is surprising and wholly welcome. Admittedly Kaiyodo have done wonders with their variable fighter Revoltechs from Macross, which also transform, but it’s nice to see a supporting mecha design from a game get similar treatment.