Godmars
Review by JoshB
During the great purge, I lost all of my Godmars toys. I always like the character, but I wasn't particularly sad to see them all go. However, when the opportunity arose to review the new Moderoid kit from Goodsmile, I felt I needed a little Godmars back in my life.
Thanks to HobbyLink Japan for making this happen!
The Moderoid Godmars comes in a box about the same size as your typical gunpla box, but it's flimsy. The cardboard is thin, and it's got a weird book cover flap that tabs in on one side.
Inside are two booklets, and numerous baggies full of parts.
One booklet is the instructions for constructing each robot, the other is for combination into Godmars.
Each baggie contains the parts for each robot, mostly. Each group of sprues has a common letter (for example "X") and then each sprue in that group has another letter. (XA, XB, XC etc...). This way, each robots parts are confined to a specific letter's sprues. It's a nice way to organize what seemed like a daunting amount of parts.
The build was not bad, with the total of it taking about 3 hours. There's a lot of symmetrical building, so if you do one arm robot, the other arm robot is essentially the same, just reversed. Let's get into the individual robots.
Gaia
Gaia is the small robot that is supposed to go into the chest of the combined Godmars. It's nicely articulated and some of the assemblies involve VERY tiny parts. However, Gaia is not actually used in the transformation, it's a separate, stand-alone piece.
Sphinx
Sphinx is the large, bulky robot that makes up the center of the combined robot. It's got almost no useful articulation, which is a common theme amongst the individual robots. The arms move at the shoulders, the legs at the hips and knees, but that's it.
If you remove the front red chest piece, you can see the molded impression of Gaia. This could be improved with paint, but I am not that ambitious.
With each of the rest of the robots, we're going to look at what needs to be modified to prepare for combination in Godmars. Rather than include the transformation inside each robot, Goodsmile has opted for a parts swapping method. It does result in a clean combined robot mode, but there are a LOT of leftover parts.
The head, arms, and lower legs need to be removed.
These are swapped out with a larger head, and shoulder sections.
Uranus
Uranus is one of the two smaller robots that make up the arms of Godmars. Again articulated is simple, with joints in the head, shoulders hips and toes. No knee, waist or elbow joints. No weapons with this or any of the individual robots.
There's not much left of the core robot when you remove the head, arms, and legs, aside from the side panels. The whole center section of the lower arm is replaced.
TItan
Titan is similar in construction to Uranus, but the outer parts are molded differently. The small green part on the waist tends to pop off easily and could use some glue.
Transformation is the same as Uranus as well. No surprises here.
Shin
How have I never realized that Shin transforms into a.. shin? Anyway, Shin makes up one of the legs of Godmars, and I think he's one of the better-looking robots of the bunch. It's got more decals on it (the head decor, and the black stripes on the legs). It still has limited articulation, with moveable arms, legs, and hips.
I don't know why, but I only have this one picture of its transformation. Basically, remove everything, and add a foot part back in.
Ra
Ra is also a very aesthetically pleasing robot, largely due to the separate molded colors. It again has limited articulation and needs to be completely disassembled for transformation.
SIX GOD COMBINATION GODMARS!
The combination is simple, once you've done all the parts swapping. If you can buy into Goodsmile's approach to "transformation", then you will be fine. Once my expectations were adjusted, I came to really like this a lot.
The completed Godmars stands 7.5 inches tall and looks remarkably good in combined mode. The lines are sleek and geometric in all of its 80s glory.
It can do subtle hero poses or more extreme poses that test the limit of the plastic joint work.
the arms have multiple points of movement that allows for a full range of motion at the shoulder, bicep, elbow, and wrist. The elbow joints can extend if you tug them down, but you are just as likely to pop the joint off in the process.
The legs have a great range of motion thanks to the moveable waist skirts, double joints in the knees, and swivel feet.
The only weapon included is a sword. Extra sword-holding hands are included.
Compared to Bandai's Super Mini-pla, The Godmars Moderoid is much more of a model kit, as opposed to the toy-like Golion. The plastic is thinner in most cases, and the design is more concerned about appearance than play value. It's still fun to pose and is very sturdy, but it does not come with as many bells and whistles like the Mini-Pla line does. It's still worth getting, but it's just a different animal.
The Moderoid stuff has a place, and I had a lot of fun building it. I would have rather had a proper "full transformation" but I get what they are going for. It's a fun kit, and easy to do. No paint is required as parts are molded in color, and stickers are included. The instructions do recommend you use glue when assembling the head of Gaia, but otherwise, no glue is needed.