Libird

Review sample provided by HobbyLink Japan. Get your RM Lybird here! 

When I was looking over the various anime titles coming out for this current season, I was really surprised when I saw a new giant robot show that I had never heard of before called Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter. I had actually seen the toys before on various news sites, but did not realize that the toys were for an upcoming anime, and also an arcade game as well.

This series of games and anime is made by Sony in an attempt to steal away children’s money along with the help of Bandai to make several toys. In a lot of ways this line is trying to compete with the currently airing Transformers Prime in Japan, and in a lot of other ways is trying to do its own thing.

Gyrozetter toys come in two scales: the smaller and cheaper Morphing Minicar series, and the larger more expensive Rapid Morphing series. This is the RM-01 of the titular Arcadia Libird (or Raibird) piloted by the main character Todoroki Kakeru: a main character whose voice is a high enough pitch that his female voice actor also plays his mother as well. It’s one of those shows. The Raibird is a fictional car made by the car company/school Arcadia. It is one of the first cars of its kind known as the Gyrozetter; a machine able to transform into a robot and fight against the forces of evil. Your typical giant robot anime plotline.

One of the first notable things about this toy and the show for that matter that a lot of people did not like was that in the show the cars do not actually transform. They fly into these giant CG circles before magically changing into a robot. The toys similarly were very basic and more than half of the actual car simply detached to change into robot mode. Although I initially considered this an inaccuracy, I later learned that this is exactly how the Raibird transforms later on in the show when it is upgrade to the Raibird Hyper Spec. Silly car parts hanging off of it and all.

The Raibird is packaged in a nice resealable card. I love when Japanese toys do this and it’s a shame that it isn’t used as often as I’d like.

Out of the package Raibird is red. Really red. It’s almost monotonous in its color scheme, to the toy’s detriment. Despite that there are some very nice details to the robot. 

The head is a nice blend of various robot aesthetics and it reminds me a lot of the Huckebein from Super Robot Wars.

The plastic is super glossy and although light, it feels pretty good in the hands. Now, some people may think that those giant chunks of the car on the back are unsightly, like I do, and thankfully the toy can take care of that. The back piece is just clipped into the back and can be pulled off with ease. Then you can fold the doors of the car back along the shoulders, or just entirely remove those as well.

My favorite thing about the toy is actually the wheels on the back. They click downwards ever so slightly for robot mode and it makes one of the most satisfyingly soft clicks I have ever heard.

With all of that extra stuff taken off of Raibird, we can take a better look at his articulation, which is… actually a little frustrating.

The arms move very well, with ball jointed shoulders, bicep swivels, double jointed elbows, and a ball jointed wraist. They move just fine. The problem lies in the legs.

The legs only get a restricted 20 degrees or so of movement due to the solid sculpted skirt. Because of this you can’t really get any super dynamic poses out of him. On top of that the knees don’t have the greatest motion. They go outwards more then they do bend properly due to transformation. The ball jointed feet and back heel created by the wheel keep him with a pretty solid stance.

Raibird comes with a sword as his one accessory. It’s made of a slightly softer plastic for safety purposes.

Thanks to that softer plastic, however, it’s pretty easy to make him two-hand the sword just by bending the crap out of it.

Even with the limited legs, it’s still pretty easy to make Raibird pose with the sword and make him look cool.

In addition to the sword, Raibird can use the rest of his car mode as a shield. It’s easy enough to work. Just swivel around the back of the car and peg it right into his hand. Simple as that.

Unfortunately because it is simple as that, it also means that his shield is just a giant chunk of the car. To be fair that is also how it works in the show as well.

Raibird looks a little silly using his shield, and he also is forced to use it as a third leg due to how heavy the shield is.

This is where things get a little interesting. When you have his backpack on, Raibird is too backheavy. When you have him holding his shield, Raibird is front heavy. When they are both on him at the same time and you make him look ridiculous? His balance is near perfect.

Oddly enough some of Raibird’s best posing came from when he was fully armed and silly. I’m not going to lie, the overly cluttered look of Raibird does have a bit of charm to it.

Here’s a quick size comparison to the similarly priced First Edition Optimus Prime. In comparison, Raibird is a much simpler toy, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Getting Raibird into car mode is quite easy, as it is just a matter of getting him into a fetal position and hiding away his face using the rest of the car.

If you want to transform the Raibird back to robot mode, here’s a quick look at how to do so:

The Raibird is a pretty nice looking fake car. As someone who knows nothing about cars, it does have some nice wheels and wing bits and spoiler-thingies.

The sword does not have anywhere to go in this mode, though. Although, since it is softer, it’s pretty easy to just jam it into the leg cavity underneath the car.

I also found it really amusing that you can make about 75% of the car mode without even using the base robot. It reminds me of some of the shells that a lot of Beast Wars Neo toys had.

A lot of people came down on the Gyrozetter line due to their simplicity and slightly cheating transformation. I think people are looking at it a bit harder than they should though. These are toys clearly aimed at kids, not collectors. The limited legs on this particular toy are a bit of a bummer, but then I began to think about the toys I had as a kid, specifically the giant robot ones like the Brave toys I had. Those couldn’t move their legs either, and I could have cared less because they were cool robots. That’s what these are at the end of the day. Nothing super fancy, high end or complicated. Just a cool robot toy that kids will like.  

[G2:675905]

Review sample provided by HobbyLink Japan. Get your RM Lybird here!