They'll be 16200 yen each. About 230mm and if you buy both you get bonus unpainted heads. One is Tiamat and the other is Keitosu. Rough translation from the interwebz.
Nice! Hoping for some fulfillment on the gogas before these go up. Having a solid G out in unfulfilled Anraku orders would be hard.
I hear ya Joe I already shelled out for first 2 Gogas and all dakos... getting them before I drop more precious monies would feel better Love the Drunkboyish head
The "comment" section indeed says those are the influences. "Ghost Whale Tiamat" is an old design that hadn't yet been turned into a product. It says he went to the planetarium and thought there that he'd like to make the ghost whale. They are two types on his style of taking folktale Youkai influences into his Kaiju series. Tiamat is a seal-type designed based on old astrological diagrams. Keitos is based on a crocodile he thought was cool from the book "Godzilla Sengen"
As much as his previous 2 new releases (Panda & Tanuki) were really too childish to me (and I ended up not ordering them), these two are simply astounding and deserve the so much overused Kaiju term. Those 2 look indeed like monsters of legends. They have an awesome vintage feel and both heads work really well with the body. The paint on the green one (Keitos) is just I hope they will be real big (also to justify the 16,000 yen price tag).
Loving the Tiamat head moreso than the Keitos personally. Definitely would be a challenge figuring out how to fit these guys into a display with those gigantic tails.
Agreed, aside from Anraku's obvious yokai influences, he certainly has a lot of reverence for early Marusan/Bullmark/Nakajima etc. toys. Yet another reason he is my favorite maker. The influence of vintage toys is perhaps most pronounced in the facial expression of his sculpts. One of the hardest things to pull off correctly in these toys we collect, methinks, is that facial expression on a toy that is not just goofy or angry, but more complex and open to interpretation. Other contemporary toy makers such as Buta are very adept at this as well. I look at the head sculpts for these and immediately think of old vintage dinos and/or ultra toys. You have excellent taste as per usual. Giant Mamas are vastly underrated. They have the most incredible texture of any AA toy, or damn near any toy for that matter. I hope Medicom gives them a respectable treatment.
230mm / 9" height. It might be a little longer in the width. Seems about right to me. I like that there are two heads, as he's done for some of his other sculpts, to appeal to different tastes. One thing I'm not clear on- why is he including blank counterparts with each figure? Would make sense if it connected to something greater, kind of like how Marvel Legends does it. Buy all of the Medicom releases (yikes!) and you get an extra blank figure at the end of the run. That would be so, so cool.
The Tiamat is just... stunning. The pearlescent sprays make it look like a celestial being, and if the rough translations are correct, "ghost whale" definitely fits! Really happy to see Anraku getting back to releasing toys on regular basis, they were always an artist/brand I wish I could have seen in their hey-day. (Sucks being "new" to sofubi collecting sometimes!) If Cronic came back too, especially with fight figs, I'd be on cloud nine.
You would most likely not have been able to buy any at the time you know (with the secret lists going on...). So don't have any regrets... now is the best opportunity to get them.
I'll most likely regret this but I just went with the Glutamine and Guerilla Punch this month. I love the Goga but 400 in preorders for one month is just too much to justify for me. Hopefully I'll be able to find one later on down the road. Ghost Whale Tiamat and Keitos are great. Perfect colorways for each. Keitos has a cool mosasaur/sea dino vibe going.
Maybe we'll see the first gen. Gogamezilla soon. Any-hoo...Love both of the new sculpts and I really hope Medicom can keep the quality under control with all the releases.
Exactly what I've been thinking. It's exciting but also a little unsettling how AA toys are suddenly getting so much aggressive production attention. I'm also wondering whether so much of something so good will meet my / our high expectations. Hopefully all concerns will be dashed when we finally see that first round of Medicom Gogas released. Soon?!
This sculpt actually predated the released Goga sculpt Dedo, but never made it to vinyl I believe. It is not my favorite either, but given a nice vinyl color and pleasing paint apps, I could probably learn to love it pretty quickly. It still has some nice things going for it.
I can't judge a proto from such a small photo- as a godzilla-based sculpt, I think it's pretty freakin' cool.