The big event sign outside in front of Tokyo Big Sight.

First I will show you this cool tank kit at Hobby Japan's booth. I want to show this first because this is something I am excited about. This is the Stridsvagn 103C tank from Sweden. This is a Cold War-era battle tank, yet it looks so futuristic. Normally I am not interested at all in tank models. I know many people really love building tank models, and that's cool. Typically when I look at tank models though, I usually don't think "This is something I want to build" except for a few occasions, and this is one of them.

I do English translations for Hobby Japan diecast and plastic models from time to time, about a few times per year. I will do the English translation for this model kit's box and instructions and I am looking forward to it. My first impression was, "This looks like one of the tanks from Techno Police 21C

So here we have Hasegawa's Macross display.

Hasegawa already has a kit for the VT-1 Super Ostrich, which Hikaru uses to take Minmay for a joy ride. Unfortunately it does not come with figures of these two, so I actually recently had someone 3D print those figures for me. Now Hasegawa has released the regular Ostrich without the space fastpack parts, for when Hikaru and Misa land on the wasteland of Earth and scout the surface. This Gerwalk kit comes with plastic figures of Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay, so buy this Ostrich kit plus the Super Ostrich kit and you'll have figures for both.

And now a TV version of Millia's Q-Rau. This comes with the different head piece as well as a TV-version Millia figure.

There was no prototype resin figure of Minmay available at this time.

Here are the figures for Millia and the Ostrich.

And speaking of figures, the upcoming Armored VF-1J by Max Factory will have a swimsuit Minmay figure!

This year I finally finished my Hasegawa Armored Valk. I hope this new Max Factory one will have better joints because mine are a bit floppy.

Max Factory will now join Wave and Bandai in making Votoms kits.

Max Factory will release Spike Spiegel's Swordfish II starfighter from Cowboy Bebop in both 72nd and 48th scales! The 48th scale version was an unpainted prototype.

It's that super-long thing from one of the Evangelion movies.

Left: At Kotobukiya's booth, this life-sized Gourai from Frame Arms Girls was animatronic, complete with facial expressions. Right: Oh heck yeah! Legend of the Galactic Heroes model kits!

Recently, Bellfine released some LOGH kits, but they were pretty small. These new ones by Kotobukiya are a larger scale!

I've never played Armored Core, but my friend (who is also named Adrian) loves this game series.

Motocompos were compact scooters from the '80s, I believe. Kotobukiya has released a 1:12 scale Motocomo for your figures in that scale. Yay.

At Bandai's booth was this big display for the FAZZ Gundam.

The Arizona from the new Yamao 3199 series. (I still haven't watched the 2205 series yet.) I don't know where the "3199" comes from, unless it involves time travel? It's basically the remake of the Be Forever Yamato movie. I saw that movie many years ago and it was a bit difficult to understand without English subtitles. I don't remember much about it. All I remember is that Starsha's daughter Sasha is so cool and what happens to her is just... ah. I'll shut up now. Plastic models are cool though. And since I'm a native Arizonan, I think it's cool that the Arizona is now a part of the Yamato reboot universe.

A Hatsune Miku/Gundam collaboration kit! Neat.

Seeing Wolf Fang models at Plum's booth was a pleasant surprise! I have this game on the Sega Saturn, but I am not good at it. It's a horizontal run&gun mecha shooter in which you can customize your mecha.

This was cute. They had several of the Wolf Fang robots around a Taito Egret Mini arcade cab.

Going back to the Max Factory booth, there were Mospeada kits on display. Apparently this can transform. I have the old Imai Mospeada kit, the Lancer-type. These Imai kits get re-popped by Aoshima regularly. I haven't built mine, and unfortunately the rider doesn't really sit well on the motorcycle because his legs cannot bend properly. I wonder if this new Max Factory kit can do this? It's hard to tell since the rider is just standing atop the motorcycle, but I would expect a newly-tooled kit to address the glaring defect of the 40+ year old kit by Imai.

This was the big surprise announcement at the show: Tamiya's new 72nd scale Tomcat. It's hard to believe that the 1:48 scale Tomcat kit by Tamiya is 9 years old already. What they have done is taken all the details from this excellent kit and scaled it down to 1:72 scale. In 72nd scale, the Fine Molds Tomcat kit was the best in terms of details, but now this new Tamiya one will directly compete with it.

This kit will have a mechanism for opening and closing the wing positions. Neat.

Lastly, here is X-Plus's upcoming Rei Ayanami figure kit. She looks great. I imagine it will come with eye decals.

Lastly, Adrian, Egan and I went to the nearby Diver City shopping mall for Mexican food. My original plan was to go up to Ikebukuro and eat at El Torito, but we went to this other place instead. I had a fish taco and a burrito. I didn't really care for it, to be honest. The tortillas were cold and seemed like they were made by a school's home-ec class, so they fell apart easily. The contents were alright, but the tortillas really ruined the experience for me. Oh well. We talked for quite a long time there, however, and they had mega highballs which were great. I didn't get back to my town until midnight, and by then it had been several hours so I could drive home alright.