rico soul: Gundamit.....you guys are crazy. This retails for 268RMB. That's ~ $38USD. You can then add maybe $30 on top of this give or take for shipping and call it $70 tops.

Let's put some retail prices into perspective.

- MotorNuclear CaoRen: 199RMB ($28), Gundamit Price: $58.99 (fair)
- TieChuang Star Destroyer: 199RMB ($28), Gundamit Price: $61.99 (fair)
- In ERA+ Ruling: 388RMB ($54), Gundamit Price originally: $89.99 (fair), Current Price: $119.99 (inflated)
- In ERA+ Aurora: 368RMB ($51), Gundamit Price: $99.99 (meh)
- In ERA+ Genesis: 298RMB ($42), Gundamit Price: $65.99 (fair)

- Solomon GP02: 268RMB ($38), Gundamit Price: $104.99 (lmao wtf)

These prices are driving me to competitors instead. I really hope Gundamit wakes up and start having competitive prices again. I have a lot of points here still to use lol.

rico soul: This Einta model kit is really quite something. For people don't know, this is a subdivision of YuJiaoLand, a very well know GK manufacturer. Actually they've made the Trident weapon system previously but the romanization of their name was spelled Ainta instead for that one. So similar to Infinite Dimensions with their Genesis, we can expect fairly high quality molds and details. YJL is kind of notorious for having extremely detailed GKs, even in the world of GKs.

This figure certainly shows A LOT of gundam influence. The overall design is obviously Hi-Nu and Strike Freedom, but side skirts are very Strike gundam, and the front skirt even has a bit of Providence in it. The rear skit is also very Freedom gundam, and the wings gives it a bit of a Hi-Nu Vrabe vibe as well. This should fit well with any collection.

Now personally, I do hope there is a Die-Cast frame version of this kit. This thing obviously will have no chance of standing on it own with those small feet and huge backpack.

Also, expect this to be a more advanced kit for builders. this has 1103 parts total which is double or even triple most Bandai MGs. You are afterall getting resin kit aesthetics in a snap build. I will be very very interested in seeing how this turns out.

rico soul: This should be interesting. It's nice to see Infinite Dimensions collaborate with more brands, and it's nice to see Animester branch out into model kits from figures. Both brands have quite the portfolio of awesome products.

As many people are familiar with now, Infinite Dimensions was originally a well known gundam resin kit company that released the Genesis model kit and then formed In Era along with Supernova. The designs from In Era are still very much Infinite Dimensions, with supernova mostly handling the production and distribution.

So design wise, we can certainly see hints of that here with elements of the In Era Thunderbolt and Ruling model kits.

Animester historically only made figures and they had the previous collab with the gundam astray designer to make the awesome fight wolf mecha figure but it's nice to see them tackle a model kit this time. Looks like they are really dipping their toes into the model kit market this year with the Galahad for mecha girls and now this Sky Blaze for gunpla fans.

Only the initial announcement has come out so there's not much information beyond what gundamit has copied here.
- 1/72 scale model kit
- ABS assembly, Alloy frame
- 32cm total height

For reference, the height of a PG Rx-78-2 is 30cm, height of the Einta Sky Defender is 25.5cm head height without the antenna, and 34cm total height with the massive backpack. So it seems like that despite also being 1/72, we can expect the main body of this Sky Blaze to be truly close to Bandai PG sized.

rico soul: It's very interesting that Infinite Dimesions released this kit under their original Infinite Dimensions branding rather than IN ERA+
This is meant to be a ID 10th anniversary special so that makes sense but it also makes me wonder whether they will continue to release other kits under the ID brand (they already had announced the Sky Blaze collaboration with Animester previously) or what will happen to the IN ERA+ brand.

Anyways, they posted a short recap of major milestones from their 10 year history which I feel is neat to translate and share:

- 2014: Originally founded by three friends as a commissioned customization studio in Shanghai, with the name Infinite Dimensions
- 2015: One of their RX-93 Nu gundam customs was auctioned on Yahoo japan for 504,000 yen, which was a very proud moment when Japanese builders dominated the market.
- 2016: The three founders of ID returned to Chengdu China and quit their day jobs to focus all their efforts on the model kit custom builds business
- 2017: Infinite Dimensions was officially registered as a business, and rented out an office, and increased the total head count from 3 to 6
- 2018: ID entered a design competition for Kidou Sentai Iron Saga and won the grand prize with a custom model of the Susanoo
- 2019: Obtained the C3 one day license, designed and released a AMK-0111G Zaku III resin kit
- 2020: Collaborated with Orange Cat to design a Tekkaman blade kit
- 2022: Officially released their first full plastic model kit, the Genesis
- 2024: 10th anniversary, announcing the Nemesis model kit

Couple neat notes here. I did not know ID was behind the Orange Cat Tekkaman Blade design. Also I believe the Zaku III gk was branded as fortune meow, which makes me wonder what the connection between fortune meow and ID is. YJL also had collaborations with ID in the past as well on kits like the Providence gk. It really makes me wonder if it's all the same people in the background lol. Might explain why there's a striking resemblance in the marketing for this Nemesis to the Einta Sky Defender.

Anyways, here's the promo video for the Nemesis with cg renders of all the features. Essentially a 1/100 kit along the lines of the Sky Defender from the looks of it. Pretty exciting

youtu.be/8JQFPhgFh_o

rico soul: Was busy when this first showed up on Gundamit so I didn't get a chance to comment on this until now.

I'll go ahead and start with a link to a anime promo video and the live product overview that Motor Nuclear had posted. The video is in Chinese but you can still get a feel for the kit.

anime promo: weibo.com/tv/show/1034:5049964997312557
overview video: weibo.com/tv/show/1034:5050004952252477

Product details:
- 126 runners total
- the entire model kit size is enlarged by roughly 15% compared to previous MNP star general models like the AoBing, as such, the entire metal inner skeleton is fully redesigned as well.
- both horse and zhao yun have a metal inner skeleton as expected. Zhao Yun weighs around 450g and the Horse is around total combined weight >1600g

I think there the new inner frame is probably going to be

Also to address some of the questions I see from people in the comments.

- Price: In China the MSRP is set at 399 RMB, which is essentially double the price of other star general MotorNuclear kits, which are priced at 199RMB. Gundamit's final price will depend on how much they want to markup for additional profit and shipping costs, which will depend on the final box size. As a rough estimate though, I want to say fair pricing shipped should be around $120-150 USD, but with the increased weight and size and Gundamit's general pricing trend recently, I wouldn't be surprised to see this on here for around $160-200.

- Quality: For people unfamiliar with MN, they are considered one of the best third part brands when it comes to quality vs value, and is also the brand known for having very spiky designs. Their prices in China are significantly lower compared to other third party brands like IN Era. However for that price, they include a functional metal inner frame and partially prepainted parts for color separation. Plastic and build quality are also fairly top notch.

- Premium edition: In the past, every major MNP Star General release has been followed up with a more expensive premium edition that is either fully prepainted or clear colored. Often there are special weapons or effect parts included in the special edition. We can likely expect the same here for Zhao Yun but those are announced closer or after release.

If you are familiar with Dynasty Warriors/Romance of the Three Kingdoms lore, there's also a famous red horse ridden by Guan Yu and Lu Bu. Those are recreated in MotorNuclear's 1/72 Metal Build figure line but I don't believe anything has been announced for the 1/100 Model Kit line yet. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see a special red version of this horse.

They have just announced some interesting new model kits but no update on their WenZhong Kirin rider that was announced together with this Zhao Yun years ago. Since I don't have any new Zhao Yun images that aren't posted here yet, I'll just leave you guys with the new product photos. The first two, Jihu and Phantom Gift are pretty different designs from typical motor nuclear and I find them very interesting. The third one is a classic GanJiang which came out in SD version earlier this year but have not come out in full model kit form yet.

rico soul: This bootleg has been years in the rumor mills so it's interesting to see it finally come out. Obviously the price is high but this really isn't something for everyone. Even in China, there's been some overwhelming feedback that the MSRP is set too high at being more expensive than a Bandai PG Unleashed but the first batch of pre-orders still sold out immediately so Daban hasn't really had any incentive to lower the price.

It's kind of a shame but their metal build bootlegs are similarly expensive for what you are getting so it's not really surprising to see the metal structure bootleg have such a high price tag given the price of the original.

So with that said, for those that are still interested, there are still more details to know for this kit:
- It's over 130 runners total and likely over 2000 parts since it's a recast of the original 2000+ part Bandai Metal Structure
- Everything comes pre-painted but the paint quality isn't perfect. The psycho frame for example can be a bit inconsistent of the color transitions
- Despite being painted, a lot of parts are not undergated. Some nubs will be hidden during assembly, but not all
- All the original metal parts are recast here in ABS plastic, and durability is to be seen
- The molding is slightly above average for Daban but isn't going to be as sharp as Bandai's original
- The waterslide quality is average

In the end, I would consider this likely a very difficult build given the number of parts but not as difficult with fitment as the haters would say. It's recasting the original Bandai parts and Daban has years of experience doing that with metal builds. The size and build experience is likely going to be more like the Rodams or Mechanicore kits.

It is also worth noting the focus of the design behind the Metal Structure Nu is for numerous hatch opening gimmicks and the internal painted details. There's very minimal surface detail apart from the water slide decals, and there is very limited articulation of the limbs. It's intended to be sort of a displayable statue rather than what one might expect from a typical Perfect Grade.

Given the price, I would really only recommend it to people that want the Metal Structure Nu as a display piece and cannot find/afford the original. I would not recommend it to anyone that's just looking for a PG Nu kit as this will not represent the same build experience and enjoyment that you would get from a Perfect Grade. For this much money, just go out and buy any actual Perfect Grade instead.

rico soul: I have to say it's good to see Gundamit put up a reasonable price for this Sky Defender.

$119 for shipping by sea for this massive box is pretty within reasonable ranges for this $55 msrp kit.
I'm glad gundamit isn't trying to take advantage of their international customers with this one and passing the value that Einta offered with the low price on to us rather than artificially gouging the price like on some other popular model kits.

For people that may be curious about how this compared to the Hi-Nu ver ka, we actually have some review images from China that shows just that lol. We can see that despite the claimed 1/72 scale on this, it is actually sort of the same size as the 1/100 scale Hi-Nu ver ka.

The Hi-Nu being a kind of shorter stockier body proportions and the sky defender really stretching the overall height. But the head is the same size and the Hi-Nu head doesn't look out of place at all on the sky defender.

rico soul: Similar to the Eagle Model Impulse and the V-Tiger Hi-Nu, this Barbatos is a metal frame plastic copy of a resin kit design. In this case, the design is based on the LabZero Lupus Rex. I'll put some pictures up for the LabZero resin kit here for reference but this model kit is just announced so there's really not much to go off of other than the CG renders.

All we know so far is:
- 199RMB MSRP
- Metal frame plastic model kit
- Q2 2025 estimated release

rico soul: This may be one of the more exciting Chinese gunpla model kits coming announced for me so far.

For those that are unaware, this is being made under a new brand, which is a collaboration between Infinite Dimensions and Supernova/SNAA. Infinite Dimensions is the GK company that makes some very epic GKs and made the Genesis model kit. That had very complex GK designs and while the posability wasn't spectacular, it definitely brought a GK level aesthetics to a snap fit model form.

Supernova, which later disbanded and reformed as SNAA has been making sort of enhanced unlicensed model kits for a long time. They first rose to prominence for me with their line of 1/100 Wing EW gundam kits that were in part based on Bandai's originaly but had modified numerous things to make them more aesthetically fantastic. They were also being the ZA model Zoid kits where they created the 1/72 Liger Murasame, Hayate, and Masamune, and then later did detailed up versions of the HMM Death Stinger and Berserk Fury.

Of course, SNAA also made the Hunt and Kill model kit earlier last year.

I think combining Infinite Dimension's engineering talents with Supernova's model kit experience will make for a very good, balanced product. This RULING internal frame is very reminiscent of the Zero-G Judge and mentions numerous points of articulation in the promo photos. The concept drawing of the figure itself also looks a lot more toned down and more practical than the more GK like designs of the Einta Sky Defender or ID's own Genesis.

This may be the kit I'm most excited for, even more so than the Sky Defender. The back has a striker pack attachment so I can't wait to see what the design looks like with the backpack on. The grey concept model is apparently already in the works and there's rumors of it being shown of in a month or two.

This is definitely one to keep an eye on.

rico soul: To clarify, this is a FULL MODEL KIT, not just an alloy frame.
The pictures right now are just teasers and only shows the frame and some teaser runners.

From the runners, we can clearly see that this is teasing at being a model kit of the YJL Amazing Exia resin conversion kit. Maybe this is what the Rabbit Model Amazing Exia ended up turning into.

TieChuang is a trusted MG 00 metal frame maker so it's perfect that they are the ones tackling this.
This model kit is also not The Verdict model that TieChuang has announced previously. What TieChuang said is that this is sort of a practice run before tackling an completely original design on The Verdict.

Given it's TieChuang, we know the frame will be excellent. Will just need to wait and see how the plastic runners turn out.

Details released so far:

- Scale: 1/100
- Size: About 23cm head height
- Retail price: 198 yuan (so it would be similar to the MotorNuclear CaoRen and the Hemoxian Thor)
- Targeted release date: August 2023
- Includes LEDs and a full action base

- Alloy frame, with alloy parts in the hands as well. POM plastic for frame connections, ABS plastic for outer armor.
- Fully color separated with parts layering. Will be mostly undergated