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: 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

rico soul: Before people get too excited on this, the announcement was only for the Progenitor Effect Overlord manga debut on this Overlord suit. There is still no timeline or schedule for making this into an actual figure yet.

Still, I'm definitely onboard the hype train since this design tics so many boxes for me. I love heavily armored mobile suits with big ballistic weaponry and this design combines elements from two of my favorite wing gundams, the heavyarms custom and the armadillo unit sandrock.

Love the giant shoulder shields, love the almost front missions or armored core style shoulder missile pods, and of course love the dual gatlings. I will be keeping an eye out to see if Moshow has any product updates. For now, we already know the next two Progenitor Effect figures to be the Wei GouGong and the God's Whip. So it may be a while before we see this one get made.

I'll attach some images from the manga for this. I don't know if there's any translation anywhere.

rico soul: Strange Work is the same brand as Nillson, which made a bunch of 1/60 scale Astray gundams. They also made the 1/60 scale Frosty Cat model kit which was essentially a Byakko Ryujinmaru.

This 1/60 scale model kit is called Monument, but obviously it's the Tallgeese from Gundam Wing.

Height: 30cm
Materials: ABS
Includes display base

If you look at the design, it definitely resembles they previous Frosty Cat kit aesthetically. However, the frame is fully redesigned from the ground up, with a focus on joint strength and articulation. They specifically wanted to design the kit for stability and so the backpack and shoulder equipment are redesigned to be better balanced. In other words, they made them slightly smaller so the kit would be less top and back heavy.

Aesthetically, I kind of prefer the original Bandai MG/RG Tallgeese designs with the big mechanical Dober Gun and the giant thrusters, but this still definitely has some of that goose charm, even if it does feel a bit too streamlined.

The physical photos are from an initial test print and are only for reference. The colors are not fully finalized yet. The TV Tallgeese colors looks good to me so far.

Currently, preorder price for this is in China 385 RMB without shipping, 435 RMB shipping included in China.
That should put it around 100 USD here, maybe 120 if the box is large. To give you an idea, it's pretty much the same price as the IN ERA+ Aurora but 1:60 scale with no metal frame.

More official news should come after Chinse new years but currently, people are estimating it to be available around May 2025

rico soul: This is kind of the kit that started it all for the current boom in Chinese metal frame not-gundam model kits. This reprint brings this legendary kit back while increasing value with painted gold runners and an extra metal polearm handle, while keeping the msrp price the same. Actually for us internationally, this price is actually better because it's not as affected by the market craze of the original release.

The one thing to note though is that the action base connector appears to still be the same plastic. So for anyone who buys this kit, realize the action base will likely snap because the built kit is fairly heavy and the action base connection is just too thin and brittle.

There are some loose parts that can be resolved with glue. The painted runners means those parts can be a bit tighter fitting than originally designed. As for being top heavy, that's kind of a given with the massive backpack, but with the weight of the metal frame, it is possible to stand on his own but it takes some balancing.

Other than that, the kit itself is excellent with excellent molding and design.

rico soul: The main topic of discussion since the BaiQi reveal has been a bit of disappointment in how they removed the dragon transformation of the old metal build. I'll attach the photos of the metal build here so you can compare.

With these model kit adaptations, MotorNuclear has been updating but still mostly keeping the key elements from the previous metal build like AoBing with the dragon and CaoRen with the phoenix transformation.

With this BaiQi, they removed the twin swords and the dragon transformation and instead replaced it with the strike freedom style dragoons on the wings. On the one hand, I like the change for making the suit more unique but I think everyone is a bit burned out by dragoons and funnels at this point with almost every third party kit doing them. Also, the lack of the dragon transformation makes the claws on the arms and legs just kind of unnecessary decoration.

There is actually some updates to the inner frame as well for some more connected armor sliding movements