Zoids Wild reviews with pics (104 different kits) plus bonus

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This is probably what I meant with it looks like a weird rabbit like thing. Because this just looks really really weird right? Some sort of ill-tempered mutated rabbit thing..

Also because of the white flaps on his head (supposedly manes, but just kind of looks like ears..)

And I also realized what makes the teeth look sort of weird.. The upper teeth are a seperate part and gold colored. The lower jaw including teeth is black. Which makes the upper teeth stand out way too much.

I think if the lower teeth were also gold it would look a lot better (more on that later with some custom pics I found, and it makes a lot of difference) 

And he suffers from what I call the Gordos/Gojulas tail curse. Once upon a time they decided that making a tail with a C shape connection is a good idea.. We all know that a lot of Gordos and Gojulas thus suffer from a broken tail piece (and not only because of the heavy weight that goes into the tail, it's just the connection that wasn't quite made to be clicked on like that.. The Wild Liger has that same connection.. And although I don't know or can't predict what will happen in the long run, I would have hoped that they would have abandoned that kind of connections. It could and would have been better if it was just a round hole where the connecting pieces would have 1 hole on one side and a peg on the other.. Eliminating the chance of it breaking. Mind you mine is not broken but because of what I know of previous such connections.. hmmm, not cool.

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As you can see in the close-up, the blue and white also have the glitter thing going on. It really depends on your lighting and it's not like you can feel the glitter structure. Bit difficult to explain if you don't have it in hand.

Also the eyes again (and in the picture of psycho rabbit)..well that's the reason why I'm not that super stoked about the "pupil eyes"

Still would have preferred clear green eyes. But this is the way this line and the anime are made, to probably give the Zoids a more lifelike feel or something. so what can I do about it (I have seen options though, I will try to remember and come back on that).

To be continued later today...(some more Liger pics, comparison photos and more findings)

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Okay so this is his somewhat less charming side, he's less photogenic from the front than from the side for sure. I could not quite get the gap to close, don't know if that's a fluke thing with mine and haven't yet tried to really close it up, but I did see it before with others.

So, the rubber caps. The other smaller kits had light and darker green caps, but because of the size, marks aren't that visible.

This one has medium sized caps and I found that somehow they all have a little dot (obviously from where they were cut off). but the strange thing is the opposite side has a sort of, for lack of a better word, chafing going on. It's like someone decided to level it out like the other side with the dot, but because of that it looks more matte on that side.

The weird thing is, on all the pre-release pics it looked like the red clear caps were really red and clear. But in hand they are somewhat less bright and clear.

I hope the photos show what I mean. Oh and yes you again do get 2 spare caps. And stickers with the logos and such and Arashis name on it. 

You're waiting on the positive stuff too right? Bear with me.

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So I got Mugen to stand next to him for size comparison (because I really like my Mugen, and even though he was from that "we allready built a lot of stuff, so you only have to add some armor, so it's not that long a build" thing) I thought him to be the ideal candidate to compare with.

Yes Mugen also has blades and well he's white. Well Mugen is more pearl white (and no he has no discolor thing going on) it's just that Wild Liger is really really white, so it looks like Mugen isn't really white.

It was just funny to see because it's been a while since I had a really white Zoid on the table. Liger Zero, Berserk, Mugen etc are all not white white. Wild Liger is "celebrity bleach your teeth white" so it stand out.

Do I like Wild Liger more than I initially thought? Surprisingly, yes. It is indeed better in hand (but also because I know what you could do to improve him; paint him, add weapons, panel line him, that all makes a huge difference.

But do I like him as much as say a Hayate, Mugen, Liger Zero? No not really.

And here's why: 

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(By the way as you can see, he is smaller than a regular Liger, but still not nearly as small as I initially thought (like I said earlier, because of the riders that made it seem that the Zoids were really small, it's just that most people including myself assumed that the riders were as small as regular Zoid pilots and thus would scale down the Zoid a whole lot more.

But even though they are somewhat smaller, they could still kind of fit the 1/72 we all love. IF you remove the rider and pretend there's a pilot in the cockpit instead of on top of the Zoids.

And no, I know that they still won't look sound or feel like the ones we adore so much, it's just hard to think of something new without straying too much from the old line, without making rehashes of the old line. (And yes I would have really liked more of the Zoids I've loved from day one BUT luckily we actually get new Zoids, albeit different...

Still ..new Zoids is better than no Zoids, and yeah I am still a sucker for dinosaur robots / animal robots.

Anyway..

"I find your lack of armor disturbing." Yes I really do, as I have said before. Just a bit of extra armor here and there would have done wonders (case in point Wild Liger stick legs versus way better looking Mugen legs or any other better armored leg from a Zoid.) Because of the lack of armor they just seem.. really thin. They ARE really thin. And I have some pics of customs where painting the pistons and some details do a really great thing in breaking up that bland black leg with no armor on it.

Okay enough "whining" "nitpicking" and or giving Wild Liger a inferiority complex, he's trying so hard to be cool with his green eyes and blast thingy..

So on to the plus side of this rabbity looking cat

 

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One more thing about the Wild Blast gimmick before my final verdict. I still don't really care much for the blades doing what they do. I, personally, think it kind of makes him look cheaper than neccessary. BUT it's not as bad as I thought.

Important note, when building his blades, the manual looks a bit unclear about them, make sure when you fold them back, if there's resistance, you're doing it wrong. There are small plastic things sticking out on the outer blades and it looks like they should go under but they should go over (or the other way around, it's late, you'll see it when you build him..) 

It's just Murasame also had a blade action thing going on, but less silly. Mugen had huge blades too, but man Mugen just looks so cool right? And he has light-up eyes and he roars. Yeah sorry Wild Liger, Mugen kicks your behind without much effort.

But I do like Wild Liger somewhat more than I would have expected. Like I said he does have some hidden potential in color (the custom pics will show you what I mean) and maybe they will someday come up with some CAS or Evolt like upgrade things, who knows, Ligers are always a focus in Zoids and he is again the main character's Zoid, so he'll probably have something going on later on.

Wild Liger is by far not the best out of the bunch from the new line (from all 14 we have seen so far) but he is better than I thought.

This was the first medium sized one I have built from the new line and yes like I said they are slower than you are used to. I will try to do a speed test when  I have time for it (was thinking of measuring the distance he can do in say 15 seconds versus what an average (any which) Liger can do. I will try to get back on that.

BUT the motor is actually really really quiet. At first it might seem different than what you're used to (I like the sort of shrieking of Iron Kong or the kind of loud sound Ultrasaurus produces when you switch them on, because it's a familiar sound.) but because this one is really quiet it sort of fits the way it walks, just should have been a tad faster I guess.

But all moaning aside I was more positively surprised by building this than I would have thought (but yes he still ranks lower than Gannon, Gabri and Gil.

And speaking of which, that will usher in the next review: the turtle with the awkward weapon in his shell; Gannontoise

BUT not before I show some custom pics I found from artists around the web (sadly can't do the whole credit and name thing for all customs, I just found a lot on twitter and didn't save the pics including the customizers, but I do think they deserve the credit, names or not ) because they have shown what you could do with Wild Liger and some really make him look much better.

And you don't neccessarily have to like the color schemes, it's just to show what a color swap could do (in any preferred color scheme of your liking.) But those gold teeth on the 2nd custom really make a big difference.

   

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Thanks for reading so far! Writing this takes up a lot of time (it's 02:12 over here)... so now it's time for me to go build Gannontoise and get back to you later when he's done.

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Review Part 4: Gannontoise

The fourth build in the line and so far my favorite one of those four. This time a lot less text because I have written about a lot of things that these kits could have or don't have in previous posts.

The kit took me an hour to build (like the 3 before him I took my time, it can be done much faster but I just enjoyed the build without rushing). Also adding another 45 minutes extra to secure all sprue marks were fixed as good as possible.

And Gannontoise has enough armor to go around. He walks a bit slower than Wild Liger (or Liger walks a bit faster) but that suits him for he just (happily) lumbers along with a turtle like stride.

One could argue about the choice of color, but again I have found some nice customs to give you an idea what he can look like, and some colors suit him really well.

Like I said earlier, most parts have around 1 sprue mark and most are actually quite okay. But I noticed that with all 4 kits so far, sadly enough the most visible scars are on the parts you see the most.. Liger had 2 pieces in his head that had the worst marks. And this time Gannontoise had 2 on his outer shell. I was able to fix those but... The absolute worst 2 marks are on his eyes..

Of all places to have a sprue attached and removed in an ugly fashion, instead of the top, back or bottom of the eyes, they chose to do it on the front of the eyes.... And you can't repair those marks (metallic blue paint and they have bright marks.) So unless you paint them it will be quite in the line of sight..

You can check the pics to see what I mean.. Found those particularly annoying..

For his Wild Blast/Honnou Kaihou action, what can I say. He has the most awkward one thusfar. I can't say it out loud, but it looks like some adult machine of which I will leave the name in the middle. But it looks quite suggestive to say the least.

And it works but it can be quite iffy to get the gun in the rails sometimes to make it move, not super difficult, but just not completely failproof every time you switch modes.

His armor can appear a bit loose at some times, but that is because he has those moving parts and if they were really stuck you would not be able to do some of the things with his shell, so that's just for mobility.

Photos start with the parts again and bone mode.

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His color might look the same as that of Kabtor, but it is a different one as you can see when they're side by side.

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Here you can see the damaged eyes..

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His buddy HMM Cannon Tortoise came along to do a size comparison (I didn't have a regular Tortoise closeby)

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Some nice customs I found to give you a nice idea of different colors. Again, these suit him quite well.

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Well that's it for today. I enjoyed this build, so far was the best one of the four. Later today it's Gabrigator's turn to crawl out of his box. 

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Review Part 5: Gabrigator

So here's the big blue croc. This time I actually don't have that much to say what I haven't allready said in the previous reviews.
And because I built them in a specific order (from my least favorite to my favorite) this one was what I expected.
I don't know if I like him because he reminds me of my second Zoid ever, Kroc (OER Barigator) or because he just looks badass.

But I really like him! Sure there's still those things I talked about earlier, but look at him, he just looks really awesome (as long as he keeps his mouth shut, more on that later)

First again the parts and such and bone mode

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It was about 30 minutes checking the sprue marks (not too bad actually, besides as expected some parts where you really don't want sprue marks, as I allready said in previous posts, and this time 1 was on his head armor). Again I did my best to remove them and he came out kind of okay.

Building Gabrigator took about 40 minutes (again stretching it a bit, just taking my time). As with the other kits, it could have been finished a lot faster if I would have rushed it, but I like the relaxation of building a Zoid, so why rush?

The caps are not yellow yellow, but more a mustard kind of yellow (actually suits him better than bright yellow). Again there are 2 extra caps like all the other releases. Stickers with the rider's name etc.

About him opening his mouth; as I predicted way before I got them in, I indeed do not like his Wild Blast.. It looks okay(ish), BUT I would really have preferred that his mouth would only open starting at his jaw. His whole body opens up and it just looks weird. Personally I would have wanted him to just open up his mouth, either when walking or as Wild Blast, now it just looks like Granny Gross from Ghostbusters (and although I always liked that action figure, with Gabri I just can't seem to like it. So I think Gabrigator is great, but I will not use his Wild Blast all that often..

 (and also the reason I didn't take any pictures of him doing that)

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