It’s been a while since I attended Good Smile Fest, and this year’s event certainly didn’t disappoint.
Set across three floors, the ground floor covered mostly Nendoroids, with the second floor covering a lot of Hatsune Miku-related artwork.
The third was the one I was interested in, though, as it covered all the mecha and had a big surprise in store.
The current mecha workhorse for Good Smile Company is there Moderoid kits. They’ve made huge inroads into the model kit market by covering off very popular anime that competitors like Bandai Spirits and Kotobukiya have overlooked.
This has been a smart move, and that’s been followed up by offering smaller and cheaper model kits of pre-existing and very expensive chogokin-type diecast toy releases from other competitors.
However, the two big mecha toy brands under Good Smile Company are The Gattai and Hagane Works.
The former toys tend to be large but use almost no metal parts, which keeps their cost down. This range has also been aimed squarely at resurrecting designs from the various Brave series, which brings me to Dandivine.
This new mecha anime, which was announced recently, is ostensibly a modern take on the Brave series formula. I think this is a very smart movie, following the success of shows like SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon, which also has had popular The Gattai toy releases.
Seeing the new Dandivine toys does make me think that the merchandising, which is crucial for mecha anime such as this, is very on point. Especially when Takara Tomy is bringing their own smaller Toyrise figures for Dandivine as well.
Then we get to the Hagane Works releases, and while these are fewer in number, they are notable because it shows what Good Smile Company is willing to throw its investment might behind bigger opportunities
This is because chogokin-type diecast toys are expensive to develop and manufacture, due to the materials used.
Making that kind of bet on a big and expensive diecast toy means that it needs to sell, which brings me to Dancouga.
Now that The Gattai Black Wing and The Gattai Dairyuga have been released, you can see the overall impact of this strategy more clearly. At the center of this is the huge and expensive The Gattai Hagane Works Dancouga.
Seeing all of these on show together, apart from being wondrously majestic, you get a sense of something coming down the line to support these toy releases.
That something is Dancouga Liberation, for which a short clip was shown at the event. With Masami Obari attached to direct.
While Dancouga Nova didn’t quite land with fans the way it was meant to, even though it was tied back to the original Dancouga anime, that will not be the case here.
The core of this new anime has the original Dancouga front and center, which is a very sensible move, as it will energize the extremely large Dancouga fanbase in Japan.
This is what the Dairyuga and the modifications to the Black Wing are all about, and the toys have been used to pave the way for this new series.
The other major aspect here is that Dairyuga’s combination with Dancouga to form Ultimate Dancouga was debuted in Super Robot Wars 30, so there’s clearly been a long-term strategy in effect to set up this new Dancouga Liberation anime.
The fact that the Black Wing is part of all this again ties back to decades of mindshare surrounding its combination with Dancouga to form Final Dancouga in Super Robot Wars.
Now, I’ve somewhat known about Dancouga Liberation for a while, but I am extremely happy to see that it is indeed finally happening, and the properly lowkey way of “announcing” it is suitably cocky, which fits Dancouga’s tone and characters very nicely.
While Dancouga may seem like a relatively small anime franchise overseas, it’s worth noting the sheer number of toys and now model kits the original series is now producing across Asia.
Lots of people are clearly buying these toys and kits, with me included in that, so a new anime series that stays true to the original designs and with Obari onboard as director is definitely going to do extremely well.
In any case, all of this Dancouga-related news aside, it was fun to see how Good Smile Company’s output has grown since the last of these events. Of all the toy and model kit companies in Japan right now, Good Smile Company is taking some of the most interesting risks and it seems those have been paying off.
Here’s hoping they put more behind their Hagane Works releases, as diecast toys are still a massive growth market both in Japan and especially overseas.
Good Smile Fest 2026 will also be in Osaka on August 22 and 23.
Good Smile Fest 2026 Gallery
Location: Belle Salle Akihabara
Date: June 7 and 8
Entry: Free
Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently writing regular columns in Japanese about mecha games and mecha anime for both Game*Spark and Automaton.
