One of the most iconic designs in all of mecha anime now has a huge toy to do it justice. In short, the SDF-1 Macross has never looked so good.
To back up a bit, this version of the SDF-1, short for Super Dimensional Fortress One, is of the movie iteration and was designed by none other than Kazutaka Miyatake.
While the Macross movie Do You Remember Love? is known for its gorgeous characters by Haruhiko Mikimoto and amazing mecha designs and direction from Shoji Kawamori, Studio Nue co-founder Kazutaka Miyatake also had a very big part in both the TV version of Macross as well as the movie.
Miyatake also had a history before, as well as after, the original Macross, for designing amazing battleships. When I interviewed him, he talked about growing up with large ships near where he lived. These had a big influence on him, and he has subsequently created numerous very famous ships across anime and games in the years since.
The reason why the movie version of the SDF-1 stands out is that it’s far more detailed than its TV series counterpart. Gone are the anachronistic aircraft carriers for the arms, and instead, we have ARMD carriers that are specifically built for space combat.
These ARMD carriers are also seen at the beginning of the TV series, before being promptly blown up by the invading Zentradi forces.
The result is a more believable silhouette that fits the setting more elegantly and also helps to emphasize its scale due to all the additional detail.
Which brings me back to this toy. The SDF-1 in the movie is about 1.2 km long, and this toy is 1/3000 scale. If you work it out, you end up with a very big and chunky transforming battleship that’s about 40 cm tall. That’s big.
Released by those very nice people at Arcadia, who have a long-standing history of making really great Macross toys, the design has been handled by T-REX. The latter is the go-to toy design studio for anything transformable while retaining the original sculpt and detailing from the anime.
As you can imagine, they’ve gone to town here, and while this is technically a re-issue of a toy from 2011, there’s been a lot of extra detail work done throughout. There’s also a decent amount of diecast in the joints to handle the hefty transformation from cruiser mode into fortress mode.
The famous Macross Cannon can also fold down in fortress mode (shown above), and you have additional detailing in the “legs” to show the city within.
Considering that Do You Remember Love? is now available on remastered 4K Blu-ray in Japan with English subtitles, fans can finally watch this classic anime as it was intended. While I was lucky enough to see it in the cinema at the start of this year in Tokyo, it feels only fitting that the iconic and titular ship is now available again as a very sturdy and large transforming toy.
The 4K remastered Blu-ray of Macross: Do You Remember Love? is now available on discount from Amazon Japan for 7,134 yen (or around $45 at the current exchange rate), and this 1/3000 scale toy of the SDF-1 Macross by Arcadia is available from AmiAmi for 42,900 yen (or around $274 at the current exchange rate).
Disclosure: Arcadia sent me a sample of this toy for the purposes of this article.
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