Kit Review

Straight build

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Exkaizer in Car Mode, separated from King Roader.

D Style King Exkaizer - Exkaizer Car Mode. (1/3)

Exkaizer Car Mode.

D Style King Exkaizer - King Roader (1/3)

King Roader

Attaching the connector to the front of King Roader..

D Style King Exkaizer - Car Mode and King Roader combined — looks just like a car hauling a container trailer. (1/3)

Car Mode and King Roader combined.
Looks just like a car hauling a container trailer.

D Style King Exkaizer - To transform Exkaizer Car Mode into robot mode, first remove the headlight section and pull out the m

To transform Exkaizer Car Mode into robot mode,
first remove the headlight section and pull out the middle section to extend it..

D Style King Exkaizer - Extend the legs and rotate the windshield 180 degrees to flip it up, then remove the red parts that f

Extend the legs and rotate the windshield 180 degrees to flip it up,
then remove the red parts that form the doors.

Extend and rotate the shoulders to finish the arms...

Reattach the door parts you removed earlier onto the back of the shoulders.

D Style King Exkaizer - Rotate and extend the toes, then attach the head, chest, and front skirt to complete the transformati

Rotate and extend the toes, then attach the head, chest, and front skirt to complete the transformation.

Exkaizer robot mode

You can swap out the chest parts to recreate the Breast Change.

There aren't many points of articulation, so action poses are pretty limited. ^^;

Now let's disassemble the body to combine into King Exkaizer.

Extend the waist and tuck the forearms inside the shoulders..

Attach the separate chest parts onto the body.

Disassemble King Roader as shown above, then...

Assemble the backpack section as shown above.

Separate the skirt-related parts from the center section of King Roader.

Reassemble the foot parts..

Attach the backpack, skirt, legs, and other parts to the center of the body.

Then extend the arms and attach them to the body.

Place the helmet and mask onto Exkaizer's head.

Attach the head and King Exkaizer is complete!

There are quite a few leftover parts after the transformation.

The lion's mouth on the chest can open and close, letting you recreate the Kaiser Flame firing scene.

A small Kaiser Sword can be stored inside the cover on the side of the leg.

The weapons included are a large and small Kaiser Sword, plus the shuriken-shaped Kaiser Shot.

A total of three hands are included.

Being a transforming kit, articulation is pretty limited...

Aerial action pose

The Kaiser Shot can be plugged onto the end of the forearm.

Kaiser Shot action

D Style King Exkaizer - Kaiser Sword action (1/3)

Kaiser Sword action

Kaiser Sword action 2

Together with the D-Style King J-Der.

The 40th D-Style kit is King Exkaizer from the anime "Brave Exkaizer." It's from 1990, making it the ancestor — or originator — of the Brave series, now already 25 years old. Since it was never dubbed and aired domestically, it's a mech that not many people here are familiar with.

The basic setup is a mech called Exkaizer that can transform between Car Mode and robot mode. Then a support mech called King Roader shows up, which can either be used as a trailer for Car Mode, or disassembled and combined to form King Exkaizer. The transformation process is a bit involved as you can see from the photos above — once you finish combining into King Exkaizer, you're left with around a dozen leftover parts. That said, it feels pretty faithful to recreating the transformation gimmick, and the look and proportions both before and after transformation turn out better than expected.

Overall the snap-fit design is solid, so assembly was possible without any glue at all, and the fit of the transformation parts is decent given how complex the gimmick is. Since this kit is really about faithfully recreating the transformation gimmick rather than articulation, there aren't many impressive action poses you can pull off.

If you have fond memories of Brave Exkaizer this will be a very welcome item, but the catch is that it's sadly almost the only Brave series anime that was never officially dubbed and aired domestically. Even if you've never seen the show, if you're after a Brave-series robot with a well-recreated transformation and combining gimmick, this is a kit worth building at least once — truly worthy of being called the "ancestor" of the Brave series. :-)

D Style King Exkaizer | 2014. 9 | ¥3,800

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.