Kit Review

Straight build

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Brave Exkaiser Great Exkizer - Detail shots (1/4)

Brave Exkaiser Great Exkizer - Detail shots (2/4)

Detail shots

Brave Exkaiser Great Exkizer - For weapons, you get the Great Kaiser Sword in 2 different forms, the Kaiser Sword (King Exkize

For weapons, you get the Great Kaiser Sword in 2 different forms, the Kaiser Sword (King Exkizer), and the Kaiser Archery.
There are also replacement parts for the lion mane parts on the chest.

Brave Exkaiser Great Exkizer - The handle-end parts are shared between the two forms of the Great Kaiser Sword. Why make you s

The handle-end parts are shared between the two forms of the Great Kaiser Sword.
Why make you swap them in and out when they could've just included two of them...

There's one leftover part left over — they really should've included this one in red...

A total of 3 hand types are included.

Brave Exkaiser Great Exkizer - The lion mane on the chest can be assembled in either a one-piece or split configuration — if y

The lion mane on the chest can be assembled in either a one-piece or split configuration —
if you go with the split version and only attach the upper portion, you get a bit more room for arm movement, as shown on the right.

The side skirts don't hold on very well and pop off way too easily..

Comparatively excellent limb articulation

The shoulders bend quite a lot both up/down and forward/backward.

The inner shoulder joint opens up one more time, giving the arms an even wider range of motion.

Interestingly, the middle section of the lower legs also moves slightly in all four directions.

The ankle can be extended outward, which gives you an even wider range of ankle motion.

The foot contact with the ground is pretty solid too.

Kaiser Sword (King Exkizer) + Kaiser Archery pose

Brave Exkaiser Great Exkizer - Great Kaiser Sword action pose. It looks best held with both hands, but getting the angle right

Great Kaiser Sword action pose.
It looks best held with both hands, but getting the angle right isn't easy.

Together with Cross Frame Girl GaoGaiGar.

Brave Exkaiser Great Exkizer - A collab shot with Cross Frame Girl - Brave Girl (1/3)

A collab shot with Cross Frame Girl - Brave Girl

Action pose

This kit is the Great Exkizer, released as the first entry in Kotobukiya's Brave Series lineup. It looks like they're planning to keep pumping out Brave Series model kits going forward, and for that first release they went with the super-combination form of Exkizer — the original Brave hero himself.

The concept of the series is to completely ignore the transformation and combination gimmicks that are so characteristic of the Brave Series, and instead focus entirely on proportions and articulation. On top of that, the high level of color separation gives it a really impressive straight build look. The parts breakdown is a step up from before, and the molded colors have come out much closer to Bandai Gunpla than the old Kotobukiya style.

You can really see how much effort went into the articulation joints in particular — just looking at the joints alone, there are a lot of fresh ideas here. For starters, the shoulder range of motion is wider than you'd expect given the design, with flexible joint engineering that moves up/down and forward/backward, plus an inner joint that opens up one more time, which is a huge help for dynamic posing. The lion mane on the chest does get in the way due to the design, but extra parts are included so you can attach only the upper portion of the mane, giving the arms a wider range of motion.

Below the knee, an additional joint has been added in the middle of the shin that moves slightly in all four directions, and there's also a built-in gimmick that lets you extend the ankle outward for more flexible ground contact. The overall joint strength is also on the tighter side, so poses hold up pretty well.

So there are a lot of experimental ideas going on with the articulation, and it does make Brave-worthy poses possible. That said, getting the angles right is oddly tricky despite the flexible joints — the joint strength balance isn't quite there, so posing takes a bit of time. The Great Kaiser Sword in particular really needs to be held with both hands to look right, and getting it into that two-handed grip means a fair bit of struggling before you get a decent pose. At that point, you'll want to glue the fingers down completely so they can actually hold the position.

There are also some parts that don't hold on well and pop off easily — the side skirts in particular feel like they'd fall off in a light breeze. The nose section on the backpack also tends to come loose, and the lion mane on the chest has a habit of falling apart when you handle it, requiring you to reassemble it. The assembly feel is noticeably smoother compared to the old tight-fitting Kotobukiya kits, but it seems like that's come at the cost of more parts with iffy retention.

As a bonus, you can do collabs with girlplas — if you use the supplementary parts included with the Brave Girl from the Cross Frame Girl series, you can combine the shoulders, limbs, and chest armor with the Brave Girl's body. Of course, with those supplementary parts, Frame Arms Girl compatibility is possible too, and Megami Device should work as well.

To sum it up, this is a genuinely fun kit in a lot of ways — the satisfying assembly experience, the incredible color separation, and the variety of joint gimmicks you don't often see even from Bandai all make it worthwhile. Posing is trickier than you'd expect, but the pose retention is solid. The ¥7,800 price tag is a hurdle, as you'd expect from a Kotobukiya kit, but for anyone with strong nostalgia for the Brave Series, this should be a pretty satisfying build. :-)

Brave Exkaiser Great Exkizer | 2020.3 | ¥7,800

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.