Kit Review

Straight build

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Head

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Body detail shot (1/5)

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Body detail shot (2/5)

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Body detail shot (3/5)

Body detail shot

Front legs.
The springs are just for looks — they don't actually move.

Rear legs

Minimum/maximum spread angle of the legs

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - The leg joints can rotate slightly on the horizontal axis as well, so you can bring the legs inward o

The leg joints can rotate slightly on the horizontal axis as well,
so you can bring the legs inward or spread them apart.

Legs fully extended vs. fully folded

The body has a 3-section linked structure, so each joint moves a little in all directions.

Head rotation up/down and left/right.
Naturally, it moves quite a bit more than the body joints.

Cockpit hatch open

The mouth can open and close.

The ducts on top of all four legs can be opened.

The cover on top of the head and the ducts on both sides can also be opened.

You can open the back cover and insert/remove the beam cannon.

The tail is essentially fixed in place, but...
you can rotate the joint to adjust the angle slightly.

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - When you spread the legs, you can see the gold-plated cylinders underneath the legs sliding in and ou

When you spread the legs, you can see the gold-plated cylinders underneath the legs sliding in and out.

All four toes can be moved individually, just a little bit.

The side panel structures can be spread open.

All hatches, ducts, and covers fully opened.

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Fully opened, it looks pretty awesome. (1/3)

Fully opened, it looks pretty awesome.

Lift the neck and there's something inside...

A Zoid Core is installed inside.

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Action pose 1 (1/4)

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Action pose 1 (2/4)

Action pose 1

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - You can naturally pose the legs using terrain features (a cigarette box). (1/4)

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - You can naturally pose the legs using terrain features (a cigarette box). (2/4)

You can naturally pose the legs using terrain features (a cigarette box).

Rawr~

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Fully crouched pose (1/3)

Fully crouched pose

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Crouched pose before pouncing (1/7)

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Crouched pose before pouncing (2/7)

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Crouched pose before pouncing (3/7)

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Crouched pose before pouncing (4/7)

Zoid HMM Shield Liger - Crouched pose before pouncing (5/7)

Crouched pose before pouncing

Having made their mark in the mecha plastic model market with Super Robot Wars and Armored Core, Kotobukiya launched their Zoids series in 2006 under the ambitious title HMM (Highend Master Model). As the name suggests, it's meant to be a high-end kit for advanced modelers, featuring intricate parts breakdown.

Unlike Takara Tomy's long-running motorized Zoids series, Kotobukiya's Zoids line emphasizes precise mechanical sculpting with no motorized gimmicks. Opening the box for the first time, I was genuinely shocked by the sheer number of parts and runners — in terms of parts count relative to size, this series is in a league of its own. Armored Core kits have a lot of parts too, but compared to Zoids they're nothing... the parts count here is almost on par with a PG. -..-

With so many parts to work with, the feeling of building this kit — starting from the internal mechanical details and working outward piece by piece — is quite different from your typical mecha model. It feels less like "assembly" and more like "construction," if that makes sense. The parts breakdown is so extreme that looking at each tiny individual piece, it's nearly impossible to guess where it even goes, making this a kit you absolutely cannot build without the manual. Honestly, reducing parts count while achieving the same result is technically harder to engineer, so it seems like Kotobukiya went the brute-force route (;;) — prioritizing maximum detail through as many tiny, precise parts as possible rather than efficient parts design.

The problem is the parts breakdown is so excessive that sections which could easily be represented with one or two parts are instead split into several times that many. When you're done building, you're left wondering where on earth all those parts even went. Maybe this raw, painstaking assembly experience is part of the charm of Kotobukiya's Zoids series...;; Also, while it's marketed as a snap-fit kit, there are plenty of joints that don't hold well, meaning parts are likely to pop off here and there even after completion — so like other early Kotobukiya kits, a good amount of gluing is pretty much essential.

Perhaps because of all that parts breakdown, there are joints throughout the head, waist, legs, and various other areas, making this quite an impressive action figure kit with a lot of articulation. The cockpit hatch as well as the various ducts and cover gimmicks are all well-implemented too, and fully opened up it makes for quite a spectacular display. That said, being an early kit, the joint strength design is a bit hit-or-miss — the leg joints are decent enough, but the waist joints feel noticeably weak. It's fine once you set it down on all four legs, but pick it up and the waist wobbles around quite a bit.

As for the molded colors... being one of the early Shield Liger kits in the Zoids series, they're not particularly great. Passable enough for a straight build, I suppose? And with so many parts, painting would be quite a challenge too.

Anyway, this is a kit of real significance as a 100% mecha plastic model — a completely different experience from the Takara Tomy versions, which always had a somewhat toy-like feel. It would've been nicer if the plastic were a bit sharper and the molded colors a bit more refined, but you can't have everything right out of the gate, right? The sheer number of parts means build time is nearly on par with a PG, which will definitely divide opinions... and since the parts are on the small side, your fingers might be in serious pain by the end.

Bottom line — if you're someone who enjoys taking your time with a build and getting your money's worth, this is highly recommended. But for the impatient types, this kit might feel more like a test of patience... It's the kind of kit where the assembly itself feels like a "challenge" — but it's hard not to be impressed that Kotobukiya managed to design something this insanely complex in the first place. :-)

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Zoid HMM Shield Liger | 2006. 11 | ¥4,000

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.