WonderCon 2018: Kotobukiya To Release New Anime, Toys, Movies And Comics-Based Statues
by Gary Catig
Kotobukiya is a company known for their plastic model kits and wide variety of detailed resin statues of some of your favorite franchises. Early Saturday afternoon, they held a panel at WonderCon to elaborate on and show off some of their upcoming products and announce some new merchandise from their ARTFX, ARTFX+, Fine Art, Ikemen, and Bishoujo lines.
First off, they recently obtained the license to a Japanese manga series Hakyu Hoshin Engi, that was inspired by the Chinese literary classic, Invesiture of the Gods. They showed off some early designs for the characters Taikobo and Youzen.
From their Bishoujo, or cute girl line, they had previously announced at New York Toy Fair (NYTF) that they would be partnering with Hasbro to release sculptures from My Little Pony (MLP). The first from this collaboration will be of Twilight Sparkle. Now, the second MLP character they will have is Twilight Sparkle. These statutes will come with the character and a base. They also obtained another Hasbro property, GI Joe, and are currently planning a Scarlet and Baroness.
On the Star Wars front, they revealed their take on 4-Lom, one of the bounty hunters from Empire Strikes Back. They have more stuff coming, but people will have to wait for their announcements on the unofficial Star Wars holiday, May 4th.
They also have a lot planned from the world of Marvel. During NYTF they revealed they were working on a Storm Fine Art statue. We finally caught a first glimpse of what she looks like. They have also previously announced an X-Men 92 series and have shown some of the statues. For the first time, they showed Charles Xavier. In the future, they anticipate making the entire squads of both the Blue and Gold team. Another statue they hope to release is a Weapon-X. They teased what he may look like subject to licensor approval.
In addition, they will have more Avengers based products. They had previously worked with artist Adi Granov to do some designs. Now he has helped create a Black Panther, and is making a Scarlet Witch, which is still in development. Also, with Avengers: Infinity War around the corner, they teased a Thanos statue.
Lastly, they covered some of their new DC merchandise. To accompany their Bishoujo line, they made the male equivalent with their Ikemen line. They already have Nightwing and joining him later will be Red Hood, Red Robin, and Damian Robin. The final reveal of the panel was an upcoming Aquaman statue from their ARTFX line. It’s still early in the designing process so they didn’t have a sample of what it would look like.
They have such a variety of products and franchises available, hopefully everyone can find something they like.