RIOBOT Mospeada Intruder Gate VRS-077F

Mospeada is probably most widely known as the third part of Harmony Gold's Robotech project. In its own right, Mospeada is a 26 episode anime series that shows the plight of humanity as they seek to retake Earth from the invading Inbit creatures that decimated most of the world population.

The Genesis Breaker story, from which this character and her suit is taken, was a spin off novel that takes place at the same time as the main series. Gate is an elite soldier who has been sent to Earth with an undercover unit and begins working with a small village to repel an invasion.

So, Mospeada is famous for its mecha, meticulously designed by anime legend Shinji Aramaki. Apparently this figure had his full oversight, so can be considered as legitimate a design as anything in the main show. It fits in well too, convincingly looking like a special forces unit with sharper lines and a more aggressive overall look. The sergeant stripes on the arm covers are a lovely touch too. While the teal and gunmetal details are sharply painted, the reds are quite flat - I don't mind the matt look, but it's hard to tell if it's painted. Thankfully it doesn't look cheap, but a bit of gloss might have jazzed up the look, as it did for the limited metallic finish Priss and her Motoroid from Yamato.

Being a relatively recent update to the series, the Ride Armour has a slightly more modern feel to its main-series counterparts. There are certainly some lovely details on this one - the 45mm rapid fire cannons that adorn the front wheel fork/arms are a very pleasing touch, as is the flawless gunmetal and teal paintwork. In a further upgrade, Gate comes equipped with a recon drone that sits atop the rear lights and can attach to a really rather classy stand that has some grey tiling and clear plastic covering. It's a shame the arm isn't clear, but it's a small nitpick. 

Talk to me Goose...

In terms of construction, the figure is mostly plastic, though some die-cast in the bike and Gate's boots help to give the figure some stability in the combined mode, which becomes very important when it comes to stability. But we'll get to that later.

With the armour sensibly packaged in bike mode, the main figure sits above along with 6 alternative hands, it's nice and easy to unpack. All the component parts feel good in hand, the heft being about right for a mix of plastic and die-cast. When you're spending this kind of money, quality hand-feel is a reassuring aspect of the toy that makes it feel worthwhile.

The bike itself is lovely, very aggressive with both cannons facing forward, a gunmetal skeleton, pistons and a pleasing mix of teal, red and gunmetal that's matched by Gate in her armour. She sits atop the bike and is stable thanks to a kickstand, so posing in this mode is a doddle. I'm torn between posing this in bike or armoured mode, but with Bartley on the way (a similar mecha from the series proper), I can have one of each in the mode that makes the most of both of them. 

Now that's a ride...

When you take the bike apart it really does feel like a floppy mess, all thin joints and pistons. But once you start to attach the bike frame to the main figure and begin to understand the myriad of twists and turns required to get everything in position, it all starts to make sense. Many of the key parts are connected via ball joints, which means that anything popping off can be easily reattached, which is preferable to breakage. 

Once the last peg is placed, the figure is rock solid. The weight of the boots becomes really important at this point as the combined figure is very back heavy. There's a need to put a slight forward lean on her if standing freely, but once you get her up, she'll stay there so long as she doesn't get knocked.

A better idea for display is to use the included stand, which is quite pretty as mentioned before, allowing for more dynamic posing, assuming you can get all the attached parts to play ball, which can be tricky.

In all then, this is a great figure for fans of Mospeada or the mecha designs of Shinji Aramaki, a testament to his imagination and meticulous attention to detail. I've never seen Robotech, nor Mospeada until recently (via Crunchyroll) but I do love a well designed bit of mecha. It's wonderfully Japanese in terms of design sensibilities and whether you're a fan of the classics, transforming mecha or just cool toys, I can say this is a good fit for your collection. It certainly is for mine!

I picked up my copy of the figure from Kapow Toys in the UK.