The HMM Z-Knights will no doubt go down in history as one of the weirder byproducts of Zoids.

If you’re not familiar with Z-Knights, they started out as a line of motorized humanoid robots with engineering based on Tomy’s motorized Zoids and came out around the same time in the late 80s. To the best of my knowledge, there were about 20 different designs, and the line also saw a separate European release with different colors.

For some reason, Kotobukiya started adapting these mechs that basically nobody remembered into the HMM line a few years ago. They did the original one called “Z-Knight” as a very weird and spindly redesign that only vaguely resembled its original version, and the Marine Kaizer, looking much more like Tomy’s version. After those two, the line was dead. I kind of suspect they were hoping to compete with Bandai’s Gunpla here and failed, so they gave up.

Anyway, I have both kits, but I only just got around to snapping together the Marine Kaizer. Since there’s little to no information out there about this kit, I thought I’d do a review before it goes on the “paint this someday” shelf.

The box, well, looks like an HMM box. It’s also absolutely massive and half empty. The Z-Knight kit comes in a much smaller box, and I really have no idea why they decided to package this one in a box that’s the same size as the Death Stinger’s. I guess the art’s nice, so it’s okay that it’s big.

Here’s what’s in there. I snapped his picture in my lightbox for reasons I won’t bore you with.

By my count, it’s about 220 parts not including polycaps, and the majority of it is molded in an assortment of Kotobukiya’s horrifyingly marbled metallic plastic. Kind of a shame because the color choices are nice, but unless you don’t mind the marbling, you’re going to want to paint this guy.

The good news is, that’s a waterslide decal sheet you’re looking at just off center there.

Anyway, the build starts with the head, which is also the most seamline-ridden section of the kit.

As you can see, the horns each consist of two halves. I tried to fix the seamline with the thin cement/clamp method, but to little avail. We’ll see if I’ll go back and try harder with some putty or just live with it – it’s not that visible. What’s worse is this one on the dome.

Of course there’s also no way to fix this without pretty much modifying everything because you attach the face before you sandwich the two halves together. We’ll see what I do about this, it certainly is goddamn unsightly.

Here’s the head sans horns because when I got to this point, the horns were glued and clamped up. It does look cool – I thought the nose was silly, but in person, it’s actually fine.

You then proceed with the torso, which consists of these parts. Pretty simple stuff.

The neck has this hinge which allows for a surprisingly decent amount of upward movement. Rotation is a bit of a problem because the horns and those spikes don’t like each other, but you can get the mech to look upward more than most Gunpla.

There’s also a tiny little pilot seat, but it serves mostly to prove that there’s no way this kit is 1/72nd scale. No pilot, though.

Here’s the shoulder joint assembly. Classic Kotobukiya overengineering. The shoulder joint unhinges and moves forward to a completely excessive degree, allowing for zero poses that I can think of. It might have made sense if the kit could grab the axe with both hands, but the handle’s too small for that.

Next is the rest of the torso, containing what I guess is meant to be the Z-Knights’ equivalent of a Zoids core.

It’s depicted as this shiny brass-colored sphere in the instructions, but as with a lot of the other detail on this kit, it’s molded straight into a larger part and will need to be hand painted if you want it to actually look this way. I don’t see how it can be masked off without serious damage to your mental health. Good luck getting that reflective finish with a brush. It’s not impossible, but… good luck. I sure as shit ain’t gonna try.

Assembly continues with the backpack, which is kind of amusing because of course this is the battery case on the original version, and the antenna is the power switch. It’s all there, but it doesn’t do anything. The backpack also features this beer can missile launcher that looks like a traffic light, but I didn’t put the missiles in because I want to paint them separately and they look like they’ll be impossible to remove once they’re in.

What’s next is what I absolutely have to call the “waist section” because aside from the double-jointed knees and elbows, it’s probably the part that looks most clearly like Gunpla. I didn’t break down the assembly into more than two steps because if you’ve ever built a Bandai kit, you know exactly what all this is. Kudos to Kotobukiya for doing the color separated insides for the skirts, of course – you guys know I’m a stickler for that. But otherwise, it’s really kind of silly how close this is to a Gunpla kit.

I do like that the tubes are a) separate parts and b) don’t consist of eleventy billion beads, though.

Here’s what it looks like all plugged together at this point.

The arms are also rather, let’s say, close in engineering to a Bandai kit. Double jointed elbow, rotation at the biceps, you know. The wrist has a proper joint instead of the balljoint most Bandai kits come with, but it doesn’t really do much.

Here are the parts for an open and a closed hand. The thumbs inexplicably consist of two halves, but honestly, the seamline isn’t too bad.

The kit comes with a decent selection of hand options, but unfortunately they don’t really work all that well.

Aside from two holding hands for the axe and the shield, you get what’s depicted here: two each of open and closed fist, and the ones in the middle, if I understand the instructions correctly, are holding hands for Kotobukiya’s MSG line of accessories.

The issue is that since the holding hands for the accessories that come with the kit have no peg or any other way to actually connect them to the axe and the shield, they just flop around when you’re posing the kit. The axe will stay in place reasonably well once the kit’s posed, but the shield doesn’t, and it really seems like a rather puzzling oversight.

The shoulders consist of a measly four parts and attach to the shoulders in the same stupid way that also never works right on Gunpla kits. The good news is, the seamline’s masked as a detail here, so they look fine. There’s also a clear part that goes on that big empty peg inside the circular detail, but I didn’t attach those two for the same reasons as the beer can missiles above.

And here’s what we’ve got so far. The double jointed elbow allows for a pretty respectable bend, but it’s nowhere near 180 degrees.

The build then continues with the feet, which consist of a ton of parts, as you can see, and like the arms, the payoff is ok, but nothing spectacular. The ankle joint works really well for posing, but the toe armor needs to be glued for no apparent reason, and this is even indicated in the instructions.

Assembly of the legs starts with a double jointed knee that, as you can see in the final pic, only gives you a 90 degree bend. Otherwise it’s pretty straightforward stuff. I also left out another clear piece here for the same reason, as well as the parts mimicking the Zoidy rubber caps; there’s five on each leg.

Notice also that all the piston detail is molded into bigger parts and will either need to be hand painted or masked. For a “highend master model” kit, that seems like a rather massive corner to cut.

Anyway, we’re done with the suit. I mean bot. I mean mech. I mean knight.

The axe goes together like so, and as noted above, it comes with a dedicated holding hand, which as noted above, doesn’t really work particularly well.

The axe is depicted here with its handle extended, which looks like crap because there’s no detail on the section that’s exposed when you extend it. Pointless gimmick is pointless.

And finally, here’s the shield assembly, or most of it, anyway. The round red bits you see in the first picture are also impossible to remove once snapped in place, so they went back in the box for now. The shield handle is this weird pistol grip like contraption that the kit just holds without anything to attach the shield to the lower arm. It looks ok, but since the holding hand isn’t attached to the handle properly, it tends to flop down in a lot of poses.

I do like that the shield is very detailed on the inside, and it’s nice that the Norwegian flag is molded into the red piece in the center. That’ll make it easier to paint if you don’t want to use the waterslide, but I’m thinking I’ll do neither and get a skull on there somehow.

And here he is all snapped up and standing in front of his hilariously oversized box. The kit actually stands about 17 cm tall from the bottom of its feet to the tip of its horns.

All things considered, I have to admit poseability turned out to be better than I thought, especially if you get it up on an action base. The hip and ankle joints allow for a lot of leg movement, that neck hinge really does help, and the torso rotates well enough. It was also just kind of fun playing with the kit because thanks to its relative simplicity, it doesn’t really have any issues with parts falling off and it holds its poses extremely well.

So after all the complaining I’ve done throughout this review, I’ll close on telling you that actually I like this kit just just fine. Yes, the engineering is of questionable originality and the color separation is more HG Gundam or Tomy Zoid than “master” anything, but it also doesn’t have any serious flaws that should be a dealbreaker. If you’re on the fence about getting one – don’t bother. But if you like the look of it (and I do), there’s nothing that should stop you from buying it either. I think they really nailed the proportions – it looks bulky and angular, but still has enough interesting shapes to appear like an updated version of its 80s predecessor and look more model than toy. And despite how derivative the engineering is, the overall concept of a giant Viking robot is weird and unusual enough that it’s kind of forgivable.

But aside from the fact that I just happen to like this design and will always have a soft spot in my heart for the weirder and more obscure aspects of Zoids and its related lines, this is so close to a Gunpla kit that you can’t help but compare it to them, and there really isn’t anyone that can compete with Bandai’s quality. Hence my initial observation – this kit very much makes me think that Kotobukiya sort of tried to use Z-Knights as a way to attract Gunpla fans, it failed, and so they scrapped the line after two kits. And that’s okay. Or it would be, if they still made Zoids.