Awaken Studios Pose+ P+03 Sengoku Majin Goshogun
Shipper Box
Outer plastic baggie
Interesting company tagline. “To awake the emotion and soul of giant robot collectors”.
Box is actually quite large, especially in light of the how small and compact the CM’s Corp. figure’s box was. Roughly 12 x15 x6 inches in dimension.
Warring States Destroyer Goshogun story:
Set in the “futuristic” year 2001 (the series aired in 1981), the shadowy criminal organization Dokuga has secretly established global domination by placing corrupt world leaders in power and profiting from wars and disasters. Lead by Emperor Neoneros (Dark Star) and his chief officers, General Cuttnal (Captain Blade), Director Bundle (Prince Eharn), and the synthetic human, Commander Kernagul (Lord Jeraldan).
Meanwhile, Dr. Sanada (Dr. William Bridger) discovers a new, clean energy source called Beamler Energy at his laboratory. Beamler Energy can even be used for long distance teleportation and key to human kind’s evolution. Dr. Sanada’s son Kenta (Nathan Bridger) is the key to this energy. Kenta is raised by his nanny droid OVA (ND-2). After Dr. Sanada is killed in a botched Dokuga kidnapping attempt, Captain Sabarath (Dr. James Shegall), Dr. Sanada’s close friend becomes Kenta’s guardian.
Captain Sabarath introduces Kenta to the members of the Good Thunder Squad and moves him to their mobile fortress, the Good Thunder Base. The ship then begins to teleport around various locations around the globe for the next 3 years, trying to elude Dokuga until the Beamler Energy and Kenta are ready for the next stages of evolution.
King Arrow – piloted by Shingo Hojo (Jason Templar in the English dubs), a former Special Forces officer who worked for the UN military as a demolitions expert and an expert at firearms.
Jack Knight – piloted by Killy Gagley (Scott Cutter). Killy is from New York, specifically the Bronx, he worked as mob enforcer for the Swan family.
Queen Rose – piloted by Remy Shimada (Kathy Jamison), a former French spy and SAS agent.
The Good Thunder team
The Tri Three
The Tri Three (Macstar) is the combined form of all three ships. Remy is the primary pilot when all three ships are combined into robot mode. The Tri Three’s power output is capable of max speeds of up to mach 10.9. While in combat, the Tri Three tends to usually rely on melee attacks, but it also has projectile attack capabilities as well, such as its shoulder cannons and “Red Impulser” chest beam.
Optional “non-transforming” arms are included with the figure, these arms are for swapping around the spare open hands, since the default transforming arms don’t have this feature.
The Tri Three is actually quite fun to pose! It’s even got a waist swivel!
Next to Goshogun
“Macstar linking maneuver” (No Japanese “combination command” equivalent)
Goshogun (Macstar)
The titular mech of the series, Goshogun was created to fend off against the large attack forces of the Dokuga criminal organization. Goshogun is extremely powerful and nothing in the Dokuga army can stand up to it once it’s called in, It’s practically invincible! Most of the series’ situations actually arise from either the human pilots having issues or something Kenta did. lol…
Goshogun is really fun to pose, plus thanks to all the ratchet joints, it just adds a nice touch of class to it when you handle it.
Goshogun attacks
Holster beam! (fires beams from his front hip skirts)
Go Saber! (Photon Battle Axe)
To equip the Saber, unplug the pommel first and then insert into the fist.
Go Stick (Laser Sword)
You can vary the length of the handle. From what I remember, the short axe is called the “Scramble Crasher”.
Long handle
An alternate hand is included for Goshogun to do the “throwing” pose for the Go Stick.
Dual wield! As seen in episode 10.
Space Bazooka
Dual wield! (from episode 13)
In the series, if in case the majority of the Good Thunder team is incapacitated or missing a pilot, Goshogun can still operate and handle simple melee combat as long as one pilot is present, but it cannot access (wield?) some of its basic weapons such as the Go Saber (Laser Sword) and Scramble Crasher/ Go Stick (Photon Battle Axe). Fortunately, even with only just one pilot, it can still use the Space Bazooka (Photon Cannon) with assistance from the Good Thunder Base’s super computer, Father (Hugo).
Go Flasher (“Laser Bombardment” in the US dubs, later renamed “Mega Gun”) is Goshogun’s ultimate attack. Goshogun fires energy spikes at his opponents from his backpack.
To attach the effects parts, I recommend removing the backpack, slide open the “shell” of the pack and then connect the parts.
Goshogun actually has working electronics. The inner chest cavity where the King Arrow docks into and the Go Flasher will light up when switched on. Unfortunately, the whole setup runs on 3x LR26 button batteries (not included). I couldn’t find any in my neck of the woods so I couldn’t get to try it out.
Battery compartment and switch.
The Go Flasher first appears in ep 10, when the Beamler Energy is upgraded (evolved?) for the first time. The Beamler Energy later on gets upgraded a second time, causing the Go Flasher to be changed into Go Flasher Special, which now emits green-colored energy capable of giving sentience to enemy machines. Thereby eroding Dokuga’s army strength
Comparison with the old Cm’s Corp Brave Gokin 08 Goshogun (released waaay back in 2007!)
I had forgotten the old Tri Three needed to be assembled/ disassembled to combine. Gosh, it’s been so long…
The Cm’s Corp Tri Three beats the Pose+ in this area… it came with a colorful flight stand for its ships.
The Good
-Tri Three stands roughly 3.5 inches and weighs 28 Grams.
-Goshogun stands roughly 11.5 inches and weighs 792 Grams (820 Grams with Tri Three loaded).
-For those curious the Cm’s Corp. Goshogun weighs roughly 468 Grams.
-Diecast parts include:
–Upper torso
–Lower torso (?)
–Thighs
–Main joints
–The gold discs on its ankles
–Tri-Three’s feet
-Beautiful paint apps! Figure really shines on a display.
– “Anti-skid” traction pads under the feet. Cool!!
-Colored manual, plus it shows how to transform Tri-Three back to individual jets. I wish more toy companies included reverse transformation steps.
-Goshogun’s horn is packed separately. This is a good call, since one of the issues with the CM’s Corp. version was the horn breaking in package. Awaken Studios even included a spare horn just in case.
-Lots of ratchet joints!
-The toy features butterfly shoulder and ab crunch joints. Giving the toy a lot of posing options!
-Interesting design concept for the head and neck joint, it does add more versatility.
-Spring design for the shoulder pads to allow wider range of articulation (tends to pop off though)
The Bad
-The feet aren’t diecast for some reason. Seems like an odd choice for a high end gokin figure.
-The Go Flasher effect is made up of two halves of plastic, it tends to split open like a cheap model kit.
-Not sure why they opted to use electrical tape to cover up stuff here. Seems lazy and might leave glue residue on the toy’s back later on?
-No flight stand for the individual jets.
-I can’t seem to close the chest panel properly on the right side, no matter how hard I push it in, even without the King Arrow docked. Not sure if it’s just my unit.
-Part of me wishes the eyes lit up too, the chest lighting up really doesn’t do anything once King Arrow is docked and blocking the light (I think).
The Ugly
The armor pieces for the biceps keep popping off! I really don’t know what’s up with this one… I don’t even see any reason why it wasn’t sculpted or glued into place. It just keeps falling off when you pose the figure. Worse, it happens on both arms. Very, very frustrating.
Overall, a beautiful piece. It’s a huge step up from the old CM’s Corp and I’m glad someone got around to properly doing this guy since he seemed like such a staple for most Super Robot Wars games. It’s not perfect (those danged bicep armor plates) but I’m more than happy with my purchase overall since the figure looks good and poses very, very nicely. I recommend getting this if you can pick him up.
I didn’t get the Pose+ 01 Gold Lightan since I felt it was oversized (and I already have several SOC iterations of the character) but I’ve heard good things about it as well. The Pose+02 Baxinger also seems like a good figure to get but I’m not too familiar with the series enough to plunk good money into it (it also only appeared in only 1 or 2 SRW games for hand-held gaming I think?). I guess time will tell if I’ll go for the Baxinger or not.
Funfact The Good Thunder Base can only have a maximum crew of only five people due to the limits of Beamler teleportation with regards to how many living things can be aboard the ship when teleporting. The ship is controlled by Father (Hugo), the ship’s A.I. and powered by the Beamler Fusion Reactor.
Funfact 2 Neoneros (Dark Star) is actually 10,000 years old.
Funfact 3 Bundle (Prince Eharn) loves to play classical music while his forces are in battle, various composers and themes include Johann Strauss, Chopin, Wagner’s Lohengrin, Franz Liszt’s La Campanella, William Tell’s Overture (the Lone Ranger theme).
Funfact 4 The events of the show transpire over a period of 3 years.
Funfact 5 The Dokuga eventually resorted to using a copy of Goshogun in episode 23, named Gonagurl, it self-destructed after gaining sentience after being hit by the Go Flasher Special.
Funfact 6 The Goshogun series was ported over to the US by Saban Entertainment and was mixed with Mission Outer Space Srungle to achieve the “65 minimum episode” requirement. The series was relabeled “Macron 1”. (I have no idea if the US series was ever given a proper ending though).
Funfact 7 For the Macron 1 series, Saban used the “Miami Vice” formula and incorporated several contemporary pop music soundtracks into its episodes, including “Beat it”, “Shout”, “The Heat is On” to name a few.
Funfact 8 Saban later released Goshogun as Macron 1 in Europe without the Srungle series, though still heavily edited to add more episodes.
Series epilogue notes (SPOILERS!)
The final battle turned out to be super anti-climactic, Kenta becomes one with the various spirit forms of energy of the Earth and then awakens the souls of all of Dokuga’s machines, causing them to become one with him. He then says goodbye to the crew of the Good Thunder Base and travels to the stars to search for the “soul of the universe” to gain more knowledge about the universe, with Goshogun in tow. There wasn’t even big robot showdown. Geez…
Each of the show’s cast is given an ending of sorts in the final seconds of the show. Ironically, the villains (turned good guys before the series’ end) got better endings than the actual heroes.
-Cuttnal (Captain Blade) – became elected president of the fictional country, Ameria.
-Director Bundle (Prince Eharn) – wrote a thesis on space aesthetics then disappeared.
-Commander Kernagul – turn into a rich tycoon thanks to his successful fried chicken restaurant chains (Kernagul’s Fried Chicken KFC?) and burger joints (Kerdonald’s/ Mcdonald’s), which he co-owns with his incredibly beautiful human wife.
-Shingo – wound up unemployed and hospitalized after slipping on a bar of soap??
-Killy- finished writing his autobiography, which flopped and later decided to open a hot dog stand in the Bronx, in front of a Kernagul’s Fried Chicken.
-Remy – became a security guard for a zoo in Africa, never got married?
-Captain Sabarath – revealed to be a creation of Neoneros (Dark Star) meant to house the spirit of the Earth in the final minutes of the show. He disappeared along with the Good Thunder Base (this made absolutely no sense, as there was no inkling of this at any part of the show).
The Time Etranger movie. (again, more SPOILERS!)
Goshogun eventually spawned a one shot movie called “The Time Etranger (The Time Stranger)”, set 40 years after the events of the series. An older Remy is seriously wounded in a car crash, she wakes up young again but trapped in her own subconscious with her closest friends (including the reformed former Dokuga villains) by her side as she attempts to escape her dreamscape. Meanwhile, in the real world, her friends (again, including the reformed Dokuga villains) move heaven and Earth to get her the proper medical care she needs to save her life.
We see glimpses of what has happened to the main cast in the future. Kernagul is now the President, Cuttnal is the Surgeon General for the new Federation, Eharn is living as a hermit, while Shingo and Killy haven’t amounted to anything other than being ordinary civilians. Thanks to all her friends helping her in the real world and in her dream world, Remy eventually “escapes” her dream world and wakes up, making a full recovery.
Goshogun never appears in the movie, since it was last seen traveling to space with Kenta in the TV series, so there are no giant robot fights here. Instead, Goshogun occasionally pops up as a toy plushie or as a collectible in the occasional background. Kenta is never mentioned either. Go figure…
Gold
