So are there 5 or 6 bots being made?

 

Technically 6, the arms are actually repaints of each other.

 

I am shocked that I hadn't considered this. I thought you were being snarky and then was confused when I read your username.... Suiken and Seizan are totally repaints of each other! I can't believe this is just now dawning on me. And Getsuei and Yukikaze (who will look exactly like Shouki in alt mode) are going to be just heavy retools of one another! This is fantastic! Going to be a really cool transformation to mess around with in 2 years.

 

Yup, which is why Kaen is most likely last, start with Shouki,end with him as they are the only unique molds. Also allows them to get 3 molds out a year with little fuss.

Transformations will be interesting as they can't be completely like the G1 Toy if you don't want them to be toothpicks.

 

Not really. While their engineering and transformation is indeed the same, they are unique molds (save perhaps the upper legs and the wheels).
Wotafa's review shows off all the details of all the figures really well

 

6

 

And I just watched that the other day 
Don't know why I had it in my head they were exactly the same barring the coloring. Thanks

 

The coolest thing about this for me is the confirmation that the Trainbots will all be HO scale, for those not in the know, that means that these will happily sit on Hornby/Bachmann track

 

I don't know much history of Raiden. Will all the cars be able to connect into a long train or are they meant to be displayed as standalone vehicles? Seems like there may be multiple engine/frontend cars?

 

In the show, they could all couple together and run as a single train. In the real world that's not possible with those engines/cars. But I'm certain Takara will "fudge" certain aspects to allow the MPG toys to do so on the track they provide.

 

These are all parts of the machine translations that I wanted to clean up but didn’t have time to do.

I rant out of time to look into the acronyms and make sure they were correct.

The part that mentions 6 and 5 isn’t translated clearly and makes more sense in the proper translation that @oblivion01 is working on.

@HolyCulture when you see this could you please add this disclaimer to the top of your post containing my translations?

Xaxis’ Disclaimer: these are rough machine translations generated by running the interview scans though Google Translate and DeepL. The result is fairly accurate, I am told, though there are some areas which have obvious errors (names, acronyms and a few other spots). A proper translation is on the way which will clear things up.

 

Great insightful interview. And makes sense. This was originally announced in the context of a national train company exhibition. A Railway Story In The Sky, as it was called - this is a video touching on what it was all about:

It's not surprising that between that and the Tomix connection, the emphasis is firmly on the model train aspect. I half expect them to have at least considered briefly (crazily) incorporating DC motors and making the thing operational originally.   The hobby railroad aspect seems very important to this release. In a way similar to the recent Tracks one-off MP design being more about homaging the real vehicle than anything else.

This is a crazy thought, but I wonder if they will incorporate other Tomy group lines into the future MP-G releases. Like Tomica for vehicles (maybe even for construction vehicles in the case of the Constructicons.) Maybe that's one reason for them going with the scale they did instead of what some had hoped for. Maybe it's just going to be a Tomix and Tomica sized line for alt modes?

 

I don\'t collect trains so what size exactly is HO scale? I see Google provided ratios but that doesn\'t help with comparison to existing MPs? I doubt its Thomas the Tank Engine size.

 

@oblivion01’s work is legendary. I won’t post the text because his website deserves a click.

Translated Interview: Kojin Ono Figure King 285, October 2021

 

“Ono-san also pointed out the differences between the Shinkansen couplers and those of the conventional trains. However as we have 6 trains to link, all the couplers are going to be the same for the 6 Transformers.”

“The sculpt of the coupler is very well done. Usually with TOMIX the couplers are not sculpted as we recreate them to be covered.”

 

Model train scales are based on the rail gauges, as in the distances between the rails. Train size goes from there.

Shouki here is about 12" long in train mode.

 

I took this pic last night for a similar question in one of the other threads:


It's not a Japanese Shinkansen, but close enough for scale purposes.

 

Couplers alone won't fix the issue. It solves an issue, but not IMHO, the biggest one. (gauge)

 

I think he was pointing that out to confirm that they'll be doing a link-up gimmick. So yeah, some scale fudging is going to happen.

 

They’re going to fudge the couplers to make the 100% necessary combined long train work.

yep   thanks