I’m not really a big MOGERA fan.  I picked him up because he’s the next kaiju in the Monsterarts line.  But believe it or not, he impressed me so much that I think he may be the best Monsterarts figure Bandai has produced so far. 

There have been two Moguera characters in the Godzilla mythos.  The first Moguerais from a 1957 movie titled The Mysterians.  The invading Mysterian aliens tried to use two of these robotic mole-like creatures to take over the Earth.  Unfortunately for them, neither was very effective.  The first was blown up with a bridge, while the second accidentally crushed when it tried to tunnel beneath a Markalite Cannon.

The second incarnation of Moguera appeared in the 1994 movie, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla.  In this movie, Mogera was created by humans to replace the destroyed Mecha Godzilla and give them a chance to stop future kaiju attacks.  The Monsterarts figure is based on this version of the character, which was definitely a good choice because he’s actually useful, and even a bit cool.

Modern Moguera is basically a war machine, laden with the latest weapons and technology to Godzilla’s rampages across Japan.  This mech is comprised of two separate vehicles.  The upper body is a super jet called the Star Falcon, while the lower body is a tank-like drilling machine known as Ground Moguera.  Both vehicles combine at the waist to form robotic Moguera.

Moguera’s sculpt is pretty intricate, especially when you compare him to the only other mech in this line.  Whereas Mecha Godzilla has a sleek looking brawler look, Moguera is heavily armored with bits of tread, drills, and giant circular saws.  You can see where the designers took inspiration from the original character’s look, but they definitely ran with that inspiration and created a great updated yet unique look.

Moguera’s head sculpt is also very well done.  His drill-nose is lined with sculpted spiral lines, while his eyes give off a pixilated view screen look.  His head is also very flat, but somehow it seems to work well on him.

I can’t talk about sculpt without mentioning the amazing job Bandai did on engineering this figure.  I’ll start by noting the metal bits that have been incorporated into the figure.  Like Mecha G, the majority of these pieces make up his feet and leg joints.  His elbows are also metal, and so is his drill nose.  The nose cone is even on a swivel joint and can be turned.

And speaking of elbows, Moguera has some unique designs that I don’t think I’ve seen before.  His elbows are just simple hinge joints, but they’ve been designed to look curved when the arm is bent.  Meanwhile, if the arm is straightened, then the joint will appear to be straight as well.

Like Mecha G, Moguera was designed with two different necks.  The first is normal and allows the head to look around a bit (I’ll get to this in the articulation section).  The second neck is for flying mode and displays his noggin looking straight up.  Continue to page 2…