Monday, October 15, 2012

Evangelion & Petronas

Stranger than you think

Petronas is Malaysia's nationally owned petroleum and natural gas company. It's a real company in this real world. Evangelion is a Japanese mecha anime series featuring giant robots fighting giant monsters. The story is fictitious, as with its world setting.

What do Petronas have to do with Evangelion? Nothing at all.

Or so you think. ^^ Give it to Kaiyodo with its beloved Revoltech Evangelion series and you have this:



This is Revoltech Yamaguchi No. 100 EX Evangelion Unit 1 Eva Racing 2012/Evangelion RT Unit 1 Apple Shiden (リボルテックヤマグチ No.100EX エヴァンゲリオン初号機 エヴァレーシング2012/エヴァンゲリオンRT初号機アップル紫電). Quite a mouthful of a name there, ^^; but I guess it's necessary in order to help fans to differentiate which version out of so many Kaiyodo have released so far in just the Revoltech series. ^^; That's not the real important point though. ^^; Relevant to this posting, I can see at least three Petronas labels on the figure: the logo on the side of the left shoulder, the name near the bottom of the chest armor and another one printed on the left thigh as the first on the sponsor list.

It makes me feel pretty good that if we ever encounter the end of the world caused by monsters sent down from Heaven, we have giant robots decorated with labels of a national company to take care of business, whatever business that might be. ^^

Of course, this figure doesn't just sprang out of nowhere (even though Kaiyodo could do it if they really want to ^^) - its design is based on the actual Super GT racing car featured in this year's series. ^^




I'm not a racing car fan, so I have no idea how the racing team is doing so far, but as you can see from the images above, "Petronas" is all over the car, which is not at all special for a racing car. Take any of the sponsor labels and paste it on a giant robot, then it's a whole different story. ^^

The Revoltech figure will come in mid November at 3,480 Yen (inclusive of tax). A regular release this will be I think, since there's no indication of it being an exclusive item.

If buying your national product is a show of patriotism, would I be able to express that by getting this Revoltech action figure? XD

Images of the Revoltech figure are from Amiami. Images of the racing car are from Response.

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