Robonoid (Future Boy Conan)
Future Boy Conan (未来少年コナン Mirai Shōnen Konan) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction anime series, which premiered across Japan on the NHK network between April 4 and October 31, 1978 on the Tuesday 19:30-20:00 timeslot. The official English title used by Nippon Animation is Conan, The Boy in Future. It is an adaptation of Alexander Key’s novel The Incredible Tide.
– courtesy of Wikipedia
The finished model:
The story:
If you’re not familiar with Future Boy Conan (1978), don’t feel too bad, you’re in good company. Even many die-hard fans of Hayao Miyazaki’s work (including me) give Conan a pass – that is if they even know about it.
Really, it’s got two strikes against it. First off, since it predates the formation of Studio Ghibli by a number of years, it’s not usually included (or at least not prominently) on a list of Miyazaki’s major works. Second, since it’s an animated television show from the late 1970s, most fans who are aware of it simply write it off as “something Miyazaki did before he got good.” At least, that’s more or less what I thought.
Now I can’t quite remember what spurred me to actually check out Future Boy Conan, but I suspect it was seeing some of the models done by members of the Miyazaki Mecha Modellers Club. Those guys and gals do some inspiring work, so that’s probably it. Regardless, whatever it was, I’m glad. After watching the whole series, Conan quickly became a favourite.
While it might not be as grand or as well-animated as the feature films, it makes up for it in story. Set in a post-apocalyptic water world, Future Boy Conan’s got a little bit of everything that you’d expect from Hayao Miyazaki – two kids trying to cope with the mistakes of the previous generation, a subtle environmental message, and some wonderful flying machines.
One of those machines, the Falco, will be featured in another build project, but I couldn’t resist the urge to get Conan represented in the Ghibli project, so I kicked it off with a small scratchbuild featuring the “mecha” from the series – the Robonoid! Given how small it is, it seemed like the perfect transition project after taking a bit of time away from the workbench.
The build:
Since there’s obviously no commercial kit available for a 1/72 scale Robonoid from a forgotten 1970s anime, it was going to have to be 100% scratch. However, give that it’s basically just a seat in a box sitting on some tubes, I figured I could manage it easily enough. I had to make some guesstimates as to the size in 1/72 scale, but there’s always a bit of flexibility in builds based off comics or animation – the size sometimes varies from panel to panel or scene to scene anyway.
After settling on a “that’s about right” size, I cut some styrene strips and glued them into a box shape. I had a bench seat left over from one of my Tintin projects, so that came in handy. For the arms and legs I just cut up some styrene tubes and used bits of styrene rods for the joints. Finally, for the hands I had a leftover pair from some non-descript Bandai robot kit that fit the oversized look just fine. After that it was just a few thin rods for the control sticks and a bit of green paint. Voila, one Industrian Robonoid, made to order!
I was quite happy with the way it turned out, but feel free to tell me what you think:
