Remember the playability-overloaded Takara Tomy Diaclone DA-95 Robot Base that is part of a giant robot? Well, the Japanese toymaker best known for the Transformers franchise has recently revealed the other half, and good lord, it is jaw-droppingly impressive.
Dubbed the Takara Tomy Diaclone DA-100 Aerial Mobile Fortress/Cloud Across [JP], it is a super-dreadnought class combat fighting machine with a flying wing silhouette and serves as a cruise-type aerial fortress and an air carrier known as Sky Carrier (basically, an flying aircraft carrier).
Like the Robot Base aka Grand Dion, it is overloaded with playability. It features retractable hangers on both sides of the fuselage, machine departure and arrival ports, and a small shuttle hangar at the stern.
Most of the time Cloud Across operates as a standalone machine but in the event of a major crisis, it can activate the “machine fusion” process known as “Grancross” which enables it to fuse with the Land Mobile Battleship “Grand Dion” to form a superdreadnought base-type heavy mobility machine known as a mobile fortress GX mode.
In this mode, it basically connects to the top of the Land Mobile Battleship and it is an intermediate mode that subsequently can transform into a giant robot that towers at around 62 cm (about 24 inches or 2 feet) tall officially called Robot Base Gran X (Cross) aka G-X.
The Sky Carrier is armed to the teeth with two huge beam cannons, a rotating composite turret (Gunner Bridge), and aerial depth charges.
It comes with 6 crew known as Dia-nauts, each measuring 3 cm (about 1.2″) tall, and has 10 points of articulation that would allow for basic poses including seating. In addition, each figure has neodymium magnets in the sole of the feet allowing it to stand confidently on the ferrous metal surface.
The Sky main bridge’s canopy can be opened and it can also be removed entirely to better manipulate the little people in the control bridge. The DA-100 has an elevator that connects the main bridge of the Cloud Across and the main bridge of Grand Dion when combined.
Also included is a vertical takeoff Heliscout, a space jetfighter Skylancer, as well as a multi-purpose shuttle plane dubbed Cloud Arc which can fit up to 6 Dia-nauts. This vehicle can go into the stern hangar. It can also be connected under the control bridge.
Moving up the vehicle is the rotating turret-type sub-bridge that protects the Cloud Across with its arsenal of weapons, including two main cannons, FZ cartridge machine guns, pulse beam machine guns, and anti-aircraft interceptor missiles. It also serves as an air traffic control tower in aircraft carrier mode.
The attached module with the FZ cartridge machine gun and pulse beam machine gun on the gunner bridge moves to the back connector in robot base mode to function as a machine gun turret to protect the rear of the base. It can also be removed entirely to become a standalone aircraft called Cloud Gunner which, if so desired, can combine with the Cloud Arc to become a heavy attack fighter.
The heavy attack fighter can also be attached to the Grand Dion’s shipboard machine, the Geodivers on either side to form an even more powerful fighting machine.
Folks. 547 words ain’t enough to list all of the features or describe how playable and how cool this toy is. But like the DA-95, such goodness does come with a hefty price tag. The Takara Tomy Diaclone DA-100 Aerial Mobile Fortress is available to order in Japan for 68,200 yen (about US$489). Meanwhile, in the U.S., you can pre-order from toy retailers like Big Bad Toy Store for US$499.99.
Delivery is set to happen starting in February/March 2024.
Images: Takara Tomy [JP].
