Comments from Robin Yang:
Masume Shirow is one of my favorite anime writers. His artwork and
weapon designs are original and exhibit fine attention to detail. Too
bad some of the weapon designs are physically impossible! Although
considered "old school" by the current generation of anime fans we
wanted to do something from the genre. Originally we created the J-9
subguns and threw the ESWAT costumes together almost as an afterthought.
Except for the hand grenades everything else came off the shelf as a
store-bought item. Unfortunately in the post-September 11th world
this level of replica realism draws unwanted scrutiny and paranoia.
Eventually we want to make the full body armor used by Olympus Police
but that's in the distant future.
The Protect Gear from Jin-Roh was a project inspired by Bandai's
release of the animated movie. As projects go it came together fairly
quickly--maybe three months were spent on mold work and a month after
that to finish and assemble individual copies. The glowing eyes always
impress people and offer a surprising amount of visibility. Sort of
like looking through cardboard tubes you can't see much but you can
see enough to walk around and (hopefully) not bump into things. The
armor is worn over hockey armor and combined with the full face helmet
means we are dripping with sweat in no time flat. Small fans in the
helmet help reduce moisture buildup but not by much. At least the
hockey armor helps distribute the armor's weight evenly.
