LEGO Insects offers the chance to recreate a popular form of Japanese media
Fans of a very specific but well-known form of Japanese media are spying an opportunity in the upcoming release of LEGO Ideas 21342 The Insect Collection.
The three main buildable insects from LEGO Ideas 21342 The Insect Collection are all around 20cm in diameter, making them slightly larger than life – and much larger than LEGO life. A typical minifigure is around 4cm high, while the butterfly, mantis, and beetle are each 19.3cm, 21.3cm and 22.3cm long respectively. That means that each one is around five minifigures long.
While this might not seem important at first, with no minifigures included in 21342 The Insects Collection, it does open a door for a very specific form of artistic expression. Kaiju is a Japanese term for a popular sub-genre of sci-fi that’s specifically about giant monsters, usually ones that end up battling humans on epic scales.
Eiji Tsuburaya’s 1954 film Godzilla is believed to be the earliest example of kaiju, but the trend hasn’t faded away through the decades, with more recent examples including the enormous gorilla, King Kong, who even faced down the legendary Godzilla in 2021’s Godzilla vs. King Kong. Other lesser-known (but still popular) examples from Japanese media include Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Gamera.
The themes of kaiju are believed to have originally been inspired as metaphorical fears, coming less than a decade after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Godzilla is often compared to nuclear weapons as an unstoppable force, also often focusing on urban areas.
So, how does this relate back to LEGO? Some creative thinkers on Reddit have seen 21342 The Insect Collection as an opportunity to be able to recreate kaiju on a minifigure scale, by placing the brick-built bugs within LEGO City landscapes. Indeed, with each beastie being five times the size of the average minifigure, it’s a pretty imposing scale to work from. What’s more, as all three bugs are designed to attach to stands, they’ll be easy to affix to buildings or other structures in your brick-built cities.
“Once I get these and a few LEGO City sets, I’m well on my way to setting up my LEGO kaiju battles,” commented one Redditor ElectricalJacket780, while another is keen for the LEGO Group to take the idea one step further: “If they can do this they can do Kaiju. I want a Toho Monster set.” (Monster is the English translation of kaiju creatures, while Toho is the production company behind many Japanese monster movies.)
While the first thought of displaying LEGO Ideas 21342 The Insect Collection was likely other nature-focused sets like the Botanical Collection, using it to recreate an epic sci-fi battle is sure to make for an impressive scene as well.
Featured image Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures
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