Motoki Takaya
Motoki Takaya (高谷元基 Takaya Motoki) is a toy designer at TakaraTomy with a long history of orbiting around the Transformers brand. Coming on to Takara in the 1988, he cut his teeth on the headlining Powered Masters of 1990's Transformers: Zone during his brief stint with the Transformers brand proper. From there, he worked on Armored Police Metal Jack,[1][2] followed by the original incarnation of the popular Gridman franchise, the 1999 Micro Millenium relaunch of the mother of all pre-Transformer toylines Microman, the 2012 Beast Saga reboot of one-time Generation 1 spinoff Beastformers, and finally landed the gig for which he is best known among shape-morphing toy robot fans today: the lead designer of the fantastically successful (and fantastically expensive) 2016 revival of the pre-Transformer franchise Diaclone.
Known design work
[edit]
Generation 1
[edit]Transformers: Zone
[edit]Return of Convoy
[edit]
Notes
[edit]- Takaya was a Diaclone nerd long before he was a Diaclone designer. He is on the record as having named Dai Atlas and pals' "Big Powered" combined mode after a similarly tripartite toy from the original Diaclone line.[3]
- Besides designing robot superhero toys, Takaya worked on Takara's Aquaroid underwater robotics line in the early 2000s,[4] and was on Beyblade around 2002.[5]
- To date, Takaya has produced bougie twice-as-expensive-as-Masterpiece re-imaginings of the pre-Powerdashers, pre-Optimus Prime, and pre-Ultra Magnus. No, you may not see them.
External links
[edit]Interviews
[edit]- June 28, 2019 Interview on Diaclone in Dengeki Hobby, translated at Soundwave's Oblivion
References
[edit]- ↑ Japanese patent for Metal Jack armor combination system
- ↑ Japanese patent for Metal Jack Hyper Red Jack Armor
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Interview on Transformers: Zone in Takara SF Land Evolution, p 90
- ↑ Japanese patent for Aquaroid jellyfish
- ↑ Japanese patent for Beyblade launcher
