Alice Gear Aegis

Now you might be wondering what the hell an article about a video game is doing in a model kit guide. And the answer may surprise you.

Alice Gear Aegis is a mobile game developed by Pyramid, released in 2018. The premise of the story revolves around the Actresses, girls equipped with mecha-like sets of weapons ranging from cannons to huge swords and hammers, fighting the Weiβ to protect humanity.

Cute girls with giant weapons who look like mecha. Does this sound like Alice Gear Aegis, or Busou Shinki? Or, for that matter, Megami Device?

Well, when the franchise’s character designs are done by none other than Humikane Shimada of Shinki and Megami fame, with Kanetake Ebikawa and Takayuki Yanase working on mech designs, and the entire game is being developed by the same studio who did Busou Shinki Battle Masters, you may be starting to see some similarities.

And to top it all off, the entire company is run by Shimada’s old friend who put him up long before Konami tapped him for Shinki.

Yep. This is basically just Busou Shinki but not being choked out by the absolute ghouls at Konami. Or Symphogear but without singing, Sumerian gods and Nana Mizuki, if you prefer that.

The franchise isn’t too popular in the West, but they would get a globally released game in the form of Alice Gear Aegis CS: Concerto of Simulatrix, dropping in 2022 in Japan and in 2023 for the rest of the world, for the Switch as well as the PlayStations 4 and 5.

The series would also receive an OVA in 2020 developed by Nomad (responsible for adapting series like Jashin-chan Dropkick, Rozen Maiden and Yozakura Quartet), followed by an anime series in 2023 titled Alice Gear Aegis Expansion.

Also interestingly enough, Alice Gear Aegis would receive a whole host of crossovers in the grand tradition of gachage, gaining crossovers with series like Dead or Alive, Steins;Gate and Youjo Senki. And Dirty Pair, which is really damn cool. Probably in no small part because of the series’ deep connection with Kotobukiya staff, they also had a Sousai Shojo Teien collaboration, with Emma and Ritsuka from that toyline appearing clad in gear based on Kotobukiya’s other toylines Megalomaria and Hexa Gear.

Fittingly for a series that has so many Busou Shinki and Megami Device veterans working on it, Kotobukiya would indeed make model kits of Alice Gear Aegis under the Megami Device toyline, starting with Kaede Agatsuma in 2018. A funny aside; Kotobukiya would also develop two different kits of Sitara Kaneshiya; one being a Ver. Charwa Kauth unique to the line as the team behind Megami Device claimed it would be impossible to adapt Sitara’s gear into model kit form.

Being the mad toy geniuses they were, they released Ver. Ganesha with her full complement anyway in 2022. There is also a whole host of Alice Gear Aegis garage kits out there intended for compatibility with the Megami Device kits. For obvious reasons, we won’t cover them here.

So in summary; Alice Gear Aegis is one of the few remnants of Busou Shinki that survived Konami absolutely screwing the pooch, and got to be part of another Shinki successor, Megami Device, because half the creatives working on Megami Device work on Alice Gear Aegis anyway.