In the 1980s, garage kits were all the rage, the predecessors to today’s snap-fit girlpla. A whole host of garage kit stores arose to take those, names which are probably not going to be familiar to those reading this guide today; Mono Craft, LARK and Domu.
However, LARK would be fairly important in model kit history. Being the place where Max Watanabe made his professional name working on VOTOMS garage kits, LARK would find some serious success. Mono Craft, the garage kit wing of the animation studio ARTMIC (known for series like MOSPAEDA, Megazone 23, Bubblegum Crash and Robot Hunter Casshern) would eventually delegate their casting duties to them entirely.
Sadly, ARTMIC themselves would not see the new millennium; they would shutter in 1997, with AIC RIGHTS, a holding company of AIC (known in their own right for series like Record of Lodoss War, Tenchi Muyo and, for young’uns reading this, the Persona 4 adaptation), retaining their intellectual properties.
As for their work with Domu, it was very brief but very significant; they co-produced Lady Gouf from a design made by Kunio Okawara. If you haven’t read the rest of the articles in this guide, Lady Gouf is one of the first verifiable mecha musume model kits to exist, and quite possibly the start of the trend that directly leads to Frame Arms Girl and Megami Device and thus this very guide’s existence.
So, just a little important.
It would be in 1987 where LARK and Mono Craft’s remaining staff would finally incorporate themselves as Wave Corporation. The company, having already had plenty of experience working on model kits, hit the ground running with garage kits of franchises as diverse as Megazone 23, Kimagure Orange Road, You’re Under Arrest and even, quite daringly , Char’s Sazabi from Char’s Counterattack in 1988, by which point Bandai had turfed out most of its rivals, even the likes of Kotobukiya, in the Gunpla field.
Wave would go on to develop model kits for a variety of franchises, such as Kow Yokoyama’s Maschinen Krieger (a series MAX Factory, founded by Watanabe would also develop toys for), Ultraman, Gatchaman, VOTOMS, Five Star Stories, Macross and Ghost in the Shell.
In addition, they would also act as distributor in the Japanese market for Chinese companies like Soskill, Orange Cat Industry and Hemoxian. They would also diversify into action figures, producing some of the POP UP Parade figure series as of 2026 and having already had their own line of PVC statues, their own modelling tools and option parts, including the Movable (blank) Body.
In an interesting development, Max Watanabe also became president of Wave in 2024, getting to run the corporation that had arisen from the garage kit shop he’d originally worked for 40 years prior.
Produced Lines:
- Movable Body
Singular Kits:
Distributor for:
- Multi-Purpose Humanoid Robot Felis (produced by Orange Cat Industry)
- Artery Gear AG-031 Guard Spider Feidy (produced by Orange Cat Industry)
- OVER ZERO (produced by Hemoxian)
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