Overview
A new line from small Chinese manufacturer Quankai Studio, Gene Interference sets itself apart with its fembot aesthetic and simplistic approach. The line currently consists of QK-ST-001 and Zombie Armor, released in early 2025 and QK-ST-002 and Egurihime, released in mid-2026. From what little lore we were able to discern1, the Domes are lifelike robots, of which Egurihime and the Zombie Armor (also referred to in other sources as Keep the Dead Alive and Geme) are particularly outstanding individuals.
Impressively for such a new line, Gene Interference has even managed a collaboration. Zombie Armor (in that game named Keep the Dead Alive (KDA)) is a collaboration character in the 2v2 mobile fighting game Starward, which was released globally in 2024 and reportedly has similar gameplay to fellow mecha fighting game Gundam EXVS.
KDA stands alongside other familiar characters to modelers such as Frame Arms Girl’s Baselard, Gourai-kai and Stylet and two different fighters based on Animester’s Galahad, of which the Dawn variant is more readily recognizable to model kit builders as the version portrayed in the White Dragon Knight kit. The game also features Black Rock Shooter from her eponymous series, which we largely mention for completion’s sake, and also because huke, her creator, worked on chitocerium.
Construction and Engineering
Gene Interference kits are very well made for a small studio, with reasonably high plastic quality. Gene Interference has an incredible range of articulation among girlpla, being among the most poseable kits we’ve ever built.
This flexibility does come at the cost of questionable joint designs, being fairly hard to lock into position, which is not helped by the plastic being of inconsistent quality. Builders coming from newer model kits with more consistent plastic quality will not quite be hit with a rude awakening, but definitely a little startled. The second wave is significantly improved from the first, however, in both quality and engineering.
Difficulty-wise, the kits are not for newbies, requiring sanding, judicious use of force to force joints to lock together, and messing about with unmarked magnets. As a tip when building these, pay attention to the polarity of your magnets; if you accidentally place a magnet with the wrong polarity into one of the slots you’re asked to place it into, you’re going to have a hell of a time getting it back. The instructions are also unhelpful at times, with images that can be unclear as to what they’re asking you to do. Have a reference image open on a phone or computer.
Conveniently, these kits are pretty easy to kitbash with other 1:12 kits, with the official X account for Quankai showing off a kitbash with parts from 30 Minutes Fantasy and Buster Doll Paladin. We did try to kitbash our Domes kits with 30MS Tiasha and the results weren’t bad, even if we prefer to leave our Domes “pure” as it were.
Aesthetics:
Gene Interference stands out as having a clean, almost porcelain-like aesthetic with its Domes and Egurihime. It stands out as simplistic, but not ugly or boring, especially with each kit coming with several different headpiece options, different torso options and weapons. Egurihime should be cited as one of the few girlpla that has a centaur body plan configuration, though she is significantly less impressive about it than Arcanadea’s Elena or Nuke Matrix’s Yefuna Malkina.
Zombie Armor is particularly exemplary for this, with a set of very cool weaponry and claws, though this comes at the cost of stability as the kit is very top-heavy. We had a whale of a time trying to stand her properly, though some report not running into too much trouble.
Ease of Acquisition:
The downside of being from a small creator is that these kits have very limited runs. The first wave and Zombie Armor are increasingly more difficult to find as time goes on, and the second wave (002 and Egurihime) are slowly going the same way as their predecessors. We barely managed to grab a few new sets for ourselves before they disappeared from stores.
The unmodified Domes retail in the range of ¥ 2800 (£13/$18) to ¥ 2000 (£14/$19), while Egurihime and Zombie Armor will retail closer to ¥ 7000 (£33/$45), which we feel is a reasonable price. AliExpress will be your first and best port of call to find these, but they might be lurking around the dark corners of Mercari or Taobao.
Personal Verdict?
Quankai Studio stands out as one of our favorite smaller creators in the girlpla field, because Gene Interference is a standout example of what a small studio can achieve in the field; it would not be a stretch to say that this guide would likely not exist if Gene Interference hadn’t drawn our attention to less popular model kits.
While the kits do suffer from inconsistent plastic quality and interesting engineering decisions, if you are lucky enough to get your hands on one of the vanilla Domes or their enhanced counterparts, it will be well worth your time.
Personal Recommendations:
The best so far are the 002 Domes; with so many different face and hair options on top of being an improved version of the 001 body, it is one of the few times we bought multiple of the same kit just to display different options.
Official Site: https://x.com/QuanKai_Studio?lang=en (official social media)
- There is some lore included with the manuals for Zombie Armor and Egurihime; however, as we do not speak Chinese and as of this writing there has not been a translated summary of the lore, we cannot tell you what it is. Sorry. ↩︎
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