Seems like it's guarding more mountains than sky.

Aaaand another set I wish I'd been able to afford as a kid. Love the sword and Zamor sphere launcher, and just such a sick design overall.

Echoing @MCLegoboy, what I can't figure out is why this came out in the mid-2000s. The mech and transformers era was late 70s with Gundam and early 80s with things like RoboTech and Transformers. Was LEGO that late to the game as we know them to be, or was there an anime surge in this timeframe that I must have missed?

I'm the sky guardian, guardian of the sky!
Zeus quivers before him!

@MeisterDad:
There's a show that's on heavy rotation on Cartoon Network (Teen Titans Go!). It's incredibly popular...except with Millennials. They were often obsessed with the previous animated version titled simply Teen Titans. I tried watching that show in original broadcast, and gave up after about 1.5 episodes because it just couldn't hold a candle to the DCAU that I'd been watching for over a decade. But it was so very popular with Millennials that when they see my minifigs on a layout they start to get excited, right up until they realize they're all the TTG! versions.

Transformers was a show that was produced for the American market, while Robotech and Gundam were produced for Japan and had to be imported in some fashion, which limited the amount of exposure kids had to them in the 70's and 80's. By the 90's and 00's, anime series had started to become a cable network staple, for better or worse. It may not have been a resurgence so much as the fact that anime continued to be popular to some degree for the past three decades.

@MeisterDad said:
"Echoing @MCLegoboy, what I can't figure out is why this came out in the mid-2000s. The mech and transformers era was late 70s with Gundam and early 80s with things like RoboTech and Transformers. Was LEGO that late to the game as we know them to be, or was there an anime surge in this timeframe that I must have missed?"

The early-to-mid 2000s was the Great Nostalgia Boom, where the now-of-age-and-suddenly-with-disposable-income Millenials were being grifted for all they were worth with 80s nostalgia merchandise and other overpriced tat. Ghostbusters, Transformers, Thundercats, and all sorts of barely-remembered anime quickly became big business again.

Of course, by 2007 the boom was already fading, so yeah, Lego was late to the game, but only by years, not decades.

Hmmm...71792 Sora's Transforming Mech Bike Racer got reviewed a short time ago, then this shows up...algorithms folk:)

@Bobsy said:
" @MeisterDad said:
"Echoing @MCLegoboy, what I can't figure out is why this came out in the mid-2000s. The mech and transformers era was late 70s with Gundam and early 80s with things like RoboTech and Transformers. Was LEGO that late to the game as we know them to be, or was there an anime surge in this timeframe that I must have missed?"

The early-to-mid 2000s was the Great Nostalgia Boom, where the now-of-age-and-suddenly-with-disposable-income Millenials were being grifted for all they were worth with 80s nostalgia merchandise and other overpriced tat. Ghostbusters, Transformers, Thundercats, and all sorts of barely-remembered anime quickly became big business again.

Of course, by 2007 the boom was already fading, so yeah, Lego was late to the game, but only by years, not decades."

C'mon. What are you talking about? The aughts were the highlight of anime reach (at least in the US). Adult Swim was a revelation to those of us who were used to watching anime at parties. Cowboy Beepbop, anyone?! The best anime of all time. Of lesser note, Trigun and Full Metal Alchemist.

Oh yes, the second wave of Exo-Force, where the human mechs went from being very stylised in a way that indicated their role to just kind of boxes with pointy bits stuck on them.
Though I seem to recall these ones were supposed to have been found within a “lost city” so I supposed them being a bit antiquated in design makes sense

Loved Exo Force back in the day, one of my favorite themes and my very first introduction to anime/manga style entertainment. Shame that I never picked up this particular model, especially since it's what is now my favorite color scheme, but I have quite a few others.

Exo-force had some really cool sets, with the designers being really creative like some of the previous RSOD https://brickset.com/article/80987, https://brickset.com/article/34856 and https://brickset.com/article/59902

@Binnekamp said:
"The sky guardian isn't quite as iconic as the Stealth Hunter or even Silent Strike, but I love the 2007-ness of it. Those brick-to-balljoint parts debuted in this wave here (this being the first iteration). So, a major step forward in mech design!
And another set that uses constraction parts like the upper arm parts (Bionicle hip parts) and launcher (Zamor launcher)! The sword looks constraction but is actually unique to this set!
Oh, and the stickers on the 2007 and 2008 subthemes were a step down unfortunately as these would become brittle over time.

For those asking why we got an Anime/Manga inspired theme in 2006-2008, look op the term 'animesque'.

In the late 90s and early 2000s anime started to become imported to the west because it was cheap. Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and Pokémon were amongst the first that reached massive popularity. And then the floodgates opened. Over here stuff like Digimon, Yugioh, Medabots, Hamtaro, Chin Chin, Bobobo etc all were broadcast dubbed on children's TV channels. The 4Kids distribution and dubbing company became big on this boom. Guidelines were loose on dubbing, resulting in the infamous Ghost Stories dub.
All the while serial anime like Naruto, Bleach and One Piece were all gaining massive audience worldwide.

During this time, western animation took note. An above comment mentions the original Teen Titans series, but there were many more. These animation styles often featured larger eyes, more exaggerated expressions and behavior and sometimes even near-copies of anime tropes.
Perhaps the most successful and well-loved of these shows is Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Amidst this boom lego must have seen the writing on the wall... and picked mecha because mecha are very common in japanese media. Even though Exo-Force mecha are quite different in most Gandam-esque series. I'm not sure if Gurren Lagann or Code Geass could have influenced the theme as I believe those came out later but I could be wrong.

The real answer is probably that most anime aren't really 'stuff' focussed and mainly deal with the characters. Granted, anime/manga are a whole medium (like 'TV') and WILL include pretty much any type of story.

But lego must have gone for mecha because that would fit best for their building toy focussed theme."

I forgot about Chin Chin, Bleach, and Naruto. Good memories. Almost forgot Ghost in the Shell.

Adult Swim was incredible at mixing great anime with incredible US shows like ATHF, Samurai Jack, Futurama, Boondocks, Loiter Squad, Perfect Hair Forever, Space Ghost, Harvey Birdman, Squidbilies, and later, Robot Chicken and Rick n Morty.

Good lord the disconnect from history is real!

None of you have anything correct, and that’s really sad.

With all the mech upgrades we've been having lately,it's about time for a exo-force reboot.

I had this set as a kid and absolutely loved it. It was sort of the Ninjago of the era, at least that's how I remember the theme as a whole. The 'enemy' robots were also a blast to play with as they had the rotating arms versus the Star Wars drones that were rigid.

I admit I love Exo-Force more than Ninja Go. Not only the Mechs are more managable, the sets are also more affordable.

@StyleCounselor said:
" @Bobsy said:
" @MeisterDad said:
"Echoing @MCLegoboy, what I can't figure out is why this came out in the mid-2000s. The mech and transformers era was late 70s with Gundam and early 80s with things like RoboTech and Transformers. Was LEGO that late to the game as we know them to be, or was there an anime surge in this timeframe that I must have missed?"

The early-to-mid 2000s was the Great Nostalgia Boom, where the now-of-age-and-suddenly-with-disposable-income Millenials were being grifted for all they were worth with 80s nostalgia merchandise and other overpriced tat. Ghostbusters, Transformers, Thundercats, and all sorts of barely-remembered anime quickly became big business again.

Of course, by 2007 the boom was already fading, so yeah, Lego was late to the game, but only by years, not decades."

C'mon. What are you talking about? The aughts were the highlight of anime reach (at least in the US). Adult Swim was a revelation to those of us who were used to watching anime at parties. Cowboy Beepbop, anyone?! The best anime of all time. Of lesser note, Trigun and Full Metal Alchemist."

As the founder of Anime Boston and AnimeCons.com, I can confirm that the aughts had a MASSIVE rise in anime popularity. Yeah, it's always been popular in Japan, but before the early 2000s, you'd only have a handful or two of anime shows that had ever been on TV. (Speed Racer, Robotech, Voltron, etc.) In the early 2000s, Cartoon Network and Fox Kids started airing stuff like Digimon, Escaflowne, Big O, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo, Cardcaptor Sakura, etc... Even Sci-Fi Channel and Tech TV were airing anime at the time. It was HUGE. Over 5 years from 2002 to 2007, the US went from maybe a dozen significant anime conventions to well over a hundred!

Lego was NOT late to the 80s nostalgia, they were right in there for the anime surge.

@PDelahanty:
And from what I understand, there were originally three Voltron series scheduled for production, all of which would borrow animation from Japanese shows and add completely new dialogue. Only, they did the land/sea/air Voltron, and the lion Voltron, and the latter proved so popular they cancelled the three-whatever Voltron in favor of expanding the lion Voltron run. I remember being confused as hell about this as a young kid, because I watched the lion Voltron, and had seen maybe a couple eps of the land/sea/air version that seemed totally unrelated, and had also run across a toy for the cancelled series at Kay*Bee. And of course there was no accessible internet in those days, so it was decades before I finally found out what happened.

@MCLegoboy said:
"I'm really curious what LEGO's main goal was with the Manga/Anime style looking characters. Was it simply because it was a Mecha based theme, or was there really more going on here? Was there a greater push for sets like these in the Asian market at the time to warrant the aesthetical difference to standard minifig faces and hair? Would this theme actually be worse off with normal looking figs? I'm actually pretty curious about this because I was never against the idea, it was something that made the theme more distinct, but I do wonder why it was done."

I have no idea what the reasoning was specifically with Exoforce, but this sort of wild experimentation with face printing was not unique to theme--even if the style was. This is the same era that saw the launch of Clone Wars sets, and the two ATLA sets were also quite different from traditional LEGO head printing.

Indeed, the late 2000s were probably LEGO's most "anything goes" head-printing time, with wide variety: black pupilled Star Wars figs as late as the original Death Star, prints that were taken from yellow-figs and put on flesh-toned heads unchanged. Speed Racer heads were a design style all their own.