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Border Break inspires biggest mech model ever to take over Tokyo

Watch out, Tokyo train commuters, just in case this enormous robot assembles itself and comes to life.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
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Gael Cooper
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Screenshot by Sean Hollister/CNET

Gamers running to catch a train in Tokyo's Shibuya station should slow down and take a look at a world-record-setting model.

First, some explanation for those whose  gaming education ended with Pac-Man. Border Break: Sega Network Robot Wars is a robot-battle arcade game that lets gamers fight each other from different machines. 

Now, Sega has teamed with Japanese toy company Kotobukiya to create a gigantic one-to-one scale model of a Border Break fighter. For now, some of the parts are on display at Shibuya station in Tokyo, all still attached in true just-out-of-the-box plastic model form.

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It's a promotion for Border Break's upcoming PlayStation4 release on Aug. 2. The parts will be on display at Shinjuku Station Metro Promenade through July 8.

Sega shared some photos via Twitter on Sunday, and they're pretty impressive.

Joked one fan, "Here's me thinking it's Dr. Robotnik's basement."

According to Kotaku, the pieces are made out of Styrol resin, and they are designed to eventually fit together as an actual Border Break mecha, which Kotobukiya is calling the largest ever made.

A new video published Sunday to YouTube shows how the pieces were created. There's more than a whiff of HBO's Westworld and its creepy opening credits about the video, so we humans might want to watch our backs.

This isn't the first giant robot come to (almost) life in Japan. In 2013, a giant robot prop was seen staring out at Tokyo Bay, part of a promotion for the 2014 film "Patlabor: The Next Generation."

And just last fall, a 64-foot-tall Unicorn Gundam statue was unveiled at DiverCity Mall in Tokyo.