As every Friday, we revisit a line of Hokuto no Ken figures. This week, we head to Sendai, in northern Japan, where a model shop did what no store ordinarily does: produce its own officially licensed statues.
We know the big names in Japanese figures: Kaiyodo, Bandai, Medicos. Less well known are those shops that one day decided to manufacture what they sold themselves. Noda-Ya, the largest hobby retailer in the Tohoku region, was one of them. Between 2002 and 2006, it produced four 1/6 scale Hokuto no Ken cold cast statues, from Kenshiro to Souther, sculpted by its in-house artisan 関東武久. These were limited-run pieces, produced in small numbers, that have become some of the most coveted items in the franchise’s merchandising today.
The shop that made its own statues
The idea may seem surprising: a store becoming its own manufacturer. Yet Noda-Ya dove in using high-end garage kit methods, with a sculptor attached to the shop and made-to-order sales. The choice of cold cast, a resin blended with mineral powder whose weight and texture evoke stone, says everything about the level of quality they aimed for; this was far from a mass-market product. The first statue, Kenshiro, released in late February 2002, was priced at 16,280 yen, and subsequent releases would climb past 20,000. Refined bases, multiple colorways for the same character: the approach was already collector-oriented, at a time when the premium statue market barely existed yet.
A shop shaped by the history of Tohoku
Opened in 1976 in the Nankodai district of Sendai under the name Noda-Ya Gun & Hobby, the shop had established itself over the decades as the largest in Tohoku in its field, with shelves covering everything from Gunpla model kits to figures, garage kits, weapon replicas, and Mini 4WD. A giant Tetsujin 28 figure standing inside the store had become its most recognizable symbol.
In March 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck the Sendai area hard. The Noda-Ya building suffered such severe damage that it was declared uninhabitable. Rather than giving up, the shop undertook major renovations and managed to reopen, extending its activity by another decade. Ultimately, it was the deterioration of the building, condemned to demolition, that sealed its fate: Noda-Ya closed its doors on October 15, 2023, after forty-eight years of existence. One episode illustrates the team’s attachment to its creations well: in March 2016, they announced on social media that they had unearthed from their warehouse a few Souther statues forgotten there for ten years, immediately putting them back on sale.
The adventure did not quite end there. The modelers who had handled the shop’s made-to-order manufacturing service banded together to found their own independent outfit, named P.A.NDLa, carrying on that expertise beyond the disappearance of the store where it was born.
Four installments, from 2002 to 2006
The series opens with Kenshiro, in February 2002. The character is depicted without his 7 scars, and he would later return in several color schemes across different print runs. Rei came in the summer of 2003, first in his classic design, then in a striking variant with whitened hair, a nod to the fate of the master of Nanto Suicho Ken, whose hair turns white after being struck by Raoh‘s Shinketsu Shu.
The third to join the shelf is Juza, the most formidable of the Goshasei, posed on a stone-stepped base. Collectors know him in two forms: one with an extended arm, the other with a folded arm, which differ not only in pose but also in the sculpture and especially the paint of the dorsal armor. The highlight of the collection remains Souther, released in August 2006. At 38 centimeters, the Holy Emperor towers over the entire line, enthroned on a base all his own, with two pairs of shoulder guards included: the classic ones and the dragon-crested ones. Here again, two print runs: a standard version and a limited green variant.
The vestiges of a vanished shop
Of this Sendai shop, only these few statues still circulating remain, like so many witnesses of an era when a store could become a manufacturer out of pure passion. For today’s collector, each one is a piece of history as much as a figure.
The details of all four statues and their variants can be found in our page dedicated to the Hokuto no Ken Statue Series by Noda-Ya.
