Project 'Gokiri' 壕切大鎧

As the Joseon-Japanese War continued to rage on the mainland, scientists of the island nation worked day and night to create a formidable countermeasure to their enemy’s stalwart defense.

Manned by engineers diverted from the Sagami Arsenal, Project Takamusubi was a special operation administered in secret by the War Ministry to devise an answer to the increasingly insurmountable defensive positions in central China. The project worked from a hidden proving ground in the mountain reaches of Ibaraki Prefecture, only being revealed to the public when the work was nearing its completion in January of 1940. The primary impetus of their design philosophy was trench warfare, which Joseon had adapted to quite well since the war’s renewal. Their infantry were heavily armored, and often equipped with effective close range weaponry, turning every battle line into an effective fortress. Whatever the Japanese engineers designed needed to overcome the morale and efficacy of these defensive encounters; a brazen and imposing piece of equipment to shock and shatter Korean resistance.

The first prototype introduced was an improvement on CKF technology; an upgrade utilizing a finely-regulated cutting frequency that improved the blade’s armor penetration. The prototype was a success, able to cut through armor with twice the efficiency as mainline counterparts. The issue arose with the amount of power this innovation required, as the weapon needed to be strapped with a battery-pack much too unwieldy for the average soldier to bear. Their next task was finding a way to make the technology practical for warfare.

Their original solution to overcome this flaw was to put the weapon in the hands of battlesuits, as the Shugo-Yoroi model had not only proven itself as a decent countermeasure to Joseon’s military doctrine, but was also strong enough to handle the battery for the new weaponry. However the base model was not big enough to protect the power source for the weapon, creating an obvious target on their backs. They also failed in the task of sufficiently shocking the enemy defenders to damage their morale. As if the team didn’t have enough problems, the funding needed to field dozens of these blades on each front was ludicrous, and it was decided that going with fewer weapons on a larger scale was more efficient.

They then considered instead mounting the weapon to the Shugo’s larger counterpart, the Daiyoroi Heavy Suit. This unfortunately would also not work, as the research team at the Koishikawa Arsenal beat them to the punch. Plasma was chosen as a more cost effective augmentation to the Japanese close-range repertoire, and Daiyoroi units were now deployed with an upscaled axe as their primary weapon of war. Fed up with setbacks, the Operation Lead, Colonel Shiga Kota, changed the strategy. If they wanted the perfect fit they were going to have to make it themselves.

The team was not satisfied with building a battlesuit that could nullify entrenched combatants; no, their new aim was to simply ignore them altogether. Having seen the designs of American mechanized walkers, they wished to provide the Imperial Japanese Army with a similarly scaled machine, to better intimidate their foes into abandoning their lines. For enemies who were not easily broken, the vehicle could use its state of the art blade and arsenal of smaller arms to clear trenchlines in single strikes. The increased complexity of a machine of this size required multiple occupants, with an engineer who doubled as a gunner covering for the pilot’s blindspots. Fortunately, the new walker was able to maintain the organically designed control layout of the Yoroi line of battlesuits, allowing its function to be remarkably intuitive.

When finished, the final prototype was more than triple the size of the original Shugo-Yoroi, equipped with a sword as long as its body. To many it seemed impractical, but for its future enemies it was the worst possible sight on a battlefield, spelling an inevitable death for any man in its path. The Takamusubi Chō-omo Daisen-Yoroi, when finally launched onto the battlefield in 1940, would quickly earn its nickname used by both its allies and would-be victims: Gokiri, The Trench Killer.