Upcoming Gundam Merchandise

Got the following news from toysdaily.

Robot Tamashii Mr. Bushido’s Ahead – February 2009.

Images from rakuten.co.jp

1/100 00 Gundam + O Raizer Box Set – December 2008. There is some mention in Japanese of a “special base colour” which I’m guessing applies to the Action Base 1 Celestial Being Ver. rather than a different colour scheme for the 00 Gundam.

Images from Happinet online

MG 1/100 G Fighter – January 2009. (Gundam Ver.2.0 not included)

Images from Amazon.com

HCM-Pro Arios Gundam – January 2009, 4200 yen. Comes with the GN Archer.

1/100 00 Gundam Hidden Feature

Image from Keita Nikki

My previous post mentioned the 1/100 00 Gundam having a surprise. Ngee Khiong has beat me to it, but this is it. Gunpla Secret Factory has pictures of the upper torso of the model accomodating an LED unit so that the head can light up. The great Keita has also done it, even showing the light-up head.

More details at momoja and maruneko.

Anime Festival Asia 2008

I was lucky to go for this event for a short while with a few friends and I snapped a few miserable-looking photos. Nonetheless I’ll still post them up here. You can see them posing with the cosplayers and stuff. By the way, I left the place with a 1/100 00 Gundam GET!!

edit: Re-uploaded the pictures to include captions and stuff. Am currently being annoyed by WordPress appending 1’s and 2’s to my pictures.

Awesome guy in a light-up Exia costume being mobbed by tons of photographers outside the entrance.

This statue greeted visitors near the entrance.

Takashimaya opened a booth near the entrance and they were making big bucks out of all the merchandise on sale which although were labelled “Offer” but were far from it. Here’s a shot of the SIC Limited Edition Den-O Rod and Ax Form going for $80 SGD. If I started on this, I will lose even more dough.

Then, 00 Gundam get! Couldn’t resist its light-up GN Drives. There is also another surprise about it that was just unearthed by some Japanese modellers. Very very exciting!

People were scrambling to snap pictures of the SD Exia at the Rapid Culture booth I couldn’t get a decent one.

Domo-kun at the Odex booth.

Kotobukiya’s 1/144 Daizengar at the Toy ‘N Toys booth.

Kotobukiya’s non scale Daizengar and Aussenseiter.

The awesome RAH Masked Riders. From left, Super-1, newly-released ZX and Black, Skyrider and Stronger.

On to the large Bandai booth.

Bandai’s GFF Metal Composite Gundam Ver.Ka and G Fighter.

Casval’s Custom Gundam.

Tamashii Spec Eva 00.

Tamashii Spec Eva 01.

Tamashii Spec Eva 03.

Tamashii Spec Eva 04.

Tamashii Spec Evas 01, 00 and 02.

SIC Masked Rider Black, Black RX and Shadow Moon.

SIC Masked Rider Kuuga and Blade (Jack Form). Once again nothing new.

The prototype model for SIC Masked Rider Zeronos and Deneb Imagin.

The current Den-O SIC lineup.

SIC Masked Rider Chalice and Joker. Notice the error on the info card.

SIC Masked Rider Faiz and Wolf Orphenoch.

Kabuto movie SHF figures, soon to be released.

More Kabuto Riders drool.

The rest of the current SHF lineup. They forgot about Kick and Punch Hoppers. Someday I’ll lay my hands on Rider 2.

Robot Spirits lineup.

Next up are the entries for the Singapore BAKUC gunpla competition.

Now on to the gunpla at the Bandai booth.

Painted MG Sinanju Ver.Ka.

1/100 O Riser/Raiser/Raizer, 00 Gundam and Action Base 1 Celestial Being Ver. They will come in a set in December. The O Riser/whatever spelling will also go on sale separately at 1260 yen. Thank goodness.

MG Gundam Ver.2.0.

The exclusive gunpla on sale. The 1/60 Gundam Exia Trans-Am Mode Clear Ver. was completely snapped up. The MG G-3 Gundam was also popular.

This is the winner of last year’s BAKUC competition rushing a PG Strike Gundam in 2 days.

Now on to the cosplay. There were several cosplayers scattered throughout the area. There may be more on Sunday as the cosplay competition is held.

Wasn’t on time to get a good shot of the cute Vocaloid Kagamine Rin posing with a little girl.

Well done CC and Lelouch cosplay. One day I should haul my lazy ass and start watching Code Geass.

Kakashi from Naruto. Never watched it, never will.

Awesome Sol Badguy cosplay. Reminds me of the days when we played Guilty Gear in school.

Managed to snap a picture of the man in the Exia suit on my way out. Look at his light-up GN Drive!

Len and Rin! Well done.

This mysterious cosplayer pays homage to the early days of Ranka Lee’s singing career. But why the covered face?!

Even younger kids are getting on the action. I think the girl on the left actually had red contact lenses, unless it was the red-eye effect.

My friend and his sister couldn’t resist not taking a picture with these two girls.

A failed attempt at strafing the humongous crowd waiting to get their tickets and go in. I think it was around 3pm that time.

One last picture of more cute cosplaying.

HG 1/100 Tallgeese

Obligatory front view.

Obligatory back view.

Close up of the head.

A close up showing the turbine-shaped detail up parts I used on the verniers.

Some action shots with its available armaments. The beam sabers are stowed behind the round buckler. The dober gun and buckler hang from the joints at the ends of the shoulder armour.

There is a handle at the back of the buckler allowing the Tallgeese to hold it. The magazine on the dober gun is removable.

Here are the unused parts for the Tallgeese III. The whip-like device is articulated at every link. They are made up of halves assembled sequentially, and they tend to show the seam line. The two extra shoulder armour pieces have slots in them and allow the extra strip of armour to attach on the outside. The heads are that of the Tallgeese III and II respectively. Lastly it’s the BFG the Tallgeese III uses. The barrel extends in length before allowing itself to split up and downwards. You can see how the colours are molded all wrong.

This is the first time I’ve painted an entire model and I’m relieved the flat Super Clear didn’t turn white and ruin it. I did have a hard time using the aqueous acrylic paint to do the panel lines though. Luckily there isn’t a need to make them very obvious as the primary colour of the model is white.

1/100 Tallgeese (part 2)

I have actually completed my 1/100 Tallgeese after 7 months of procrastination! However as I achieved that just a moment ago I haven’t had time to take pictures of it, though it won’t look very different from the ones I took last time.

The only work done on it since the last update is the pathetic attempt at doing the panel lines and a go at spraying flat all over the model. The results are much better than my previous attempts which always resulted in the model turning white. I guess the key to making it look alright is to go over it very fast and briefly. While spraying gloss requires the part to be wet, this does not apply when doing flat. Instead the part should just begin to show the flatness right away. If it looks wet, the coat is too thick and will almost certainly result in whiting.

Additionally, I gave the beam saber clear parts a coat of flat and the results were rather interesting to me. It’s almost like the airbrushed translucent blades the professionals do. Here’s a quick photo to show the result.

The top blade is sprayed with flat while the bottom one is the stock unpainted version. I believe there are some people who prefer the blades to be clear instead of being translucent or almost opaque. I think it gives the blade a glowing appearance.

This may be the last time I’m taking photos using my old 2 megapixel camera. When my parents purchased the split air-con, there was an offer where we could buy a “Sony 7 Pixel Digital Camera” at $5 SGD. My brother made them fall for it in the name of sharing it with me (he already has a Sony Ericsson 5 MP Cyber-shot phone, probably a C902, not sure of the exact number). It turns out to be a Cyber-shot S750. Perhaps I’ll take a picture of it using the old camera as its final picture. I’m not sure what the difference will be though, apart from having to deal with obscenely huge images.

In other news, Akibahobby has photos of the upcoming SHF Momotaros Imagin DX Set as well as upcoming SHF Kabuto series Masked Riders from the Miyazawa Model Show 2008 (beware questionable content ie. lots of questionable female figurines).

SHF Masked Rider Gatack has just been released in Japan. Time to lose more dough…

The absurd design of Masked Rider Decade has been confirmed in this magazine scan I stunned from SGCollect.

Image hotlinked from tinypic

Lastly on a model-related note here are a few prototype pictures of the GFF Metal Composite Zeta Plus. I believe it’s 1/100 scale and will cost a bomb as with all the other figures from the GFF line. However the Zeta Plus Hummingbird is just too cool to ignore, especially in its Wave Rider mode. It’s simply bursting with Katoki-ness and would look totally at home in a scrolling shootemup. If there were an MG model of it, I would snap it up right away.

Images hotlinked from amiami

Upcoming 00 Gunpla & Anime Festival Asia

Ngee Khiong has posted news of upcoming 00 gunplas.

Image originally from vipper.org

The NZ-003 Gadessa and GNR-101A GN Archer have been slated for a 2009 January release at 1575 and 1260 yen respectively. I can confidently declare that the Gadessa is 1/144 scale based on the price range. However I’m not too sure the GN Archer is also 1/144 scale.

Additionally, Gundamer has new images of its 00 Gundam + O Raiser set. Of note would be the 00 Gundam marking version which sports decals and a lighter colour scheme which ought to be the official colour of the 00 Gundam and Gundam Exia instead of the more saturated blue.

This weekend, there will be an Anime Festival Asia ‘08 held in Singapore, from 22-23 November 2008. This event aims to cover many popular otaku sects as you can see from the official website.

While it may be too late to obtain entry passes for the event, the official website has listed the following merchandise which may be on sale.

• 1/60 Gundam Exia Clear Trans-Am Version
• HG 1/144 Gundam Exia Clear Colour Version
• MG 1/100 Gundam Ver. OYW G3 Colour Version
• SOC GX-44 Tetsujin 28 and Black Ox

Product launches have also been listed, though it’s not explicitly mentioned if they will be on sale during the event.

• 1/100 00 Gundam
• HG 1/144 Seravee Gundam
• MG 1/100 Shin Matsunaga’s Zaku II Ver.2.0
• BB Senshi 317 Shusou Doven Wolf

Bandai’s SIC Limited Masked Rider Den-O Rod and Ax Form will also go on sale. There are only 30 pieces available and 30 lucky folks will lay their paws on sculptor Ando Kenji’s signature.

Also, 20 lucky folks who buy the MG 1/100 Gundam Ver.2.0 will also get to attend an autograph session with mecha designer Kunio Okawara.

There will also be a mystery RAH (Real Action Heroes) figure by Medicom Toy on show. Speaking of RAH figures, a RAH figure of Blade (played by Wesley Snipes) has been announced. Don’t be surprised this would be the exact one on show.

I wanted to continue working on my 1/100 Tallgeese but ended up spending the whole of yesterday and today evening completing Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. I lost my save file and replayed the game with cheats to catch up with my progress. Also I had already charged my batteries and was ready to take photos, but I had to clear up the mess that was my table and make way for people who will be coming over tomorrow to install a split air-con in my house. Can’t believe my parents actually spent so much dough on renovating both toilets, installing a heater (yes I have been showering either with unheated water or a big tub of hot water and a scoop for all my life until now), re-wiring the entire house and lighting, changed all the doors and now air-con’s for my parents’ room (of which the air-con was spoilt pretty long ago), the study room where I’m in and the bedroom I share with my brother. I find it pretty disconcerting it’s all done during this financial crisis.

SHF Masked Rider 1 The Next

Bandai’s first wave of SHF figures kicked off with the riders from the movie Masked Rider The Next. They included Riders 1, 2 and V3 and all of them were riders without weapons, and their figures came accordingly with very few accessories compared to newer releases like the Deneb Imagin and the upcoming Momotaros Imagin DX Set.

The green areas are painted in shiny gloss while the feelers are made with soft plastic. There is also an attempt at weathering the helmet as in the show where Riders 1 and 2 have battered helmets and clothes after many battles. It doesn’t look too pronounced as the scuff marks are done in a dark brown instead of silver in the product photos.

The belt is one piece along with the bottom part of the jacket-like clothing. Sadly with the thin waist, it hardly gives off a jackety vibe.

These are the few accessories that come with the figure. Extra hands (apart from the fists) include 3 variations of open palms. The muffler is worn by removing the head and placing it on the neck. This opens up opportunities for people to stick heads of other characters for fun.

There. I dug these pictures from my computer.

Hongo performs some manly poses to wow his enemies.

Some more old school Rider poses, like this one which I think is normally done by Rider 2/Ichimonji.

This one should be done by Hongo himself I think.

Bandai showed off the figure’s excellent articulation with a Rider Kick pose as the main image at the back of the box. It seems like they initially started the line with emphasis placed on highly articulated figures instead of armour pieces, gimmicks or accessories, with so much mention on the articulation before they were released. However now it seems like accessories are the way to go for their newer figures. The stand I used in this picture was taken from my Revoltech Fraulein Pocco which happened to be conveniently nearby at the time.

I wanted to take more pictures of Rider 1 with V3 but all my batteries were flat. I thought I could take the time to snap pictures of my other not-so-old figures and post them here. Somehow this pose doesn’t look too impressive but I think it shows how well the figure can pose, especially its lower half. As I’ve mentioned before, my complaint for this figure are its floppy legs that have lots of play side to side, making extreme poses harder for it to balance.

SHF Masked Rider Kabuto

After taking these photos and uploading them onto WordPress, I suddenly realised I forgot to crop them. But as promised, I will write about the SHF Masked Rider Kabuto. Mysteriously the figure wasn’t inundated with light compared to yesterday even though I placed the lamp in the same position.

The red parts of the armour are done in gloss. Unlike Kick and Punch Hopper, Kabuto does not have any chrome parts despite official product photos showing him to have chrome silver knee pads and details on the thighs. Instead, it is done in a drab silver which makes the colour consistent across the whole figure. Strangely, this figure seems to be suffering from bow-legged syndrome. Perhaps I had a bad one.

The head horn is hard plastic along with the rest of the head while the Kabuto Zecter on the belt is made up of soft plastic.

Obligatory rear view.

These are the weapons and extra hand parts provided. Sadly, the Kunai Gun comes in 2 forms instead of being two-in-one like the SH version, giving it less playability. Also, its size is reduced. The hand parts provided include a pair of open palms, Tendou’s signature sky-pointing hand as well as a pair of weapon-gripping hands.

Mysteriously, the colour balance of the photos was changed starting from the above one. I turned the camera off when preparing for the next group of shots and I guess the low battery power resulted in the inconsistency of photos. Blame it on my old rechargeable batteries that seemingly run out of power less than two weeks after charging them.

This is Kabuto with his Kunai Gun in Gun mode. The hand grips the weapon tight enough for it not to fall out by itself. Holding the weapon is achieved by forcing it into the grip. The hands are not made from hard plastic, allowing for some flex in them.

Pardon the blur shot, it’s Kabuto with his Kunai Gun in Ax mode. Strangely, I could not get the camera to focus when I took this shot, no matter how long the camera was pointing at him.

Lastly, it’s the Kunai mode, a separate part entirely, unlike the SH version where it is pulled out of the gun.

Kabuto in his signature sky-pointing pose.

“Walking the path of Heaven, the man who will rule over everything.”

Kabuto in preparation for his Rider Kick. In the show, he does it by pressing the Kabuto Zecter’s leg buttons in sequence…

<< ONE, TWO, THREE >>

Pushes the horn lever right and announcing,

“Rider Kick…”

Before pulling the horn back to the left, with the Zecter announcing,

<< RIDER KICK >>

The articulation of the SHF body is good enough for it to achieve the always well-timed finishing move.

Like all the other SHF figures, Kabuto uses the standard base body which consists of the following:

• a joint in the head and one in the base of the neck,
• a swiveling joint in each shoulder with the shoulder armour capable of lifting off the shoulder,
• rotation along the axis of the arm,
• double elbow joints,
• double wrist joints (one ball joint in the hand and one Revoltech-style joint),
• ball joint in the upper torso,
• ball joint in the waist,
• pelvis ball joints capable of bending downwards from the waist to improve leg articulation range,
• rotation along the axis of the leg,
• double knee joints,
• triple ankle joints and
• foot joints in the die-cast feet.

This gives the figure a whopping amount of articulation range. While the knee joints are now tighter compared to the SHF Rider 1, 2 and V3 which were extremely loose and had lots of play perpendicular to the joint (ie. left and right), my gripe with this figure is the bow legs it has. I would say that the figures with do not have any of these problems would be the Kick and Punch Hoppers. Also, some people may complain that the waist and head are too narrow, giving it a skinny silhouette instead of the bulkier form the SH version has.

Gets for Today

Here are my gets for today. I have tried to improve lighting using my clip-on lamp from above. However I am still using a really cheap background made up of two pieces of A4 paper. The photo would have looked better if I were using a larger size of paper instead, like an A2 sheet. This would eliminate the seam at the back as well as the distracting objects lying close by that were not intended to be captured.

I have finally obtained my long-overdue SHF Masked Rider 1 to accompany my SHF V3. Additionally I also have obtained the SHF Masked Rider Kabuto. I shall try to post a review of it as soon as possible. Unfortunately the shop that I bought it from didn’t have Masked Rider 2. Well maybe not unfortunately, or I would have walked away with 3 boxes and a larger hole in my wallet. To think I’ve already spent almost 20% of my allowancepittance for November…

It’s rather obvious that the SHF Kabuto is using a different font on its box art. Being the obsessive-compulsive bugger that I am, I’m pretty annoyed that the font has changed to the uncool Arial Narrow-style font which is different from my Kick and Punch Hoppers. Enough of that nonsense. Other things I’ve noticed include a Bandai Asia sticker on my Rider 1 with a Hong Kong address. However both of them have a hologram sticker with my country along with the words “Authorized distribution by Bandai Asia Co., Ltd”. A quick check on my older SHF figures reveals no such sticker anywhere on their boxes. Oh no!!

1/100 Tallgeese (incomplete)

I am guilty of updating this blog very sporadically. I will make up for it by finally picking up my lazy butt to take a photo of my 1/100 Tallgeese which is still incomplete after over 7 months of procrastination.

While the painting is done, I have yet to do the panel lines when I took these 2 photos in the afternoon. I have begun to do them using Gunze Sangyo Aqueous Hobby Colour and failed miserably. When wet, I can do the panel-lining job, but when dry I can’t get rid of the excess paint unless I use thinner which I risk ruining the paint job underneath. Despite following my friend’s directions to use water with a little bit of soap which I concur, my problem is that I can’t do the job as easily as I could if I had been using my Mr. Colour paint. I had no choice but to sand the paint off with fine sandpaper, and even resorted to gently rubbing it off using thinner, which works really effectively.

Below are the steps I have taken to build the model since mid-April 2008. You can check out a detailed page I posted on my previous blog much earlier.

1. Initial straight assembly of Tallgeese III
2. Decision to switch to Tallgeese I
3. Usage of putty to fix seam lines
4. Failed attempt at trying to improve the horrible elbow joints and head articulation
5. Sprayed Mr. Surfacer Gray on all parts
6. Spray-painted white parts poorly, messed up the paint job by piling all of them in a pile
7. Hand-painted black parts midnight blue
8. Hand-painted all other parts (rooster crown, eagle emblem etc.)
9. Re-did the paint job due to poor appearance and dust stuck all over the model and suspected mould growth
10. Added details to vernier nozzles using Kotobukiya’s Detail Up Parts (you can just see the turbine-looking nozzle in the photo above. It originally was just an ugly hole exposing the mounting peg inside.)
11. Sprayed Mr. Super Clear Gloss on most parts
12. Broke the ankle polycap mounts on both legs (due to poor design) and fixed them by holding the polycaps in place using epoxy putty (unfortunately on one leg the polycap may fall out if I pull on it)
13. Commenced panel-line painting
14. Regretted not sticking an LED inside the head to light the visor (which is just a hole) up

My house isn’t a good environment for model-building. There is so much dust that sometimes it gets stuck to the parts before the paint even finishes drying, and I have to redo the paint job when it gets bad. Also I frequently work on it at night and it’s difficult to notice if any dust is stuck before doing the next step. Recently I obtained a clip-on lamp; I hope it helps to make things better. And I still have an unopened 1/100 Gundam Exia which I got for free waiting for me. I might even consider getting the 1/100 00 Gundam when it comes out at the end of this month even though I know an MG version will come out in the distant future. I am a total sucker for gimmicks like lights.

I foresee myself spending lots of dough on upcoming SHF figures. I am also tempted to buy the Revoltech Gurren Lagann toys after watching the awesome anime. Seriously, it’s one of the few shows that made me watch many episodes at one go because I couldn’t wait to watch the next episode (unlike Macross Frontier which I have still yet to finish watching).

This week has been pretty eventful as I have had driving lessons the past 3 days (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) and regimental duty on Friday. The same routine will await me next week. What made my Saturday suck was that I lost my internet access the whole day. My cable modem’s AC adapter had one of its prongs broken, and there isn’t an easy way to get a replacement.The metal prong got stuck inside the terminal socket on the multitap and my mum dismantled the socket just to take it out. In the process the switch parts popped out and she couldn’t figure out how to put it back in.

After I managed to do it, she wasn’t too positive that it would work as per normal despite my confidence. There are no shops selling individual AC adapters, not to mention finding one that would fit. The ISP doesn’t just sell cable modems as they require some kind of activation to work and I am very sure this would involve lots of paper work and red tape. Going to the service centre wouldn’t be easy as the modem is around 5 years old.

However I got pissed with the lack of internet access and my parents allowed the adapter to be jacked back into the power point and remain powered on 24/7 (we were made to turn the modem off every night), so now I am surfing the tubes like a man just out of jail trying to make up for lost time.

It’s really depressing when everyone’s about to move on to the next chapter of life while I’m trying to catch up from so far behind, hoping that the current one would end as quickly as possible.