Overall views. I used lighter colours for the colour scheme, with fluorescent pink being a component for most of the colours. The camera doesn’t pick it up on the blue areas though; in reality it’s somewhere between blue and purple.

Colour changes to certain parts were done following a particular low-res photo I found which was used to sell those add-on feathers kits. I have no idea who the original modeler was. There are several other modelers who also followed the same style but you could tell the differences between everyone’s versions in the details. The colour layout takes some aspects of the Wing Ver.ka and increases the proportion of white across the entire model. I tried to follow as closely as I could to the first set of pictures I found but there were some areas which I either forgot about or did not have the skills to replicate. Of course, mine were also different in that I didn’t have the extra feathers, and I slapped on those little markings on the corners.

For the head, I tried keita-style cameras on the forehead and silver tape for the eyes so that they are visible.

Scribed some extra lines on the shoulder and upper arms. Added some Kotobukiya pistons on the elbows. The forearm sensors were somewhat rushed, with only the LED and a round mold underneath the clear cover.

Extended the torso by around 1 mm but the difference wasn’t noticeable. The Zero System indicator/chest orb was done using a K round mold with a clear lens set inside it. The lens was painted clear green, then given another layer of clear blue over it. Not sure what I did to my clear blue paint but it made the lens much less reflective/smooth as before. Also cut a bit of material off the cockpit hatch to create the gap around it.

Scribed some lines near the edges of the front skirt armour and did some recessed detail with aftermarket metal parts set in them.

Added recesses to the thighs which were painted, and some more panel lines and recesses for the rest of the legs. The feet were also slightly altered from the stock version.

I always forget to paint the beam saber blades but I finally did this time round. The Twin Buster Rifles were painted in a light gray, with yellow sights and some red piping.

Keita-style scopes.

Despite the double-jointed ankles, they only have a limited range so articulation is mediocre. The wings also usually support the model due to their huge size and weight.

The included stand makes things easier.

I didn’t add holes to the beam sabers for the hands to peg into so there is some difficulty holding them properly.

I must say this is my favourite pose as he doesn’t look so stiff here.

Those of you who play Super Robot Wars would know this move is also a MAP attack.

The iconic Twin Buster Rifle shot.

“Mission complete…”

Looking cool pose. In the end the wings were are hassle to fiddle with and made a lot of chipped paint.

With the LEDs on.

Work process:

1. Initial assembly [link]
2. Minor detail work (panel lines/recesses, sheet styrene, aftermarket parts) [link]
3. Modifications to accommodate LED lights [link]
4. Primed with Tamiya Fine Surfacer and sanded, rinse and repeat [link]
5. Painted inner frame
6. Failed pre-shading
7. Painted white parts (several times over)
8. For the sub-wings, removed the seam lines and painted the wings white
9. Painted other colours: yellow, blue, red [link]
10. Hand painted minor details
11. Gloss coat with Mr Super Clear Gloss UV Cut
12. Panel lines and decals (generic markings from Samuel Decal)
13. Flat top coat (Mr Super Clear Flat UV Cut)
14. Partial re-assembly and finished the electrical wiring [link]
15. Clear parts/sensors painted and attached
16. Final re-assembly

Colour scheme:

• White: White + Neutral Gray (tiny bit), then White
• Dark Gray: Neutral Gray + Black
• Yellow: Yellow + White + Fluorescent Pink (small amount)
• Blue: Cobalt Blue + White + Fluorescent Pink
• Red: Red Madder + White + Fluorescent Pink (small amount)
• Light Gray (rifles): Neutral Gray + White
• Clear Green: Clear Blue + Clear Yellow
• Clear Purple: Clear Red + Clear Blue
• Panel line wash: (T) Flat Black + (T) Neutral Gray

All colours used are Mr. Color unless specified: G = Gaia Color, T = Tamiya Enamel X- series

Some of the problems encountered on the way were described in my progress updates. Paint chipping was also an issue especially on the arms of the sub-wings. However the one biggest disaster – the LED on the left arm stopped working after I was finished with everything. Things were still working perfectly before I did the clear parts, so now I can’t tell whether it’s a case of bad connections inside the cockpit which will be incredibly tough to fix, or the LED just died which is slightly easier if I can pry the lens cover and re-solder some new LED in place. That explains why I left the light-up picture for last. Having the switch hidden inside the cockpit also resulted in lots of frustration prying the hatch open, and lots of chipped paint around the area.

Anyway, this appears to be my longest-running build to date, so thanks for watching till the end! Looks like my supplies are going back to their boxes, and I may be back to the days of one post a month as I have also slowed down on my toy purchases too. I will be going for an internship next week onwards, so I can’t tell if I will have time to do any building this summer since I will be working then.

I got all the parts panel lined and slapped a few decals here and there. Most of the fancy graphics that came with the kit were stickers which I had no choice but to avoid. Besides, people have been saying that this MS (and its fellow Wing/EW brethren) is designed with psychological warfare in mind. Imagine seeing an angel/devil shooting/slashing the crap out of everything in the battlefield. So I just stuck to the generic markings found on every corner of a Ver.ka kit.

With the wires already threaded through some of the parts, the next step was to put them together in the right order for the final connections to be made inside the torso. Here’s a picture I took with all 5 pairs of wires sticking out the cockpit hatch. The objective was to connect all of them with a switch and cram everything inside.

After a few hours’ worth of messing around I was finally able to connect all 4 LEDs in parallel to the switch and battery, and there was barely enough space inside I simply used a stick and shoved whatever I could.

The final step would be to deal with the clear parts/sensors.

In any case, it took almost a week to get over this problem. Only around that time I remembered from building my Z plus that the base colour had a subtly important role in determining how the final colour would look. I guess I was too used to those gloss-finished kits the past year and a half. I dug up some Mr Base White and went to blast all the other coloured parts with it. This ought to make the final colour slightly brighter with the gray undertones eliminated. For the rest of the white coloured parts, I really hope they turn out okay in the end.

With the white problem over the other colours were a breeze in comparison.

Sorry for the poor picture quality – I’ve been using my phone to take these pictures for quite a while. The blue colour is a little over-saturated in the picture though. Within the span of just one day I did 3 other colours – yellow, blue and red. Almost all of the kit is painted, leaving the minor details which will be a difficult test for my now horrible hand-painting skills. I’m scared when I look at my shaky hands.

I’m also working on the seam lines on the rifles right now. Since their design is quite simple, I decided to paint them in a lighter shade to make whatever detail easier to see. Sorry, no modding work on them. It would have been nicer if I could light them up with LEDs but with my limited skill I didn’t want to permanently fix the guns to the hands just to be able to light them up.

Hopefully I can get some progress done this week.

The one good thing right now is that I have an internship that starts in February so that gives me a few weeks of rather slack school life (I hope) before everything goes into full force where I will be working on weekdays and going to school at night twice a week.

What I did the past week was to prime the kit. I had to re-sand and re-prime a lot of areas because I conveniently forgot to sand with higher grit sandpaper the first time round. There were a few seams to fix again, and I commenced painting with the first colour – the inner frame.

There aren’t many inner frame parts on this old model so that was taken care of quite quickly. After a few evenings gone, I attempted to do some pre-shading which turned out horribly. I prepared my white paint mixture but it was also not bright enough. The gray primer and the black paint made my parts too dark so I’m doing another layer of newly mixed white over them. I could get lazy and simply slap on some white without mixing it but the WZC has those soft plastic ‘feathers’ on its wings which don’t take too well to paint, so I had to follow the molded colour.

Getting the white parts done would take a few rounds as I have to deal with seams on the wings too. I think those will take some time to get done, following which it’s the other colours. I also ran out of my white colour mix and had to prepare another batch. Needless to say I couldn’t get the exact colour right and that was more time spent. Some of the parts can only be painted after the other coloured parts are painted, so that is a hassle.

With this one picture the answer should be quite obvious.

It’s easier to work with these prepacked tiny kits as you don’t have to travel around sourcing them and the SMD LEDs are much smaller than those I’ve worked with before. They’re pre-wired so I don’t have to struggle with trying to solder wires onto their tiny terminals. The biggest challenge though is still the wiring and finding the right place to store the power source. I could take the easy way out by running an umbilical cord, but I decided to make this guy self-contained. To make things difficult, the Wing Zero is slightly smaller than most other MGs.

After looking around the backpack and torso which are usually potential spots to store the battery, I found that it was possible to hide the battery inside the crotch area.

Dug out as much plastic as possible inside and cut a notch in the polycap. There was just enough space to fit the battery.

Drilled a hole behind the polycap to run the wires out.

Working on the torso, I had to make space for the switch and for all the wires to meet. I sacrificed cockpit detail and removed the back of the pilot seat. The Zero System indicator was also getting an LED. The pilot figure will be left out to make space for the wiring and switch.

Too bad the finished product won’t look half as bright as this right now. I’ll be covering the LED with the usual silver tape + lens combo so that the orb would still look halfway decent without any light. Also, this LED isn’t alone…

The arms are also getting the LED treatment.

Drilled holes to run the wires through the entire arm. I’m a little worried about the structural integrity of the elbow joints as quite a bit of material was removed to allow the wires to thread through them, and ABS joints are brittle and will crumble in a few years.

Testing them out. The articulation range of the elbow is reduced to around 135 degrees due to my poor positioning of the wires. Could have stretched the range a bit more but I’m not keen on removing even more material from the joints.

Topping things off with the head.

Derp, the LED is so small it can’t be seen clearly in this picture. It’s sitting between the putty mess and the polycap. Cut the forehead camera off so that the face can be re-attached after painting.

Again the final product won’t be bright as I would most probably cover the eyes with silver tape too. Also I wonder if the little battery can even put out enough juice to power all 4 LEDs at the same time. I’ll see how it goes. However, things are far from over as I can only join all the connections when I’m at the very last stage of re-assembly.

Back to the pla-plate nonsense, I extended the waist by around 1mm as I found the arms to be a little long. The waist joint extension isn’t anything special – just some sheet styrene, a piece of brass wire and some super glue. Put a few pieces of plastic around the gap in the waist to make the joint less obvious. It still looks a little empty inside there but I can’t think of a good way to fill it up without losing the upper joint’s ab crunch ability.

I should be done with my messing around so it’s one round of checking through the parts again before priming them. Then it’s another round of checking. I have a feeling I may need to fix all my freehand scribing and chiseling.

In my previous post I mentioned I had plans for my Wing Zero Custom. I guess there’s  no point keeping them a secret since there would be no progress updates otherwise. First, it’s the details.

I was really glad to be able to find this and a bunch of Kotobukiya parts which I really needed for this project. Gonna act like a pro and slap on a truckload of Kotobukiya parts on this guy.

For panel lines I’ll try to level up my lack of skills.

Got a chisel to help me make more details instead of flooding lines alone. I went to search the internet for tutorials on how to do this to no avail. All I could find were tutorials on how to draw panel lines, nothing new. At first I thought using a scriber alone would be enough, but I ended up with a horrible looking chunk of crap, and then realised I needed the right tool for the job. This is only a single width, but brands like Sujiborido offer an assortment of widths that cater to the highest-level panel liners.

Here’s an example of what it can do. Left: before, right: after.

Along with K parts and panel lines, it’s also necessary to spam those pla-plates.

The poor guy’s feet became my guinea pigs.

One problem with the hands is that they cannot hold the buster rifles at all. Good thing they re-used the Ver.ka runners, as you would end up with 2 pairs of hands! That means I could mess up one pair with another pair to spare.

I stuck a piece of brass wire so it would work like the tabs in the newer releases.

Hoping I would nail things right, I made holes in the corresponding positions in the handles of the guns. Things turned out better than I expected, so now I have 2 pairs of hands. The downside is that only 1 pair of the hand armour pieces are provided.

Also before I got the chisel, I made a big mistake which took a week to fix.

It’s a long story which would probably confuse anybody but I went to cut the front thigh armour pieces apart and realised I was doing it wrong, so I tried to undo my mistake. As I removed quite a bit of material during the cut it wasn’t sufficient to simply cement the parts back together. I tried using my epoxy putty to join things but it wasn’t very sticky (probably due to it being a few years old already), and the contact area was also probably too small as well. Re-attached the parts using 1mm sheet styrene and reinforced them with some brass wire. Didn’t take any pics though as I just winged it. Hopefully after all the puttying and sanding it would look as normal as possible.

Aaaaand the second plan is still anyone’s guess.

This is taking much longer than I expected.

Package contents. Homura comes quite generously packed as the standard small-size figma box hides a second tray that specially holds just her extra hairstyle alone. You get a lower arm with her shield, a pistol, a pipe bomb, 2 extra faces, a pair of glasses, a gold club, a bazooka, 8 extra hands (3 left hands, 5 right hands), and the extra hairstyle part. The extra number of right hands are for holding her various accessories.

Overall views. Homura has a simpler design compared to her BFF, and the overall quality is much better as well. The paint job is better done.

The printing on the faces are well-done, but I have issues with them as I find them somewhat strange-looking and I can’t pinpoint the exact reason.

All faces allow for her glasses to be clipped on, so you can mix and match her hairstyle, glasses and expression.

The braids hairstyle is made of flexible plastic and does not have any joints.

Her clothes are much simpler in design so the paint mistakes are less obvious. The entire body is made of soft plastic and the cuts for upper waist joint are well-hidden.

Soul Gem on the left hand.

The cut for the upper waist joint is only visible from behind.

The figma joints on the legs are slightly more purple.

The figure can’t really look up due to the non-moving parts at the back of the head getting in the way. The longer bits of hair on the front hair piece are made of soft plastic.

Elbow joints are the standard figma versions, not the shrunken ones. The upper waist joint is practically useless as the soft plastic still isn’t flexible enough to allow her torso to twist in any direction at all.

The skirt is made of a single piece of flexible plastic so forward leg articulation is limited.

The extra lower arm with her shield. It is attached via a peg so you can rotate or detach it. However, you cannot display the shield opened up.

Handgun.

Bazooka. The trigger is removable. It can’t rest of Homura’s shoulders so it’s just perched precariously on her arm and hair.

One of the extra right hands allows for the bazooka to be held in a different fashion.

Pipe bomb. Also has a right hand dedicated to holding it.

Golf club. While it’s not a frequently encountered prop in the show, it is still quite well-made and it was nice to be included with the figure.

I can’t really make it do the Shaft pose that well.

Conclusion? I was pleasantly surprised by this figure. While I don’t like the faces, the rest of the figure is well-made and it comes with quite a few accessories. Homura uses all sorts of physical weapons, so if you have any other weapons that are in the same scale, it adds on to her play value as you can pose her using all sorts of weapons to beat up those Witches. However, there may be concerns about her clothes staining as the coloured areas like the ribbons may stain her white dress. Anyway, I’d recommend her over Madoka any day, but she might be harder to find now due to the popularity of the series.

★★★★☆

As above. Again it’s been a long time since my previous Gundam kit, but I’ve wanted to build one of these for quite some time already. When the MG Delta Plus was announced I got sidetracked a little, and then came Gundam Unicorn ep. 4 which sidetracked me a lot with all the mecha porn (Sieg Zeon). I kept to my own promise and was a little surprised to be able to find this guy easily right after my exams.

He can’t even hold his rifles. Oh dear.

It took a week to get this guy built up, and now I’ve torn it back apart and gone down to the chores. I’ve got a little plan for this guy which I envisioned for a long time, and it’s gonna be quite difficult to pull off at least with my rusty, horribly noob skills. I thought of getting one of those add-on kits for some wing overkill but decided against it later on. For now I’ll be sticking to the out-of-box kit with maybe some minor changes to the colour scheme – not metallic colours this time.

I’m not sure whether I can actually finish this by the end of the year, since I’m already facing several roadblocks with my plans and I haven’t even gotten around to sanding all the parts down. Gonna do a third resupply trip to see if the shops carry the one specific tool I need. I hope I can get enough done to be able to post updates weekly.

Here’s a review of Bunny. I was lucky to be able to pre-order him when I bought Wild Tiger and I only went to collect him after my exams ended. I had somewhat high expectations (not sure why) but was completely let down by the figure. I’ll tell you why later.

Seriously, that’s all you get. A pair of generic open hands. Agito syndrome. I was really disappointed when I found this out. To make things worse, Bandai is pulling off a Trinity Form by releasing extra hands with Darkness Bunny. Fuuuu~

The included stand. The included stand. Why bother putting his name twice if he’s using his own name? Why bother putting his name twice if he’s using his own name?

Overall views. WordPress changed the conditions for displaying shrunken images so the images in all my old reviews are all in full size. Bunny looks just like his animated counterpart. Clear parts are used where required, but there are fewer clear areas compared to Wild Tiger.

One of the bunny ears on my figure isn’t as sharp as the other and it is slightly bent with white stress marks. So much for the protective space around the head in the package. I’d give some credit for Bandai trying hard to paint the complicated face patterns.

Bandai logo emblazoned across his chest and a little emblem on the left side. The pink lines on the stomach are supposed to be clear but the pink paint looks too milky to look convincing.

Just look at the crack marks on the left arm. Oh god. The right arm is fine though. The details on the hands are painted.

Legs look a bit similar to Wild Tiger’s with the nice die-cast feet.

On the other hand it looks as though the paint on the feet has been chipped in several areas.

Good Luck Mode right leg. The middle part of the leg is supposed to be gold but we saw that coming as the promotional pictures showed it in dark gray. And the limited Darkness Bunny has it painted correctly…

Surprisingly it has a complete double knee joint and a rather limited ankle ball joint with a movable ankle cover (the pink piece on the front).

Attaching the leg is done by pulling out the existing leg at the thigh swivel and replacing it.

As expected, head articulation is horribly limited due to the high collar.

The waist joint is more flexible than Wild Tiger’s though.

Typical arm articulation, but the wrist joints are gone leaving only the ball attachment points for the hands. I guess they’re not needed because of the arm gauntlets getting in the way. Oh and on my figure the right elbow joint has chipped paint due to the arm gauntlet rubbing against it. Sigh…

The hip joints, despite being the movable type, are slightly more constrained but kneeling poses are still fine. On my figure both hip joints were impossibly tight so I had to grease them with some shock oil.

Again with the limited ankle articulation, that’s as far as you can spread the legs with both feet still firmly on the ground.

The two “tails” on the back have their own ball joints. They have some inner frame mechanical detail underneath the clear canopies.

A replacement right arm gauntlet is provided with Amazon Japan’s logo printed on it. It’s possible replace the cracked left arm on my figure with the logo upside down though.

Barnaby prefers kicks to punches.

That horrible left arm.

Rider Kick~

Toh~

GOOD LUCK Mode

3…

2…

1…

Tiger and Bunny, over and out!

Didn’t have an Uva for them to attack since Japan has some fascination with Uva getting his ass handed to him.

“Why are you smiling?”

“I’m not smiling.”

“So… Will this thing stay like this?”

“My name’s not Bunny. It’s Barnaby.”

So why am I disappointed with this figure knowing that it will be typical Bandai Crap Quality? I think the exceptionally horrible quality on mine took it to the next level. And the shocking lack of extra hands, then finding out that the limited Darkness Bunny and Wild Tiger 1Minute are going to come with extra hands for their counterparts. Especially Wild Tiger 1Minute which is exactly the same except with an extra emblem at the back of the neck, no Good Luck Mode, a whopping 6 pairs of hands for those comedic poses and it’s cheaper than the normal release. If they could give Bunny an extra arm gauntlet, why not do it with Wild Tiger? But I digress.

Out of fairness I decided to give 2 stars rather than 1. Deducted stars for articulation, unusually bad quality and for Bandai milking to the max making you buy exclusives just to get a decent selection of hands. Tamashii Web, oh you.

★★☆☆☆

No clear window on the box this time round. What is Kamen Rider Birth without his weapons? SHF Birth was a let-down as it didn’t come with any of its capsule weapons, so I gave in and got this to go along. Seriously, this guy is like the father of Kamen Rider Fourze. Bandai must have realized how big a cash cow this gimmick could be and made it the main theme in Fourze.

Package contents. One look at the stuff and you can instantly notice the horrendously cheap-looking gray plastic used on the parts. You get the various capsule weapons, a milk can, a bunch of attachment parts for the weapons, the Gorilla Candroid in active and can modes, and replacement chest armour pieces.

The parts assembled into the CLAWs Scorpion. I realised I had the left and right arms swapped after I uploaded the pictures.

Date’s trusty milk can. It has holes for a shoulder strap to go through (but none are provided) and it opens up to reveal that it is full of Cell Medals that are stuck inside, along with a Scorpion Cell Medal right in the centre.

The Gorilla Candroid is also included as a static display piece in both active and can modes.

Drill Arm. The drill can rotate but the joint is rather tight. The hand is detached and an attachment part is clipped around the wrist brace. The existing wrist joint then connects to a hole inside the weapon.

Crane Arm. The boom is extendable. An extra shoulder pad is provided to replace the original. Not sure why as it seems unnecessary. The Crane Arm is attached to the wrist joint.

An included wire allows the hook to be extended. The Drill Arm can also attach using an attachment part on the hook.

Shovel Arm. The jaw is movable. It attaches the same way as the Drill Arm.

Breast Cannon. The chest armour pieces are exchanged with those given in the CLAWs set. The cannon attaches via a peg on the chest.

Cutter Wing. The wings can fold up.

Here’s a look at the replacement chest pieces. They don’t have the clear orbs on them but at least they aren’t left in the crappy gray color.

Caterpillar Leg. The feet areas are movable but their range is quite limited and aren’t very show-accurate. The figure also stands somewhat precariously on the edges of the legs. The die-cast feet are removed and a pair of attachment parts are clipped on the lower legs. The Caterpillar Legs connect to the holes in the ankles.

*pop~* “Drill Arm”

“Crane Arm”

“Shovel Arm”

“Breast Cannon”

Breast Cannon Shoot~ “Cell Burst”

“Cutter Wing”

“Caterpillar Leg”

I think during the show the CLAWs Scorpion was somewhat larger than Birth itself. It looks a little underwhelming now.

Birth Day. Only someone like Kougami the Cake Boss would give a name like that.

Unfortunately it is difficult to put the figure into a decent pose as the right arm is quite heavy and most of the weapons just get in the way. Also on my figure the hip joints are incredibly loose and I didn’t fix them for this review. The total weight of the figure is also too much for my stand to take without sagging. :/ It’s a classic case of “you are over-encumbered and cannot run.”

Front and back views.

Looking at this promotional picture of the CLAWs Scorpion, you could probably conclude that Bandai shafted its victims with a bait-and-switch. Some have suggested drawing in the panel lines to make it less cheap-looking. The CLAWs Set gives you practically unlimited play value as you can use any combination of weapons. However the OCC series counterpart does the exact same thing for a fraction of the price – Shewsbury Land has a comprehensive review. Now that Birth Prototype has been announced and it includes a Breast Cannon and Crane Arm, you can see the cheap plastic used on them in the photos. The CLAWs Set cost a fair bit more than Birth itself and looks so cheap. Now the exclusive Birth Prototype is only a bit more expensive than Birth itself. Why…

My conclusion? Not really recommended. Those who canceled their pre-orders saved a fair bit of money. I think you can find this on second-hand retailers for less than Bandai’s asking price.

★★☆☆☆

Extra: Music Time!

edit: oh my god screw you wordpress for removing the ability to display smaller images in ALL of my entries now all of them are all in full size and despite shrinking them in the previews they still show up full size on the site