SHF Masked Rider Black RX & Tamashii Stage ACT2

SHF Masked Rider Kuuga Mighty Form

SHF Urataros Imagin

SHF Gets

These figures were a gift from my very generous brother. Reviews will be up soon.

SHF Momotaros Imagin DX Set

Today I went out to get some supplies for my new gunpla project. At the same time I gave in to temptation and got the SHF Momotaros DX Set.

Upcoming Merchandise: Masked Rider Kuuga Mighty Form

Toysdaily has a thread with pictures of the upcoming SHF Masked Rider Kuuga Mighty Form. It will be released in March 2009 at 2625 yen.

Other upcoming Gundam-related stuff below.

SHF Masked Rider Gatack

Taking a short break from painting my 00 Gundam, I finally got my long overdue SHF Masked Rider Gatack yesterday. The shop also had the Kabuto movie riders Hercus, Ketaros and Caucasus but I wasn’t keen on spending cash on three similar-looking riders that only appeared in a movie and not the series. I also didn’t really like the design of Caucasus’ head and the SHF yellow reminded me of yellow post-its and not gold.

Gundam 00 S2 Ep10 New Mech: Garazzo; SHF Masked Rider Kuuga

According to Toysdaily, the new mech that appeared in the Gundam 00 S2 Ep10 is named Garazzo (pardon my katakana translation) and will be joining the Gadessa in getting the Robot Tamashii treatment in March 2009.

Additionally, Masked Rider Kuuga will be released in SH Figuarts form, starting with Mighty Form and Titan Form in March 2009.

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

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.