Sayounara Nippon

September 1, 2022 at 23:40 | Posted in Random rants | 6 Comments

As they say, all good things must come to an end. And so the time has come for me to say goodbye to Japan. Throughout my stay here, I’ve built plenty of Gunpla, been to several hobby shows, and visited a couple of life-sized Gundams. I do consider myself lucky to be in this situation and I’m grateful for it.

So what next for this blog? Well, it seems inevitable that my gunpla activities will slowly come to a halt and maybe die a natural death. But I still have a couple of completed kits that I haven’t photographed, plus a few unbuilt kits. So fear not, there’s still some contents left in this blog.

Rather than making this post just a wall of text, I’ll just leave this scenery that I’ll definitely miss:

富士山

Golden Week Gundams

May 9, 2022 at 20:43 | Posted in Random rants | Leave a comment
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I don’t usually travel during Japan’s Golden Week holidays, but this year was an exception. After travel restrictions have been eased, I decided to visit two locations with life-sized Gundams.
The first spot was Fukuoka in northern Kyushu, where the RX-93 was just recently completed. The proportions were closer to the RG version instead of the MG ver.Ka, thankfully. The new color scheme takes getting used to, and I’m not really fond of the unicorn logos on the right leg & left shoulder.
Unfortunately because of Golden Week, access to the Gundam Base shop inside the shopping center was restricted. Tickets had to be pre-purchased online to go inside and buy the RG RX-93 ver. Fukuoka, among other things.
Anyway, when it got dark, there was a light up show with a short animation screened on the shopping center walls. The RX-93’s right arm was raised and the head turned to the right.
2/10 points for range of movement; 10/10 for details & proportion; 5/10 for color scheme.

After a couple of days rest, I went to the Gundam Factory in Yokohama where the RX-78F00 was. Unlike the RX-93 in Fukuoka & Unicorn in Odaiba, this one requires an entrance ticket and for an extra 3,300 yen you can climb up the dock tower to get a closer look.
The main gimmick for this one was its mobility, and I was thoroughly impressed. It can kneel, raise its hands, move its fingers, open the cockpit hatch. Granted, its feet were not planted on the ground, but attached to the dock via its back.
I wasn’t too impressed by the design & color scheme, though. Too many diagonal panel lines & triangular shapes to my liking. Anyway, the Gundam Base shop was fully accessible and I bought myself a 1/48 scale bust of the RX-78F00.
10/10 points for range of movement; 5/10 for details & proportion; 5/10 for color scheme.

Project Remake: Final report

December 31, 2021 at 01:33 | Posted in Etc, Random rants | Leave a comment
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For the Project Remake, I set out to rebuild gunpla that I built when I was just a fledgling builder. It was borne out of a sense of nostalgia, but I was also curious to see how my skills have progressed over the course of 10+ years. I selected 8 kits for this project: 1 HGUC, 1 RG, 5 MGs, and 1 PGU.

I didn’t take a group photo of all of them due to lack of space for photography, so I made side by side photos of the old and the new. Hopefully it’s obvious that the ones on the right are the Remakes.

Astray Red Frame

Zaku II

Z.A.K.U Warrior

Heavyarms Custom

Wing Gundam Zero

Mk-II Titans

Freedom Gundam

Realtype Gundam

Overall it was pretty fun & satisfying project, although most of it was just custom painting with little or no modifications. Nonetheless, I’m pretty happy with all 8 builds and I might just consider expanding this project to include more builds from my past. But for now, I’ll take a short break from gunpla since I foresee a slightly busy 2022 for me. Happy new year!

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