I’m excited about this! I bought this Priss sofubi kit soon after I moved to Japan. I posted unboxing photos of this kit on my Tumblr account 11 years ago. I didn’t pay much for it at the time, but since then the price for sofubi kits have increased considerably. I began working on this kit a year ago and I like how it is turning out.
I’ve painted her entirely with sofubi paints. mostly V-Color but also I’ve used the new, water-based Mr. Hobby Sofubi Color for the metallic black parts. The metallic blue color of her hardsuit is a mixture of silver, clear blue, and a bit of regular blue V-Color paints. It looks so beautiful.
I finished painting her eyes last week, using acrylic paints. (She has red eyes in the anime, so this isn’t a case of my color-blindness causing me to make a mistake). I added a bit of white to the red paint to one side of her irises to give them two tones, then painted the black pupils, and finally the light spots.
Unlike other sofubi kits I’ve made, this one is made to be semi-poseable. Her arms pop into sockets and her legs can swivel at the thighs. Her heads can pop in and out, and I’ve employed magnets to make this easier. Her regular face is sculpted with her neck together, but her helmet has the head and neck as separate pieces. I have magnets in there to make her head movable.
I’ve since done a panel line wash using Turner Acryl Gouache black paint with Mr. Hobby Weathering Paint Gouache Solvent. All that’s left is the final assembly at this point.
Over a year ago, I posted about how I bought Luluce with Option Body Parts A03 (color C) and some optional hair styles. I had some leftover skin color from a Shantae garage kit I built a few years ago to give her a darker, sexier skintone (in my opinion), so I used this and did some shading with burnt umber Faber Castell and artist’s chalk for her breasts and butt. I was lucky to find a set of the official 30MS eye waterslide decals, which I don’t see often. Her hair color is Mr. Color Lascivus Aura CL103 Black Hair with Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color Black for shading. I sealed these with a flat coat. The rest of the parts are the original plastic. Her “assault rifle” is made by a company called Yamada, which I bought at a Seria 100 yen shop.
I want to work on her underboobs a bit more, because the shading I did is a bit too dark. I’ll pop that piece off and see what I can do.
I bought this bikini-like body parts set when I was nerd shopping with my friend Lou in March. I haven’t been able to find the bare legs and arms sets at any hobby stores, so I will probably buy a set on Yahoo Auctions Japan.
My friend Gary sent me this small, 3D-printed Minmay figure a few years ago. I’ve slowly worked on it since then. The UN Spacy logo is from a set of Macross decals I bought on eBay years back, some of which I’d used on my 1:100 Imai Armored Valk I finished earlier this year. The pattern on her dress is from leftover decals from a Haku Rinpha resin kit from Hasegawa Eggplane Girls series.
She is VERY small, so zooming in with my camera like this is exposing the flaws I cannot see with my naked eyes. Her eyes turned out better than I thought they would. The sides where her torso joins her waist does not fit together like I’d hoped it would, but it fits very well in the back.
As for the Buck Rogers Starfighter visible in these pictures, my friend Blake had sent me this. He asked if I wanted one and I asked if he could print one in roughly a 1:144 scale version to make it essentially like a Bandai Mecha Collection-sized kit. I scanned the decals from the Monogram kit and shrunk them down to size to fit this small kit.
So a couple of weekends ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Mandai in Takasaki and look at the neat stuff there. I first checked out the plastic model section. Here’s an Imai kit of the Big Mighty from Mighty Jack. Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans will know about Mighty Jack. I believe I saw the toolings for these models when I worked at Aoshima 9 years ago in one of the company’s storage warehouses.
Imai made a classic Batmobile in 1:42 scale. Weird scale. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kit before.
There were many vintage Arii and Imai Macross kits too. I was tempted to get this one, but decided not to.
Here are vintage kits of Macross, Ideon, Harlock, and Yamato.
Vintage Mospeada, Ideon, Dunbine, and L-Gaim kits.
They have new kits too, of course. Evangelion, Xabungle, Layzner, Dunbine, Sakura Taisen, and Super Robot Taisen. I’ve watched YT videos of that Asuka kit and she looks great, even unpainted.
Plenty of scale aviation kits too! I don’t see those 1:100 scale Platz jet fighter kits very often.
I saw this Street Fighter II bath towel and Chun-Li doll. I was tempted to get the towel, but I couldn’t resist the doll. “Ha ha ha ha! Yatta!”
Lots of Famicom and Super Famicom games, of course.
All the expensive games are kept in the display cases, of course. I didn’t know that Clock Tower was ported to the Wonderswan.
I played a few rounds of Shanghai on a Blast city cabinet in the Gunma Leisure Land game center downstairs.
King of Fighters was playing on a Nesica cabinet.
There was this nice sculpture of Rei on an Evangelion pachinko machine. I don’t ever remember seeing Rei with long hair. Maybe it’s from one of the new movies I never bothered watching.
Here are the signs for the restrooms: Jojo for male and Hatsune Miku for female.
On my trip to my hometown of Phoenix, AZ during my summer vacation, I was able to visit a Book Off on Bell Road! It opened within recent years. There have been Book Off stores all along in California. When Mayu and I used to live in America, we would visit the Book Off locations in Torrance, Garden Grove, Los Angeles and other areas. But now both Book Off and Daiso stores have opened in the Phoenix area.
Here are the signs outside.
Look at all the books! The books are in English, of course. Otherwise, the experience is just like a Book Off in Japan. This makes Book Off a direct competitor with the long-standing Bookmans store locations in Arizona.
The store clerk says that so much of this stuff is imported from the Book Off locations in Japan. I guess they buy so much stuff that they just export it to the USA for sale there.
So many anime figures for sale in the display case.
So many pin buttons, keychains, and small figures. Just like a Book Off in Japan.
They have import Famicom games from Japan! Star Wars, Red Arima, Parodius, Galaga… neat stuff!
Import Famicom and Super Famicom games too.
Domestically-released modern games are sold used there as well, of course.
This is the Grave of the Fireflies movie soundtrack on vinyl record. I was surprised to find this.
Huge selection of used, English-language manga. I bought several used volumes of Spy Family.
Gunpla! There were also other model kits there too. I even saw an Eggplane Girl resin figure by Hasegawa there, and for a good price. This is so cool.
Dollar books. Very neat. I didn’t have time to look at the SF book selection there. It would’ve been nice if I had more time to spend, but I had quite a busy itinerary with my friends Kevin and Brian. (Our next destination was Andy’s Hobby HQ which I featured in my previous blog post.)
Many years ago, I wrote an essay on my history of the plastic model hobby. I mentioned how it was my wife Mayu who got me back into the hobby. Although I had bought a couple of models here and there, she is the one who came home one day in 2005 with an AT-AT from Empire Strikes Back by AMT and asked me to build her a “doggy horse” as she called them. That’s what got me back into the hobby.
I grew up with a local hobby retail chain called Hobby Bench. In fact, this is where Mayu bought the AT-AT, as she went inside while waiting for the next bus to take her home. While they had a decent supply of model kits, supplies and tools, the guys working the counter only seemed to care about radio control stuff. They’d always be talking with other RC hobby enthusiasts, to the point where I felt hesitant to even ask a question. I once asked if it’s possible to mix Testors acrylic paints with Tamiya acrylic paints and the clerk said, “Yeah, they’re both acrylics. Why not?” Well, that turned out to not be a good idea and it just shows their lack of expertise.
Then I discovered Andy’s Hobby Headquarters. I was impressed with both Andy’s knowledge and enthusiasm for the model hobby, and there was no RC stuff in his store at all! His store was focused solely on plastic modeling. His advice was always great and I always enjoyed talking with him.
Before I moved back to Japan, I gave him a huge stack of Hobby Japan ad Dengeki Hobby magazines to share with his modeling club. The last time I saw him was in March 2012, when I bought my 1:537 USS Reliant from Star Trek and the corresponding decals. Then eventually Andy became well-known among the YouTube modeling community.
In my recent trip to Arizona, I stopped by. He wasn’t there, and the man working there seemed used to disappointing people for not being Andy. Andy now spends most of his time at the new Hobby HQ store in Tolleson. The guy working at the original location may as well have a nametag that says, “Hi, I’m NOT Andy. Deal with it.” It was still cool to see how the store has changed, though. Here are some pictures I took.
I was surprised to see a Perfect Grade Millennium Falcon there!
There was this awesome Cylon Raider by Moebius Models hanging from the ceiling. I reached up high to take this photo. There was also an old Kenner X-Wing toy behind it. Notice all the Gunpla on the shelves in the background below.
Lots of Perfect Grade Gundam models.
So many Fujimi car model kits! Years ago when I worked at Aoshima, I had tried to build a relationship with Andy and tried to get him to purchase Aoshima kits directly from me. It didn’t really work out though. I don’t know why. Still, it was great to see all of the Fujimi car kits there.
I was surprised to see so many Hasegawa kits with their old box designs.
Here you can see the new Hasegawa boxes (top) and the old ones (bottom).
I wished I had taken more photos, but I actually ended up talking quite a lot with the store clerk. I know people would’ve liked me to take a video tour of the store, but I was with two friends and we had other places to go. I wasn’t alone. Maybe next time!
I took this old Imai/Bandai Macross Glaug kit to work on while staying at the in-laws’ place for a 4-day summer holiday weekend. I figured that I’d get familiar with these older kits before building the new Hasegawa ones. But, I am a bit surprised. There are no bottom parts for the feet of this old Glaug kit! I can’t believe they made the kit like this. Seems a bit half-assed. Now I feel compelled to cut some Tamiya Pla-Plate to make my own feet bottoms. I’m also going to modify this with proper clear lens pieces as well as ball joints where I can.
This old Imai Glaug kit is from the ’80s. Bandai bought the Macross molds from Imai long ago and re-issued them under their name. Not all of them though apparently, since Bandai never once repopped the Armored Valkyrie kit I completed this year, or the Zentraedi recon ship. They repop the Zentraedi battle pod and Destroid kits every once in a while, and this one I have was released for the 25th anniversary of Macross. I paid only 1,020 yen for it about 12 years ago.
