I bought these vintage Arii Macross model kits on YAJ this past week. The standard Regult on the left and the Light Missile Carrier on the right. I’ve already built the Heavy Missile Carrier and Scout Regults. These kits were not repopped for the Macross 15th Anniversary in ’97. In fact as far as I know, the only models Arii released for the 15th anniversary were the 1:100 Destroid and Valkyrie kits (and maybe the 1:170 Valkyrie kits).
The standard Regult was released first, and the “knee” joints aren’t so good. These parts were re-tooled for the scout and the two missile carriers, but the first one isn’t capable of bending into a sort of “fetal position” in standby mode like the others can. Despite their age, the decals for both kits seem like they are alright. Like the Regults I’ve already completed, I will use aftermarket parts by Wave and Kotobukiya to improve detail.
Wow, I’ve never seen this box cover before! This is the 15th anniversary 1:100 VF-1J kit by Arii. Of all the 15th anniversary boxes, I’ve never seen one featuring DYRL artwork. I came across this on Mercari and would be tempted to get it for the box art alone (well, that and because I have an impulsive mental problem), but I wouldn’t pay 4,300 yen for it. Still, the bags inside are unopened and the decals are in good condition. The figure inside is a mystery since the black bag it comes in is unopened. I’ll pass.
I remember when I first visited Japan in summer of 1998, I saw piles of these 15th anniversary Arii model kits. They were on a discount table at a department store and while I was happy to see Macross stuff prominently on display, at that time I had already given up on modeling a few years prior out of frustration and didn’t get back into the hobby until 2005.
So when I went to the Winter Wonder Festival in February, my friend Adrian who works for Big West told me that they have a stash of Macross models that model companies give them as free samples. He said that I was welcome to as many as I’d like, as long as I just pay for shipping cash on delivery.
I was hoping that I might be able to meet up with Adrian when I visited Yokohama a few weeks ago, but that wasn’t possible. Instead though, he told me that day that he’d take pictures of the contents of those three big boxes of Macross kits and give me first dibs on what I’d like. So I gave him a list of models for me and some friends of mine and on August 25th, I got a big-ass box of Macross neatness.
So all of these kits are by Wave. On top is the 1:100 VF-1S Strike Valkyrie. The next row down is the 1:100 VF-1S/A Super Valkyrie “Multiplex” (it can be built as the Valkyries flown by Roy, Hikaru, and Max) and VF-1S/A Super Valkyrie Battroid Multiplex. Under that is the 1:72 VF-171EX Nightmare Plus and under that is the VF-171EX Armored Nightmare Plus. I’ve never seen Macross Frontier, but the VF-171EX Nightmare is such an incredible fighter jet, and I now have both versions! When I first saw this Nightmare kit at the All-Japan Hobby Show, I really liked it but I figured that I’d never get this kit because it’s so expensive.
This is what I sent to my friend Gary in the USA. He got another of the VF-1S/A Multiplexes, a VF-171EX Nightmare kit as well, and Hasegawa’s Miria resin garage kit figure, Bandai’s 1:100 YF-21, and a Hasegawa decal sheet for 1:72 scale Valkyries.
I’m sure that the Big West employees are welcome to take what they like for themselves. These are kits that are leftover and I figure that since they’re just taking up space at their office, I did a favor by letting Adrian offload so many onto me!
I had 9 days off during the summer, from 8th to the 16th. There were a couple of open campus events at colleges my daughter Ulan is interested in attending in the Tokyo area. For the first weekend, we drove to Yokohama. The car navi took us through the Tokyo area. I’ve always been scared of driving Tokyo’s Shutokou (首都高) expressway system in Tokyo because it’s complicated like a spider web, like concentric circles with spokes. I made one mistake and took an exit instead of merging onto an interchange ramp. The car navi recalculated how to get back onto the expressway. We ended up drive past the imperial palace and Tokyo Station in the Ginza area before getting back on.
In Yokohama, we parked the car in a big parking garage in the Minato Mirai 21 area. Mayu and Ulan went to the college campus nearby while I took the subway up to Yokohama Station. I went to Yellow Submarine, a hobby store. There are actually two locations, but the first one is just card games and Warhammer stuff. At the second location I bought some neat supplies.
I saw these Evangelion figure model kits by Blokees for the first time. They also had several Hasegawa resin anime figure garage kits. (Click the pictures for close-up views.)
Lots of Macross model kits there too!
I went to a pizza place called Shakey’s. They had a buffet for lunch, so it was all-you-can-eat food and all-you-can-drink booze. I had macaroni and cheese with plenty of pizza slices, plus some beers and gin and sodas. Pretty nice.
When I met back up with the two lunatics, we went to the Cup Noodle museum. That was pretty interesting. Admission is only about 500 yen.
There are walls of noodle products, featuring so many limited edition versions. Here are some Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star) cup ramen products.
After this, you watch an animated documentary about Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen. He went from being a down-on-his-luck inventor to becoming world-famous. I didn’t know this, but Chicken Ramen was his first invention. He created instant ramen by frying the noodles (and I assume freeze drying them). Later while visiting America, he got the suggestion from Americans to put the instant ramen into a cup because they put it into cups and eat it with forks. Thus, Cup Noodle was invented. Before he died, he invented space ramen for astronauts to enjoy.
Ramen-inspired modern art. Pretty wild.
So here is Mr. Ando, pictured with geniuses like Plato, Beethoven, Charlie Chaplain (?), that SOB Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein. OK, so where is Nikolai Tesla? They have that rotten bastard Edison but no Tesla? Ridonk.
After that, we went across the street to Yokohama World Porters. When I first visited World Porters 26 years ago, the first floor was a giant import foods grocery store. It’s now a multinational food court with Indian curry, Vietnamese pho, and so on. I had a Hawaiian style avocado hamburger.
The floors upstairs consist of a typical shopping mall. There’s a Village Vanguard there! (I madea post about Village Vanguard on my Greg’s Life section.) Look at the neat video game stuff! And as always, there are handmade displays made by employees. Thus, each of these stores have their own unique displays. I bought a Pac-Man keychain for my car.
So after shopping and eating, we decided to head home. Here is Landmark Tower, standing tall in the early evening sky. It was a nice day.
We went on a drive down to Souka City in Saitama Prefecture on Sunday. While the two ladies had their thing to do, I checked out a couple of Hard Off/Hobby Off locations. The street I was driving on said that Ueno was just 13km ahead, so I really was right on the border of Tokyo. I’ve never driven to Tokyo before and the expressway system is a bit confusing in the middle of the city, but at least it was a straight drive along the Kan-etsu Expressway to Souka.
The first place I went to had these expensive Arii Macross kits. The stickers on these say 掲載商品 (keisai shouhin) which means an advertised product. That Spartan for 27,500 yen confuses me… That’s an Imai kit, right? It says it’s 1/72 scale, which would make it by Imai because Arii made the 1/100 version, but the white price tag says that it’s Arii. It’s also a “Macross diorama” kit. The stack on the right are 1/100 variable Valkyrie kits. I didn’t know they go for so much these days.
More obscure Macross kits. “System Fortress” diorama kits. Weird.
I proceeded on to another store location, and it wasn’t very far away.
Lots of legacy Gundam kits from the ’80s at this location.
Here are B-Club resin aftermarket detail parts for 0083 kits. I ended up not really finding anything of interest. I stumbled upon a Surugaya by chance, but there wasn’t anything particularly interesting there either. Lastly I went to the Book Off Super Bazaar in that town, but it was boring.
This is the building with Gunma Leisure Land game center and Mandai Shoten in Takasaki. We went down to Takasaki last Saturday. Mandai doesn’t open until 10, so I spent some time at the game center where I played some shmups like Senjin Aleste, which I wrote about in an earlier post. Then later I checked out Mandai.
Plenty of Macross model kits, old and new.
The Nautilus double set from Nadia. I have the regular submarine Nautilus, but not the nu-Nautilus starship.
The flag of Zeon was hanging overhead. Nice touch.
I didn’t notice these Eggplane Girl resin kits the last time I was here.
The high prices of Saturn games (and all retro games in general) is sad. I really need to sell a bunch of games now hat Ulan is getting braces. It’ll be a tough decision to make which ones I want to keep. I really can’t play any retro games anymore since my new TV has no S-Video inputs. I’d have to see if I have the regular composite inputs, but it looks like ass on a high-def TV. Rats.
There’s a new Neo Geo console coming out that features HDMI output. Neat stuff, but I won’t be buying one. I also found a boxed Sakura Taisen Dreamcast. I bought mine when I first lived in Japan, in December 2000, IIRC. Unfortunately, the plastic has yellowed and the pretty pink color has been ruined. Rats.
Oh yes, and when I was at the game center in the basement level, I got to play Cotton: Rock with You for the first time. You can play as Izuna, the unemployed ninja! I played those two games like crazy on the DS. Her shots are shuriken, and you can slash your sword for up-close damage and to swat enemy bullets away.
My home away from home, we’ve had our own room at the in-laws’ place in Nagano Prefecture ever since Mayu’s grandfather passed away. Years ago, I commandeered an unused table and set it up as a modeling workbench in front of the TV. The blue zaisu (floor chair) is partially busted. I’ve had it ever since our apartment when we lived in Himeji. I have some tools and supplies I keep there. I’d posted earlier about Japanese modeling setups, so here is my secondary modeling workbench.
This neat holder for glue bottles and paint brushes was 3D printed. SMKR gave it to me as a gift several years ago, and it is perfect for this little modeling setup.
Tamiya’s enamel, acrylic, and lacquer thinners, toothpicks, ceramic paint trays, plus a bottle of Mr. Base White 1000.
I keep a bunch of modeling crap in the drawer. Sandpaper, tweezers, scissors, paint trays, etc. My nippers here are from a Taiwanese company and I got them when I worked for Aoshima 10 years ago.
I keep a Tamiya work apron here too.
I bought a cheap region-free DVD player on YAJ and it’s there for the TV whenever I want to use it. The TV doesn’t have the best hi-def resolution, but I’m not gonna complain. It actually has S-Video inputs in case I ever want to hook up a retro console to it. The last time we stayed here, I had my hacked SFC Mini console hooked up to the TV. Usually I have either my laptop or Raspberry Pi set up on this table.
These model kits by Fujimi which came out in 1982 are obviously inspired by the Mad Max 2 movie. They now fetch high prices and it’s easy to see why. Police cars modified with rocket launchers and Vulcan guns are neat.
This is apparently a scan from a magazine or promo flyer. These kits came with figures too!
It was a quiet weekend at home, and on Sunday while I was following the events of yet another attempted presidential assassination by the “tolerant left,” I finally got around to resuming work on my old 1:100 Glaug kit I started working on last summer at the in-laws’ place while on vacation. I sort of lost track of this build for several months. I’m pretty good at starting new kits and losing track of them.
I’m inserting Wave’s ball joints to add better articulation for the shoulders and the hips. While this kit does have plastic-on-plastic swivel joints, Adding ball joints should improve mobility and allow the legs to be splayed for more natural poses. I’ve sanded down the dome-shaped protrusions and intend to replace them with Wave H-Eyes lenses. I’ve also taken a mold of the mono-eye. I plan to cut out that plastic, attach the mold, and backfill it from the inside with clear UV resin. I did this with the old Bandai/Imai Q-Rau kit.
I thought that I’d buy some more of these Wave ball joint sets, but when I looked online I saw that several of them are sold out! I can still get the BJ-05 set, and I ordered a couple from Yodobashi Camera. But I couldn’t find the BJ-04 and some other sets anywhere!
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.
