Big thank you to Gundam Mad for selling me this kit.
It's not every day I have to create another category entirely for this blog. It's not a mecha kit, it's not a Figure-Rise kit, it's only technically a real-world military scale model in the loosest possible sense of the term, and although it's from Bandai, it's a recent kit of theirs which doesn't use the grade system. So...ok, for the first and possibly only time, I add a weird appendix to my filing system and present to you the Other Bandai series!
Space Battleship Yamato, then (That's Star Blazers if you're in a hurry). Another series I'm thus far only aware of by reputation. Hugely-influential sci-fi series from Leiji Matsumoto, who also gave us stories like Arcadia of my Youth, and supervised the creation of that opus-length Daft Punk music video.
Yamato in particular is known for codifying many tropes of eastern sci-fi we take for granted, not the least of which is a giant blue scenery-annihilating laser. Yes, a whole decade before Son Goku fired his first Kamehameha. Between this and the Twin Satellite Cannon, it's been a good few months for giant blue energy middle-fingers-of-death, hasn't it?
The one I ended up watching was the remake, Yamato 2199, and thus far I'm really enjoying it. And it's fitting that my way in would be the remake, considering that this kit is based on Yamato 2202, the sequel to the remake.
Raring to go and open the box, but I should point out that it's a little weird how the Yamato 2202 logo was stickered over with the English-language logo on both the front and sides of the box. I'm not sure if it was Bandai's idea or Cosmic Group's idea, and I've never had that happen to me anywhere else. It'd be like if the HiRM God Gundam had a huge sticker over the title saying, "BURNING GUNDAM".
Whatever, let's pop this thing open.
What I find interesting is that according to the manual, only three of the parts on the C runner are actually used in the kit, specifically for the stand. Seems to me like Bandai's been recycling moulds!
It's a landscape manual as well. Been a while since I last saw one of those!
There's also some screws, waterslide decals, some foil stickers, and...oh no...
It was gonna happen sooner or later...we have to deal with Bandai's infamous LED units. I'm not talking about the specifically-wired-up and programmed stuff like with the PG Unicorn, nor am I talking about the separately-sold white LED unit that lights up this kit's engine. I'm talking about their standard small LED units. I've heard all sorts of horror stories about the circuit connection being so flimsy that they cause flickering, and it's gotten to the point where there's even one guy from Hong Kong who sells handmade improvements on the LED units that are brighter and activated by holding magnets near them. *sigh* We'll worry about them when we get there.
Eh, screw it. I put one of the stickers on it as well. You get a choice of four, two English and two Japanese.
Well, that's certainly interesting, this must be how they do the Wave Motion Gun- OH NO, THEY WANT THE FIRST LED UNIT ALREADY.
And I'm short of LR41 watch batteries, of which each unit takes 2. GROAN.
But on the plus side, I looked ahead in the manual, and it tells you how exactly to disassemble the kit in order to get the LED units out, which is nice. I think the bigger concern is the white LED kit that lights up the engine, since it seems you have to disassemble the kit almost entirely to get it in there after assembly. So screw it, I've placed an order for one of the white LED kits, and in the meantime, I'm gonna go out and get 4 LR41s and at least 3 LR44s. I at least want to have an informed firsthand experience of how crap these blue LED units are. Back in a moment!
ONE HOUR LATER
Well, arse. It turns out both the big supermarkets only stock LR44s and make no mention of LR41s. Fortunately, these are tiny laser pointer/calculator-type button cell batteries, so it's not like they aren't available somewhere cheapish. I'll do what I can in the meantime, since I can tell the housing that the LED fits in simply slides out of this Wave Motion Gun part.
This red hull is practically begging for the brown panel marker, it was so satisfying to do.
Same thing with the grey upper part of the hull, this time with the grey marker.
It was at this point that I realized the Japanese text below the clear parts early on called for the clear parts, and there's an identical orange runner in the kit. It's not like the kit was difficult to disassemble, but this is a little annoying unless if there's some kind of story justification for an orange alternative (I don't know, I'm only 3 episodes in as of writing this). So I replaced it with the clear parts so that now the LED will give the Wave Motion Gun that blue shine. Or flicker, depending on the LED unit.
Speaking of which, the next part that houses the engine requires me to start connecting up the white LED unit fairly early on, so I'll see you in about 5 or so days!
MEANWHILE, ON THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY
People, I tried with these. I tried to play good cop with the LED units, but at the end of the day I just couldn't. These things are absolutely atrocious. The covers don't have the right pressure to hold the batteries in correctly, causing a weak circuit that comes undone too easily, and the screw is so badly-aligned that even when you line it up right, screwing it in pushes it off. I even ended up scuffing up the back of the cover using my Citadel cutters as an impromptu spanner, and I shouldn't be in a position where I have to partially destroy a component to make it work properly.
What makes it so much worse than the absolute worst model parts I've worked with is that Bandai apparently still insists on these things being the recurring standard in compact LED units, making so many kits compatible with these almost-completely unusable wastes of plastic. No wonder the guy in Hong Kong has the better reputation for his third-party LED units, I think I'll be getting some replacements from him at some point. All of you who pooh-poohed the official Bandai LED units? You were right to do so. Screw these accursed things.
While I'm here, I might as well work on what I can work on, so I'll put the part with the white LED unit on hold and skip ahead to the deck of the ship.
I hated working on these turrets. I really did. Like, these things nearly put me off the kit for good. They're so delicate and pretty much require plastic glue to hold the barrels in. And you only get one shot with each of them since the I and G runners don't give you any spares. You can probably tell from the photo which one I accidentally bent the turrets too far to the point where they were unfixably crooked by the end. And after these six, there's two more to go.
Oh yeah, these back turrets from the D runner? The connection on these is so loose they basically have to be plastic glued in.
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| Saraba chikyuu yo tabidatsu fune wa... |
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