I don't quite remember the exact place where I got this kit from, but that'd only be an issue if more and more people were casually flying to Tokyo for a brief spell, so whatever.
Oh yeah, it's been a while, hasn't it?
So there's a number of reasons I haven't posted here since May 2022. Most of it revolves around an absolutely horrible job I had around that time, and I basically spent the months after putting my sanity back together. Nowadays, I've got a much, much better job and have finally accomplished my lifelong dream of visiting Japan, and to celebrate, I shall build one of these kits I bought while I was there.
Yeah, I also started watching One Piece. Feels like it's been just over a whole year since I started, but even after that much on-and-off binging, I'm still currently just after the first Rebecca flashback in the Dressrosa arc. But there's obviously been plenty about it I love thus far, and one of them is the mighty flagship of the Whitebeard Pirates. This should go nicely with the Whitebeard figure I got while in Akihabara.
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| Gurararara |
Let's confirm this and get started, my cutters are already in dire need of a spritz of WD-40 after all this time!
The little windows are colour-correcting stickers. In the context of a kit like this, I don't mind the stickers too much in terms of appearance, although a number of them get really tiny.
It also doesn't help that some of the stickers are a little tricksy - you might notice the top of the banister is white in the above picture, and that's thanks to a separate sticker. The manual isn't too clear about that though, even though the first few pages are in colour.
Oh, and if they look misaligned in the above photo, that's because the adhesive isn't that great either. They get moved around a bit too easily from merely handling the piece, so watch out for that.
The cannon stickers aren't too bad - the technique with them is to grab them with tweezers from the white bit, stick the bottom of the sticker down first, smooth out the black segment all the way, then fold the white part back.
And that's the Moby Dick assembled. Truly, a vessel worthy of Gramps himself. Not without a good few fiddly bits (please ignore the fact that I almost forgot to attach Whitebeard's throne on the deck until just before I put the foremost mast in - his most famous shots involve him standing up anyway!), but a wonderful way to shake the rust off of this hobby after way too long. It may not be spectacularly huge, but it captures the majesty of the vessel in a pleasing build nonetheless.
Of course, the one question undoubtedly on your mind is...
...can we get much higher?
(Of course we can, this isn't the only One Piece kit I bought.)
Stay safe and keep clipping, folks!
The Good
+ I've always had a soft spot for the design of this ship
+ The actual build is really simple
+ The removable hull to fit in the "ocean" display base is a nice touch
+ In this context, the foil stickers look pretty good
The Bad
- The many, many porthole stickers are hideously fiddly
- The bottom of the rigging doesn't always line up correctly, as a consequence of it not sliding into anything there
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