[Librarian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tokumonkey

I finished building Muketi Shogun the other day.

PROS:
- Good GRIEF, the final combined mecha is gorgeous. Since I'm newish to the franchise, I'm simply not accustomed to Sentai mecha design that's this stylish and cohesive. The individual mecha colors don't totally skew the finished form.
- Shockingly good articulation, both in the individual component mecha and the final combined form. That both arms are put together so you can fake a convincing two-handed grip on the sword is really satisfying.
- The build instructions are clear, and everything fits together nicely.
- The vac metal on the sword and the Shogun chest looks great.
- Some thoughtful accessories, like swappable hands for two of the component mecha to better hold their weapons.
- Mostly really clever engineering. There's movement in the fingers, so it can look like it's gripping, or maybe like a fist. (This is not necessary to get the sword to stay put. It just looks nice.)

CONS:
- The articulation in combined form comes at the cost of stability. My attempts to get it into some dynamic poses involved a lot of stuff popping off, especially the skirt armor.
- Transforming the red mecha's legs is just a miserable experience, as the rotating connection is so tight, the plastic (a) barely budges, and (b) is clearly risking breakage just trying to get the back and front to turn in tandem. While that tightness is great for posing the legs in its individual robot form, it's a nightmare to transform. I'm not sure I'm even willing to try transforming it again. It's a shame, since the basic design of the legs' transformation is so clever.
- The many tight connections means you often have to manhandle the moving parts, which is hell on any stickers you've applied.
- I can't tell whether I made a build error, or if the blue mecha's shoulders, when in arm mode, are just built to have a somewhat-unsightly gap. By comparison, the lack of a gap on the white mecha is awesome.
- The face stickers for the individual mecha are hideously easy to misalign, leaving their eyes lopsided forever; I can't figure out why they were included to begin with, since most of the faces have sufficient paint.
- The plastic connections on the sprues are really thick. You'll end up with nastier plastic flash than if they'd used cheaper plastic with smaller connection points. My build time was probably doubled because I had to use an exacto knife on nearly every piece.
- I keep wishing they'd found a way to put the red mecha's (and thus Muketi Shogun's) head on a ball joint.
- Another wishlist item that didn't happen: someplace to put the heads of the black and yellow mecha when transformed. This mecha largely eschews parts-forming, but two heads just have to be popped off and set aside.

All together, it's still very good; it's just more pleasant to look at than to try to pose, at least where the legs are concerned. The engineering is insanely clever, and where it succeeds, it's just a delight. For me, this is much better than Daizyujin and Dragon Caesar, despite the flaws.

Something to take under consideration for future Super Minipla potentially.
Since the sentai model kit area has been growing more and more, an approach more towards how gundam does it may be something that'll need to be looked into with the rubber caps in the future.

A lot of the negatives you pointed out sound like they could be solved if it wasn't a plastic on plastic approach. So a new high end premium style may be something that'll need to be looked into overall, which in theory can bolster scaling too. (Though I'm personally a fan of their current size, I can see others wanting more scale variety to match their preferred gundam scale.)

As for one of your other "cons".

It's sacrilege to hand 'pop' them out or use an exacto knife, invest in some high grade nippers. Have you learned nothing from the Frame Arts anime and Gundam Build Anime? xD