[kamen rider Q]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShiShiLeo

Looks great, I suppose you had to cut out the sticker?

[ShiShiLeo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kamen rider Q

Looks great, I suppose you had to cut out the sticker?

Yep, I am a fan of mutilating the stickers. I do it all the time with SO-DO. I use a a "spudger" tool and pointed tip cotton swabs to help apply stickers.

[SPLIT LIP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShiShiLeo

Heh, I did the same thing with my Ghost Driver. Really strange that Bandai didn't even give an option for a separate eye sticker.

[ShiShiLeo]

Long time no post.

I've built both the Onitaijin and Daizyujin & Dragon Ceasar minipla. I'll just give some quick thoughts.



The Mini-pla line continues to be great. Onitaijin is big, bulky, and really grabs attention. The articulation is excellent and the stickers are very serviceable. Mini-pla kits in Japan are something like $20 and for that price, they are some of the most fun model kits you can buy. By the time they get to the west they look more like $40, for which the recommendation will have a few caveats. But if you like the suit, they are absolutely worth getting.

So let's move on to the Zyuranger mecha.

What can I say, the Daizyujin robo is perhaps one of the most iconic giant robots in history. Side by side with the Super Robot Chogokin release, the proportions start to look really off.



That chest piece is really massive, and right behind it is a somewhat skinny looking frame. I also find the SaberTiger's head to be too long- it sticks out way too far, and I wonder if its to better hide the long fore legs.

Still the engineering on the kit is very impressive for the size. You just will never find a combining mecha at this size with this articulation.

Yes the stickers are still a bummer, but you know what, the original DX toys had stickers too, these kind of toys aren't meant to last forever. That's just part of the charm.

If you're wondering how I painted the kit. For efficiency's sake, I actually take out all the silver runners and spray paint them with some Tamiya Silver. I keep all the parts on the runners but remove as many runner points as I can. You want to try and remove the ones that will show, and keep the ones that will be hidden on the kit.



This saves a bunch of time and ensures a somewhat even color consistency across all like parts. The downside to this is, unless you cover some specific parts, the paint makes them ever-so-slightly thicker, resulting in very tight joints. This may actually be a good thing, but on my kit the joints ended up being so tight, I was worried I was going to stress the plastic.



As for Dragon Ceasar...



This is clearly a premium product. The parts separation is much better than your average Super Mini-Pla, and even some of the gold parts are nicely plated.

For this kit I got to try out the new Gundam Marker EX Yellow Gold. The result are amazing! The original Gundam Gold marker has always been kind dull and dark, and this new one is a great match to a lot of the gold paint used on Bandai kits. We finally have a good gold marker!

In the end, are these kits still worth getting? I think so. Despite the flaws the kit is still one of a kind for the moment. Out of the box, the kit is great. With some paint and detail work, it's even better. I would have liked to see alternative hand parts.

So what did I paint?

For Daizyujin:
Gundam Marker Black paint on the head's "cheek armor", various small areas on each of the mecha, the wheels on SaberTiger.
Tamiya silver paint on all silver parts.
Gundam Marker EX Silver on various small areas of each mecha, triceratops feet, saber teeth.
Gundam Marker Blue on the waist piece, middle of the chest.
Gundam Marker Yellow on lower chest area.
Gundam Marker EX Yellow Gold on the sword.

For Dragon Ceasar:
Gundam Marker EX Yellow Gold on gold runner parts, each tail segment, should hinges, green knee pad parts.
Gundam Marker Black on various areas: upper thighs, gold arm pieces. The guide area for this is embossed so the paint is a little sloppy.

[MrWilliamGraham]

Thank you for sharing these! I picked up Daizyujin pre-owned/pre-built but unpainted, so I appreciate your breakdown of your approach. While I agree the sabertooth foot looks a bit off, I actually like the wide chest. It makes it feel more robotic and less of a stunt suit. I wish I had gotten the chance to build it, but I did have fun snipping off the nubs the first owner left behind

By the way, can you share if this new EX Yellow Gold is similar to the gold paint on So-Do Gaim?

[ShiShiLeo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrWilliamGraham

By the way, can you share if this new EX Yellow Gold is similar to the gold paint on So-Do Gaim?

In terms of the paint that's already there, I think EX Yellow Gold is a good match for the gold on the head. SO-DO Gaim already has some gold on the legs which are little more dull than the head ornaments. So EX Yellow Gold might actually be too bright and shiny.

If I were to do it again, I would probably paint the shoulder feathers in Yellow Gold but keep the other gold areas as I have them. OR I would paint all the gold parts with Yellow Gold and repaint over the prepainted gold on the legs.

[ShiShiLeo]

I picked up a whole bunch of SODO figures all at once recently. Here we go!

"Subvert Up! Wow! Just believe in myself! Kamen Rider! Ah! Aguilera!"

Kamen Rider Aguilera




This is actually a full repaint of Dark Aguilera from Geats SODO ID04. I ended up sanding down her face stinger thing to make it more sharp looking. It looked like a silly nose previously. Another one for the Women of Reiwa collection. Aguilera ended up playing a much larger role in Revice than I expected.



I realize I didn't even put Na-Go in here. I'd really love to track down a SODO Poppy now.

I haven't kept up with Geats but I do enjoy seeing all the suits. Geats in particular is most excellent. Perhaps my favorite Reiwa suit following Zero One.



Here I've got all the "base" forms of the main riders. It's unfortunate that they don't come with their respective weapons. Hopefully there is eventually a weapon pack for all of them, but right now you have to grab the Lower parts of each form to get the weapon.

The SODO line is slowly getting bigger and bigger. The Geats line figures stand a little taller than previous figures from Saber and Zero One. The Geats suits in particular are very complex (especially with the lower legs), but it was nice that all the legs were simple with very little added paint. All the heads breakdown into two pieces, the helmet and the jaw. Though I will probably never take advantage of it, there's a ton of mix-and-match playability here.

Geats and Na-go seem to suffer a bit from shunken chests making them look oddly flat. Na-go has an interesting parts swap to achieve her bangles, I would have definitely given that up for her Guitar weapon.

These definitely look like the most video game suits since Ex-Aid. Hopefully that wraps up my SODO Geats collection, as these things are getting harder and harder to obtain.




I still want Geats' bike though.

[ShiShiLeo]

Cast off, change beetle!

Kamen Rider Kabuto






Arriving at hyper speed, Kamen Rider Kabuto joins the SO-DO Chronicle line. Kabuto is my no. 1 favorite Kamen Rider suit. The SO-DO version is not bad. Although the detail is there, however the silver stickers are not as shiny as they appear in adverts or on the box.

It's neat that they were able to do the Cast Off gimmick but the process to do it is actually pretty cumbersome. Doing it too much will definitely wear at my paint job, so I'll likely never use the option.

For the paint, Gundam EX Silver on all the grey/silver parts (jaw, shoulder pads, wrists, ankles, boots, belt, ribs). Flat black on the chest piece, rear chest armor, and shoulder pads. The Zector was painted in metallic red, gold, and gunmetal. I did not paint any of the Masked form armor, but I will probably go back and add silver to the all the hand guards.

Kabuto's horn and holding hands are made from a soft pliable plastic. These swappable hands combined with the various weapons really set the SO-DO Chronicle line apart from the regular SO-DO line. Those weapons really start to look goofy without hilts and handles.

The Kabuto suit looks really dynamic and agile, but ironically he has one of the stiffer fighting styles in all of Heisei. The SO-DO incarnation has a very good waist joint, a clear attempt at giving him his signature Ricker Kick pose, but it still doesn't come off looking good.

I now have Kabuto in SHF, Figure-Rise Standard, Shodo-x, SODO, Converge, vinyl, souchaku henshin, keychain, and various gashapon. I will have to do a size comparison soon.

[Eklas]

That are amazing customs, I love what you did !

What's your next project ?

[EpsilonX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrWilliamGraham

While I agree the sabertooth foot looks a bit off, I actually like the wide chest. It makes it feel more robotic and less of a stunt suit.

I definitely agree with this. In the comparison shot, the SRC does look a bit more "natural," but I think it's because it has a more human proportion, based on the suit and not the overall design.

A great example to explain is LiveBoxer - the SMP release is super chonky, which some people have said looks bad. But if you watch the transformation sequence, up until they swap it out with the suit actor at the end, they're showing a LiveBoxer that's just as chonky. Meaning, that's what the official design is, they just had to slim it down for the suit. At least, that's how I interpret it.

Anyways, all these painted figures look great. I'm especially impressed by the Ghost Driver - it's easy to forget how much detail is actually in these figures when everything is covered up by stickers, and you brought it all out.