#Kotobukiya plastic model kits

[zoideramy]

Scouting

[Zoids HMM Shadow Fox Custom - Rose Fox Gigi]

[horseskullman]

1/72 Kotobukiya White-Glint

Colour scheme, weathering and decal placement is based on its appearance in the game’s intro cutscene.

[geminusbayonet-xv]

After nearly 2 weeks of work powered by hyper-fixation and perhaps a bit of autism, I've finished building, cleaning, hand-painting, and spray-painting my first Kotobukiya Armored Core kit.

I've always had a fondness for the TYPE-HOGIRE since the era of the PS3, so it's a little surreal to have it in model kit form in my hands in my own colours.

Armored Core is great.

[hobbystationerytagimi]

コトブキヤ　1/72 EZ-049 バーサークフューラー リパッケージVer.　ゾイド ZOIDS　再入荷しました。

[suzylind]

My boy arrived a while back and he's jusst looking so GORGEOUS!!!

[grailfigure]

Asra Ninja // Original

Megami Device (1/1) by Kotobukiya

[megamidevice]

TG-11-M Guarayakha • Virtual-On 1/100 Scale Model Kit by Kotobukiya & Hasegawa

[gofigureee]

Sousai Shoujo Teien | Emma Koishikawa | 1/10 Plastic Model (Kotobukiya)

[ohmygodiamonfire]

Project Leona PT3: Legs, Boots and Belts

You ever think something's gonna be simple to do, only for it to be annoyingly frustrating to deal with along? And that your underlying perfectionism bites you in your ass?

That was painting the legs here. While I painted the teal first in order to actually make it easier to mask, the MASKING somehow always would be faulty at the top of the edges, resulting in paint bleed on the teal when I'd go and paint the black on the legs.

I had to sand it down, and restart again twice before saying fuck it and buying another set of legs to do it from scratch to get a result I liked, and even then it wasn't perfect.

The boots however, were way simpler. SOMEHOW, despite having to work with pla-plate for the first time, and also having to BEND the pla-plate to match the curves of the lower legs. After that it was a measure of painting it, which the gradient painting was actually WAY easier than I thought it would be. I've grown to quite enjoy having to learn how to airbrush for this project.

Which actually brings me to the part I was really happy with, which is the belt which was cobbled together from Kotobukiya option sets. The metallic teal was REAL fun to do, with painting a silver undercoat, then a top coat of clear teal over to result in the final effect.

Anyways the project is now done, and I need to take the final photos today, so wait for that I guess?

[gay-robot-boyfriends]

COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD FOR A MINUTE CUZ MY BROTHER SENT THIS TO ME! AXL MY BOY MY SON HE'S HERE!

[l-crimson-l]

I'd love to get into girlpla, I'm just a bit too broke to afford any kits; however, if you'd like to talk about it as a whole, I'd be more than happy to hear.

So…let me try this again. I had a whole nice post written up and I swapped off for a moment to check something and I completely lost the post.

Mecha Musume has a pretty long history that I’m not going to go into but here’s a little video if you’re interested.

Now when most people think of Mecha Musume there’s basically one standout line above them all: Frame Arms Girl.

This line is a bit old now but its popularity has set the aesthetic style for the market as it stands now. The build of these are…ok. Kotobukiya was definitely learning with these kits but they’re still solid at the end of it.

Now if you’re like me you’re not too much a fan of the pantsu out look, and other kits in the line don’t exactly do anything to mitigate that feeling (looking at you Durga I).

The next line Koto would release would be better at this tho. The Megami Device line features all original designs as well as collabs from new and old mecha musume brands alike.

First thing off the bat this is that they’re pricey. At an average cost of $70 you’re basically buying a Bandai MG gunpla. That said, they all typically come with a bunch of option parts. These are usually in the form of unarmored limbs, different chest pieces, face plates (with water slides to make your own) and extra connectors to help with kitbashing. Koto also has released option body segments to let you swap any part of the body you might want to if the right option isn’t available in the box (~$12). It should be noted the newest kits in this line have brought the price down to $50 as well as reengineered the build to add a lot more articulation and pose-ability.

Also in this lines favor is the articulation and build quality. You’re going to get a nice range of motion with or without armor and some of the smaller details also sometimes come pre painted.

That said Kotobukiya is a company that favors more complex character design over an Out Of Box experience so there’s some smaller details that are etched into the kit but unless your paints them won’t be color correct. I would say this is pretty common across most Koto lines.

Both the FAgirls and Megami Device are scaled at 1/12 so Little Armory guns and the whole market of 3rd party accessories will work with these kits.

Next up is Koto’s Sousai Shoujo Teien which is simple girls as plastic models

A little cheaper and at 1/10 scale instead of 1/12. I’ve not built any but I do know they can bash with Megami Device and Hexa Gear lines just fine. If you take a peek at the JP girpla community there’s actually a niche but healthy group dedicated to taking nice photos of their kits dressed up in everyday scenarios.

Finally the newest line of Koto girl kits is the Arcanadea line.

Purely in a fantasy take these are Incredible kits. I’ve only built one (Lumitea) but it was far and away a much better build experience than the FAgirl kits. These are actually designed by a vtuber artist iirc which is why the designs are so different than other Koto kit lines. If you have the cash and want to try something different I would highly recommend.

Now finally we get to Bandai. After learning from their failures with the Hg Build Fighters girls they went back and designed something solid and what got me into mecha musume: 30 Minute Sisters

Right off the bat with an average price of around $30 the barrier to entry is much easier. While not as refined as the Megami Device line, these simple kits cram in a lot for the price. You’ll get an armored and unarmored form, as well as face plates. However the biggest selling point is How Damn Easy they are to bash. Being apart of the 30M line means they’re completely compatible with the 30MM line of mechs. Which also means all of those extra weapon and armor sets transfer over for the most part. And that’s not even talking about the dedicated 30MS option sets like hair parts, body parts, etc.

This is a Very beginner friendly line of kits and the place I would suggest most people starting if they’re looking to get into mecha musume.

This example I think uses about 5 different kits to build and I don’t believe any serious modifications were needed.

Another Bandai line to mention is the Standard Figurise line which you’ll be familiar with if you’ve picked up the Sulletta, Miorine or ChuChu kits. Typically pretty solid kits (uma musume excluded, only get the 30ms version of that one) they usually include characters from a variety of different shows. These are still of course bash-able but not without modification.

With the explosion of popularity with these kits means we have even more companies now joining in the race. ATK and MS General have a bunch of kits to offer and we see new companies pop up some really sick looking kits (see tgat Galahad)

We even have Plamax giving us the really cool looking GODZ ORDER kits and soon character kits from Blue Archive, Konosuba and others.

For these smaller/third party companies I would suggest doing plenty of research before buying one. The ATK kit that I made was Especially frustrating and required a lot of extra work to make parts fit right or to clean them up so they fit at all. Not to mention the extra detail work required to really make them look like the box example. Just do your homework.

I hope this helps!! It’s a growing market so there’s always more kits being announced. This should have covered the majority of kits out there but IMPORTANT! Check sites like AmiAmi for sales or resales on kits. You can sometimes find an unbuilt kit that retails at $70 going for $30.

USAGS will regularly get Koto kits in and new releases but by no means believe them when they say a kit is USAGS exclusive. Remember to check HLJ as well. Let me know if you have any other questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!!

[mysticdragon3md3]

I'm sorry to all the people sore about the new packaging for Nendoroids, but some of these comments make it sound like you wouldn't have preordered, if you got the new box design that replaces all the plastic packaging with paper. o.o? Are you guys Nendoroid collectors or box collectors?

I don't know if you've heard this before, but GoodSmile figures cannot remain in the box. You're not preserving any collectibility by displaying your figures forever in the box. You're thinking of WESTERN figures and those figure producers' plastics. GoodSmile representatives have said several times, the plastic that GoodSmile uses to make their figures will DEGRADE if left unopened, in the box! The plastiziser will melt the figure surfaces and turn some platics into horrible discolorations.

Are you guys really buying articulated figures with swappable parts, to not play with them? Even my $120 scale figure, that i was afraid to touch, had swappable parts which i swapped and therefore, handled the figure, to set for optimal display.

How do you guys even have the room to keep all that plastic? I can't wait to have collapsible paper packaging, to save space, avoiding the struggle to throw it all away and wonder if it'll even get recycled. Some of you may have the money to buy all your figures and all the space you want. But some of us are just barely scraping together money for just the figures and can't afford to just get more storage/living space, just for packaging. I would love to just keep all my packaging, in case i decide to sell some of my figures in the future, but a lot of us have limited space and have to make tough choices.

Companies have to stop producing so much plastic. We still need plastic for our figures to be made out of, and if something needs to be cut, I'd rather it be the packaging. Recycling isn't working, and has been proven to be a scam in a lot of cases. China is no longer buying the world's trash to process or recycle. Japan has started new laws in 2022, to reduce plastic packaging by 2030 and become plastic-free by 2050. What do you expect to happen? For Good Smile Company to break the law, just so we can display their figures in the box---which will destroy the figures anyway? GoodSmile is not Tokyu or Mitsubishi. They don't have the power to bend laws to their whims.

I'm not looking forward to the bootlegers who will try to scam us with opaque boxes, either. But we'll just have to come up with new tactics to circumvent them. In fact, do we really need new tactics? Lots of scale figure collectors and plastic model kit/gunpla collectors have been navigating bootlegs, despite opaque boxes, for years. Maybe we can just learn from them, ask them how they do it. I for one, plan to just buy from officially licensed partner shops and directly from figure producers, as much as i can, just to make sure. But i was already doing that. They even have yearly sales, so i dont want to hear complaints about getting locked into high prices, from avoiding secondary markets. Ever go to the Bandai/Bluefin warehouse sales? Check out Kotobukiya's KotoUS shop during Black Friday? Or GoodSmile's 2-3 insanely low sales every spring? Even the officially licensed secondary-market partner shops have sales. These new, plastic-free-packaging boxes are not the end of avoiding getting scammed by bootlegs. We just have to learn to navigate our new world's rules.🐔

I'M the one who has to deal with that packaging. Me, the end user, the collector. This is beyond "preformative environmentalism", "greenwashing" or a "marketing spin so GSC can cut costs and raise profits". I don't have room for all this non-collapsible plastic! Of course, i dont want to throw any part of my collections away! I'm extremely sentimental! But if the packaging were collapsible, less, and just smaller, then i wouldn't have to deal with this struggle to let go of packaging into the trash, in the first place!

Let the packaging evolve! They will refine the design until it's effective in all the ways we need. In case you haven't noticed, GSC has already been changing their box/packaging designs for years, and we all survived. And regardless of whatever images of flimsiness the word "paper" bring to mind, there are designers who actually know what they're talking about, who know better than non-experrts, about how sturdy paper can me manipulated to be. Paper can be molded into non-collapsible clamshell bubble packaging, if you want that so badly. Paper does not automatically equate flimsy.

[geminusbayonet-xv]

Hand-painting a 1/72 Armored Core kit is a fucking trip but goddamn this is just the FromSoft experience in real life, isn't it?

[hobbystationerytagimi]

コトブキヤ　1/72 クレスト CR-C840/UL クレスト軽量級Ver.　アーマード コア ARMORED CORE　再入荷しました。

[suzylind]

As a bonus, have Deckerd and his box art, side-by-side. I never threw away his box either becuase, obvious reasons!

My boy arrived a while back and he's jusst looking so GORGEOUS!!!

[grailfigure]

Hatsune Miku (Sakura) // Vocaloid

Frame Music Girl by Kotobukiya