Kit Info
Manufacturer: Hasegawa
Release: November 2006
MSRP: 3,000 yen
More info: Hobbylink Japan
Needed: Paint, cement, sandpaper, a hobby knife, gloss finish, patience
Gimmicks: Removable skirt (panties are not removable, sorry,) decals/clear parts for alternate color scheme
Model Info
In every game in Sega's Virtual-On series, there is a machine of the very pink Fei-Yen line, for girls and for guys who are particularly secure in their sexuality. This particular model is the MARZ incarnation. Not having played the game, I can't really say much else. However, my friend was willing to comment. "MARZ makes me fall asleep," she said. "It's ARGH."
Mini-Review
This is my first model kit made by a non-Bandai manufacturer, and there are a few important differences. First, a bit more paint than your average HG (High Grade, not Hard Gay) will be required. An airbrush would be nice to have while working on this kit, but you can be like me and make do with regular old paintbrushes (if you're a sucker.) Second--and this seems to be endemic to Hasegawa kits--a buttload of decals is included. They're of the water-slide variety, so they're a bit more forgiving than the alternative, but they can be tricky to negotiate anyway. Third, the plastic isn't quite of Bandai quality, so expect a bit of flash or excess plastic here and there to get rid of (as well as little bits attached to the pieces that you'll need to cut off. Be sure not to accidentally cut off a peg!) Fourth, and this is where problems start to arise, there are quite a few poor fits and loose connections. Now, this last issue can mostly be solved with judicious use of cement, but a couple areas where you cannot use cement suffer from this problem. I'm talking about the canards on the back and the "ponytails," which are posable with a simple ball joint. Unfortunately, they are also extremely floppy and fall out quite easily. And on the subject of floppiness, the elbow joint is not strong enough to hold up the Vivid Heart (the sword,) much like the HG Gundam X Divider, except that the VH isn't even that heavy. (Note: I've actually resolved this problem; it turned out that a part of the elbow structure had come loose. Again, cement is going to be an absolute necessity with this kit.) Exacerbating this problem, you cannot pose the kit without the VH, because Hasegawa only includes one left hand, which is molded in one piece with the VH's hilt, reminiscent of the HGUC Zeta Gundam and Gundam Mk-II.
I've been rather critical so far, but the kit isn't all bad. The sculpt is superb, even if the kit is very small for a 1/100 (as depicted above, the HG Gundam Astray Red Frame of the same scale dwarfs it.) And although I complained about the decals, they beat the hell out of manually painting on the markings--I should note here that I actually left off about half the decals (the white stripes that would normally be on the upper part of the dress) because I'm lazy I thought the solid orange-pink would look more striking. Furthermore, in a move that Bandai could seriously learn from, Hasegawa includes notes in the instruction manual telling you exactly where to paint and what color--right next to the assembly diagrams. That's right, no looking at photos of the finished product and guessing here. Another very cool thing Hasegawa did was to include not only instructions for the alternate (blue) color scheme, but an entirely separate set of decals and clear parts for it.
As a final note, the skirt is removable, with a bit of fudging. However, doing so doesn't increase the poseability much, due to the construction of the legs. I guess it's a nice feature if you're a pervert.
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