Ikaruga Kotobukiya model kit build & review

My build of Kotobukiya's plastic model kit of the white ship from the videogame Ikaruga.

Tools used in construction were:
Side cutters
Scalpel
Fine sand paper
Selection of good quality brushes
Polystyrene glue
Tweezers
Tamiya weatherine master RUST
Revell aqua colour mix
Tamiya thinners
Revell decal soft

All the paints I used in construction, all acrylic based:
Tamiya fine surface primer white (spray can)
Revell aluminuim 99
Revell tank grey 78
Tamiya metallic blue X-13
Tamiya bronze X-33
Tamiya titanium gold X-31
Tamiya gold leaf X-12
Tamiya metallic grey XF-56
Vallejo field blue
Vallejo azure
Mixture of water + silk black paint, referred to as "dirty water" during build

Pros:
Quality of kit is supurb and builds very well, even putting many large name kit manufactures to shame with its logical sprue join points.
Amount of seperate parts really improve an already impressive kit.
Moveable parts on model.
Addition of a moveable display stand.
Nice manual with colour pictures and some infomation about the game and ship (however in Japanese)

Cons:
Manual fails to call out painting instructions during build, instead leaving you to study photos of the model to accurately paint it.
Left and right engine pods are built seperately in manual, if following the manual you will have one side of the ship built before you even start on the other side. Idealy when building just build all the parts as couples which makes the finish on the parts consistent.
Decals are poor quality with pixalated print and they tear easily compared to other decals I have used. Also they had a tendancy to melt/shrivel up when using decal soft.

Overall in incredible kit and highly recommended to anyone who has an interest in the subject or even just modeling in general.
Kit difficultty I woould rate as being hard due to very small parts and lack of painting instructions. I certainly wouldnt recommend this as a first build.
For a comparable build i'd say build some model tanks a few times until you feel confident to do this kit justice.

Build time took about 5 days totalling around 40 hours to complete.
It was a nice change of pace to build something completely different to my favored 1/24th scale cars (Tamiya, Hasegawa)
Given the chance again i'd certainly buy another one of these kits.
I preordered and purchased mine from Hobby link Japan
http://www.hlj.com/product/KBYKP-167
Total cost of buying, importing and customs charge ended up at about £50 which of course does not include the cost of paints and tools required which you will be looking at around an additional £20+ to do a satisfactory job on it.

Thanks for watching and reading my review, if you have any questions feel free to ask and I shall try and reply to them ASAP.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Ikaruga
• kotobukiya
• treasure
• xbox
• live
• 360
• dreamcast
• model
• kit
• plastic
• paint
• build
• review
• shoot
• em
• up
• radiant
• silvergun
• gamecube
• 1/144th
• space
• ship
• japanese

[AlvarezAzel]

IIRC there is a little peg that goes into the top of the base which will plug into a hole in the bottom of the ship.

There is also a 2 clawed type piece that goes underneath the ship in this area, I didnt glue that onto the ship as it makes putting it on and off the base difficult. I mearly just press this piece onto it when it's attached to the base.

Study the pictures in the manual carefully, it was quite easy to miss. I picked up on it when I had trouble attaching it too.

[nycteris78]

Great review for a great model!

It is a snap-fit kit or does it needs glue?

[AlvarezAzel]

@nycteris78

You will certainly need glue to keep everything tight and in place, However alot of movable parts dont need gluing on it.

IIRC I didnt use a great deal of it building this.

[AlvarezAzel]

@nycteris78

You will certainly need glue to keep everything tight and in place, However alot of movable parts dont need gluing on it.

IIRC I didnt use a great deal of it building this.

[AlvarezAzel]

@nycteris78

You will certainly need glue to keep everything tight and in place, However alot of movable parts dont need gluing on it.

IIRC I didnt use a great deal of it building this.

[chiphopper]

Oh, Forgot to mention! If you liked this kit, you might like the R-Gray 1 kit of RayStorm for the psx/ sega saturn as well! Awesome ship and great game as well :)

[AlvarezAzel]

@chiphopper

Ohhh I remember that game from the Saturn!

Who made the kit btw? Im having trouble getting info on it, all I managed so far is a rather basic prepainted clip together toy.

[TheIkawatay]

DAMMIT! yo make me wanna buy diz sh!t.

[gillcam]

This is such a wonderful video, and a magnificent build as well;

thank youf for posting it!!

[elementpollo]

how do you put the ship in the base? im having trouble with that part

[antaresprime0]

What a beautiful ship...

[BluTrilobite]

Very cool, whatever it is!! :]