Things have gotten busy again but I was able to finish off my current project… Well, kinda. The build process and painting has been completed but… Ah, I’ll get to it later. Here’s Asuna from Sword Art Online in her Knight of Blood uniform (so not a useless damsel in distress or a killer white mage… OK, healing Undine).
Now, if you’ve been keeping up with my WIP posts, you will know that I’ve been whining about this kit pretty much all the way through the process. It’s not that the kit itself is bad, but there are lots of little things which add up.
Still, not everything is bad. The first thing which attracted me to the kit was the dynamic pose and, from certain angles, it still looks pretty great.
The details are also all there and are pretty clean for the most part (though the fact that they are raised quite high make them a pain to paint). Parts fit was also pretty good with just a couple of small gaps on the arms where they meet the body. Those were easily filled and painted over.
But, there is a long list of issues which marred my overall enjoyment of the kit, even though it looks pretty decent as it is, you just know it could have been way better which a little more care and attention in the casting and design level. More adventurous modellers could elevate this kit to what it was meant to be, but I’m not one of those people. I can only point out certain things…
Things like the rough sculpt on the smaller parts. The sword was especially noticeable in this area and the size of the thing made it near impossible to sand into a smooth finish.
Another thing which bugged me was the overall pose. Remember that I said that it looked really good when viewed from certain angles? well, here’s how it looks from other ones…
The heck is up with her legs? If you look at her straight on, the legs are positioned somewhat awkwardly and it makes it very difficult to work out what the pose was meant to be. At first, when I first saw the kit, I thought she was turning on the spot but if you turn, you don’t spread your legs wide like that…
Which leads me to the next bit…
The balance on the kit is absolutely horrendous. I don’t think the right foot is even meant to touch the ground for stability and the left foot isn’t actually flat, hence why I used some putty to try and give the foot a flat surface to support the whole thing. It’s possible that she’s meant to be standing on the ball of her left foot alone but that doesn’t make sense if the legs are so far apart. Also it’s a nightmare to balance and to get her to stand on her own because of it. Even putting her on a base won’t help as there’s not enough depth on the foot to properly pin her down to the base. The pins would also be taking on an incredible load and I’m sure she would eventually fall.
That’s definitely the biggest issue I have with the kit, it’s nigh on impossible to stand on her own without some tricks and the long skirt makes things harder by shifting the balance to the back.
It is very pretty though! The flowing look is really good.
Still, all things said and done, I don’t regret picking up the kit. Sure it wasn’t the best experience but it was still fun.
If I was a more adventurous modeller, I could have tried to mod the kit and possibly remove some of the flaws I mentioned, but I don’t really have a good eye for modding kits, especially at the scale this one would require. I can do some small things but this would have been a complete rework pretty much…
Still, Asuna turned out pretty well and I can start thinking about what kit I want to do next. With Walkure Romanze having its anime adaptation airing right now, I’m tempted to start on one of the 2 kits I have from the game but at the same time, Yoko has been waiting an awful long time for her build and then there’s my 1/4 Bayonetta…
Does anyone have any preferences as to which they prefer to see?