Those of you who have been readers for a while will recall thatI built Nausicaä's gunship back about a year ago. Wellthat kit has done very well on the model show contest, taking some prettyimpressive awards, despite the dodgy fit of the kit. This kit is another in theseries . This one is Nausicaa and her friend/ride, Kai. Now I will repeat that Ihave only a fleeting understanding of what the whole Nausicaä thing is about.For that I'll have to repeat what I put in the gunship review.

NAUSICAÄ - She is the daughter of Jiru, the chief of a small kingdom calledthe Valley of the Wind. After Jiru was killed, Nausicaä and her troops joinedthe Torumekian force according to a treaty signed long ago. Nausicaä meanwhilediscovered that the Decayed Sea cleaned up the contaminated world, and bycommunicating with the Ohmu, the giant insects, she foresaw the coming of agreat disaster. She fights bravely and hopes to witness the coming of a newworld.

Confused?  Me too. If you want to find out more about it, here is a linkthat should be of some help. http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/nausicaa/. Rumors have that the movie that was made from this comic series has beenacquired by Disney. Apparently the movie is pretty cool and having it in Englishwill be great.

Let me get into my 'kit description' mode here. "Molded inmedium grey plastic, the detail is very good, despite the age of the kit."There are enough bits to make both Nausicaä and Kai (of course) and the partsare all pretty well molded. Detail is pretty crisp and there is minimal flash onthe bits and pieces. A nice touch is that Tsukuda taped the two trees to a pieceof card to keep them from sloshing about in the box and getting damaged.

Instructions are six construction steps and I'm sure there is apainting guide there somewhere, but I can't read Japanese so I'm pretty cluelessas to what is what color. It seems that most of the kit is Kai, who appears tobe a sort of Roc. I'll let you look up what that is. Consider it your 'learnedsomething new today' session. According to the box art, both Kai and Nausicaaare in mostly blue, though that can easily be changed! There is also a smallcritter that fits on Nausicaä's shoulder. It looks like a.........No, it can'tbe..........lt sure looks like a Pokémon of some sort!!!

Needless to say, no decals with this one either, folks, thoughthere is a stand for Kai so that he won't go falling over! I fully expect thefit of parts to be a dodgy as they were for the gunship. I also expect it todraw as much interest as well!

With most kits, construction begins with the interior. Not withthis one though as the interior would be a bit messy to be able to duplicate!No, with this one, the best thing to do is to start gluing together halves.There are basically two models involved in this. One is Nausicaä herself and theother is the warrior chicken,err... the Kai.

As you may recall from the other Nausicaä kit, the molds forthis are not anywhere near new. The fit of most parts is not that great andthere are usually large gaps or mismatches from side to side. This one proved tobe no exception. 

Anyway, I did start with gluing together as many parts that camein halves as I could. This was Kai's body, and head as well as some sort ofskull looking thing that hung from the side. Then I attached the claws to thefoot that is to be up in the air. I also glued together the torso and skirt ofNausicaä as these are to be painted the same color. There are gaps in all of thejoins. The area behind the claws on the upraised foot is a disaster and frankly,impossible to clean up.

I attacked all of the joints with a sanding stick and got thingsrelatively clean. The mold seams, which were also pretty awful, were alsocleaned up as much as possible. Some filler was applied to a few parts. Beforeusing filler on Kai's body, I attached the tail feathers and the rear portion.Fit here was not at all good, especially the section inside the tail feathers.It will be interesting to see how this will be cleaned up. I also glued on thelong leg that will eventually sit on the base. There are some bumps and pitswhich are supposed to be lined up. I removed the bumps as they were not any realhelp.

Next I did some work on Nausicaä herself. In this instance, Iglued the arms to the shoulders. The fit here is better than on any of Kai'sparts, but still needed a lot of cleanup and some other work with files to getparts smoothed out. One thing I use that really helps take care of areas where alot of scraping and gouging has been done is liquid cement. It smoothes out alot of the lumps and bumps and does a pretty good job of blending things intoeach other. 

During this time I added the 'horns' onto the skull thing thatwill hang from the saddle. You need to note that the parts are shown beingattached on the wrong side. Simply switch parts 10 and 11 and you'll get a muchbetter fit! :o) The other leg was then attached to Kai as was the aft part ofhis head feathers. Fit is not good. 

I took a bit of time off to remove the weapons from the spruesand clean them up. The gun had the barrel drilled out and the swords had theflash cleaned from them. I left the packs on the sprues as it seems like theyare designed for a certain place, but as poor as the other parts fit, I'm notsure if it makes any difference.

I finally got most of the parts in place for the two mainfigures. All the baggage will be added on once the figures are completelypainted.

This part was extremely time consuming. Mostly because of allthe different colors of paint that I used and the time it took to dry betweencoats. I airbrushed on several of the colors, but most of them were applied witha brush due to the small area that needed to be painted. I used Aeromasteracrylics and enamels, Modelmaster enamels and Badger Acrylics when I sprayed.This is the first time I have used the Badger paints and though they were a bitthin, they went on quite well. As you may know, the Badger paints are premixedand ready to spray.

Rather than paint Nausicaä and the kai in the blues shownon the box art, I chose to keep all the colors in the green and brown area. Thisincluded Nausicaä's outfit as well. The only deviation to this was the use ofsome metallics and the orange-yellow of the kai's beak and feet.

Paintingtook several weeks to accomplish, and once done, the figures were given a clearcoat. When that was dry, a dark wash was applied and then some light drybrushing wasapplied to a few areas. This was done with several colors dependingon the background.

Then it was time to attach all the bits and pieces. I firsthooked up the large saddle bags as they were paramount to placing Nausicaä inthe saddle. After much fiddling to get the saddlebags to fit,  I plunked Nausicaäinto the saddle. Hmmm. She doesn't seem to fit very well. In fact, shedoesn't fit at all. Only a small area of her actually fits into the saddle.Perhaps I should have glued her torso to the saddle, then attached the bags andthen the legs. Well, it is too late for that now. 

Anotherresult is that the stirrups are too short!  To fix that, I attached severalpieces of paper to the ends and threaded them under the bags. Looks ok if youdon't use a flashlight! As recommended in the instructions, reins were made ofpaper as was the sling for her rifle. The other bits and pieces like thebackpack with short sword, the long sword, the gun, and the gas mask were thenglued on. 

This all made the whole assembly very heavy onone side, so I added some weight to the other side of the underside of the baseto compensate. Then any touchup was done and the entire kit sprayed with clearacrylic. When dry, the whole kit was washed with a thin gloss black enamel. Thenmatte clear was sprayed on all but the beak and feet of the kai. A bit moredrybrushing was then done and the kit was complete.

Well, I certainly think it looks neat. Those I show it to likeit as well. It was sorta fun and would have been more so if the parts fitproperly. It was fun to paint as most of it was done with a brush. One thing itproved to me is that I still can't do figures! I will recommend this kit only tothose who have experience with kits that don't fit worth a s*it.

September,2000

Review kit courtesy of me and my wallet!

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