NKDS

Over the AFA weekend, I got a mail from Mike that my pre-order of the (bear with it) Bandai 1/72 VF-25S Messiah (Ozma Colours) had arrived. I had given up my pre-order of Hime-sama’s VF-25 for this baby. Reason? The Jolly Rogers. As a child, I was fascinated with the yellow and black colour scheme on the tail fins of their aircraft. Heck, even the F-14 and F-18 kits I have are associated with the Jolly Rogers. So, Ozma’s unit it was.

I will be doing what is known as an inbox review, meaning that I will be giving my impressions on what I think of the kit before I start building it.

Let’s start off with the sprues themselves. There are no less than ten of these packed into seven differents bags. As with Bandai’s standard practice for their Gundam kits, they are molded in almost the exact colour they are supposed to be when painted. The layout too resemble that of their Gundam ones. You will have to forgive me here because the last VF kit I built was a Hasegawa one and I am just amazed by how simple Bandai made this kit, compared to the over engineering that Hasegawa did for the VF-1.

Let’s dive into some of the things that caught my eye.

First off, it would be the landing gear. Instead of opting for a fragile multipiece option, Bandai has chosen to mold the main landing gears as a single piece, inclusive of the wheels. As Bandai kits are meant to be abused more than a normal kit, this seems to be a very prudent choice indeed. Okay, the nose gear has the wheels molded seperately but the mounting plugs look sturdy enough to take abuse. And I do believe the landing gear is designed to be removed at will to allow to switch between flight modes at will.

Moving on, I found some of the molded detail and panel lines of the kit to be quite good as well. Sure, they may not be as sharp as Hasegawa but they will suffice. For the moment.

Three sets of different hands

The vertical stabilizers

Now this got me rather happy. One gripe I had with the Hasegawa VF-1 were the two part wing halves, coming with top and bottom parts. This was rather troublesome, trying to cover up the seam line. But Bandai decided to mold the wing for the VF-25 as a single piece, eliminating any frustration that would occur. Good on them for that!

On to the canopy. Thankfully, Kawamori went a simpler canopy shape, meaning the canopy could be molded with simple mold technology and not the complex multi-part mold that would have created a mold line down the middle of it. It looks rather thick but nothing a bath of Future floor wax wouldn’t cure.

For the head visor

Instead of relying on plastic rods, Bandai has wisely elected to provide metal rods on the parts that would undergo a lot of stress during the transformation process.

Let’s move on to the manual. A very far cry from Hasegawa’s black and white ones. The cover page is a fully done VF-25S in colour which looks awesome. The step step by step instructions rely on CAD drawings to show you how to put this kit together. For the middle page, they have done a short writeup on the VF-25 and and other related stuff.

For the markings, Bandai has included both stickers and water slide decals to cater to both casual and the more serious modeler. The decals look very nice and thin, unlike the one I had to deal with for the Ver. Ka Gundam. There are no white markings so I am spared with dealing with yellow tinted white decals, common when it comes to doing kits of Japanese origin.

And that ends off my short inbox preview of the VF-25S. I intend to start on the kit when I am done with the Eurofighter and Arblade Custom.