Building the X-Plus Gamera 1996 Part 1
Heisei Gamera 2 is my favorite!
X-Plus has released a Gamera 2 plastic model kit.
Gamera and the Self-Defense Forces fighting a mysterious space monster.
So cool!
As someone who only knew the Heisei Godzilla VS series when it came to monster movies, this was a shock. I had just started reading Hobby Japan at the time and loved the articles featuring dioramas made by Takuji Yamada and others using soft vinyl kits. I'm looking forward to the Legion kit in the same scale coming in September. Do I even have room for it?
When I opened the shrink-wrapped box, there was a unique smell. It's the same kind of smell I've encountered with American car model kits!
The shell parts consist of two pieces, front and back. It's huge. I love huge parts! I'll be attaching small parts to the shell later, but for now, I've assembled the head, limbs, and tail.
I'm happy that the gates connecting the parts to the runners are few and placed in inconspicuous areas. I was worried about the seam lines, but I thought it would be difficult for me to fix them if the gate marks were in visible spots.
I glued everything except the head by section.
Besides the seam lines, if you look closely, there are also parting lines, but they seem a bit difficult for me to handle. So, I'm going to ignore them this time. For the seam lines, I decided to try using Tamiya's light-curing putty.
I bought these a while ago because I was interested in them. I hadn't tried filling sink marks on plastic yet, but I wanted to do that eventually. I bought them to test because I wanted to avoid using solvent-based materials like lacquer putty as much as possible.
First, to try it on one spot, I put some putty on masking tape, rubbed it into the seam line that I had lightly sanded with sandpaper using the glue applicator, and blended it with the brush.
I had a desktop LED stand, so I shone the light close to it. It's easy to use since it doesn't have to be a UV light.
It hardens in an instant, but there was some sticky residue left on the surface, so I wiped it off with acrylic thinner.
I wondered what the residue on the surface was—was it the solvent or something? While I was looking into it and tweeting on Bluesky, Banto-san taught me that it was the putty itself that hadn't hardened. Thank you very much.
There was still a slightly sticky feeling even after wiping, but it seems to go away if you leave it overnight.
I am also assembling the shell in parallel during this time, but that will be for next time. I think the reason I can think through the process relatively smoothly is because of the experience I gained building the ARTPRA Eva Unit-01 last year. It's fun!
See you next time.