Merry Christmas and a happy 1/100 VF-25F

Huh, I haven't been celebrating Christmas for the last 5-6 years, and the last one and this one was pretty awful, but I've bought a couple of stuff, so I guess it's time for celebration!!


1/100 VF-25F because I need a red-and-white for this year's santa (no, Figma Reimu would be too hard and expensive to get right now).
RG Freedom because I love RG and will get every single one of them (yet I haven't gotten the green Zaku HAHAHA).
HGUC Gouf Custom wasn't a new buy but has been in my backlog for a while because I'm in a slump.
And Kotobukiya's Flying Base 3 because I need one for my Takemikazuchi, and because bd77 has been promoting them as pretty damn awesome.

And if you read the title, yes, this post will talk a bit about the 1/100 VF-25F, also known as "the feminime protagonist's main jet/jetbot/robot that isn't as cool as the badass Ozma's jet/jetbot/robot from that 2008 Macross anime", or known shorter as "Messiah Valkyrie Alto Custom" from Macross Frontier.

While I wouldn't call myself a true Macross fan (skimmed the original because I was just a (stupid) kid at the time, watched Plus & Frontier, had Zero but haven't watched it because I kept forgotting that I had it. But it's kinda okay because I played the games & SRW/ACE :P), but I pretty much loved it.
Most giant robots that transform into a vehicle that I know tends to botch one of it's form. Either the vehicle mode doesn't look very vehicle-ish and more like a giant robot in a somewhat complex (and sometimes not complex at all) yoga pose (where you can see parts like legs and/or arms in that form), or that the robot design/stability gets jacked because of the transformation gimmick, especially for the plamo (I'm looking at you Delta Plus, both HGUC & MG). But for Macross' Valkyries, their vehicle mode looked like a realistic fighter/bomber jet, their vehicle-robot mode looked like... jets with arms & legs, and their robot mode looks ranged from decent to damn cool (except VF-17, the very first time I ever goes "Ewww" looking at a VF in a Macross series).

With that said... well you can see that I never put a post or made a comic with any MG in it... you know where I'm going? Well I actually had one (MG Gundam Mk-II Titans color HD Version. Loved it, would've loved it more if I hadn't broke it's fingers), but I never got another mostly because of both budget & space limit (well it's pretty much every toy collector's problem hahaha). And for Bandai's 1/72 transformable Valkyries, those are darn expensive, even compared to most MG. And I also heard problems about it's transformation gimmick problems of paint scratching and stability problems, making the DX renewal ver. the most reliable transformable VF toy, but that is even more expensive X_X.

And then, I saw Bandai 1/100 VF line. I'm okay with the fact that it's non-transformable since the VF from Frontier looked damn good even in fighter mode. And it's cheap!! (1200 yen, which is also the lowest of HGUC price range), and the review at dalong convinced me that it looked good enough without any paintwork. So when one of the local retailer put this on their (virtual) shelf, no second thought, bought.

So when it arrived, I was humming happily because I'm going to get over my slump with a simple kit, enjoying myself unboxing it, thinking about santa jokes because it's red-and-white, and relaxingly build this simple three runners kit...



HOLY MOTHER OF GOD
I'M WRONG!!

Five second to cut this one part from the runner.
Three minutes to remove the nubmarks of this one part.
One hour too properly finish the panel line for this one part.

You know, one of my housemates said "Huh, seems like you can finish that in a day" when he saw it arrived. And well, I did finish it in a day, 12 hours (granted I took breaks like eating and watching), without applying the stickers (except the ones on the wings because it's applied before putting the parts).




This kit brought the OCD in me. I even painted the lines on the black parts with silver, only to find those parts get covered with stickers later. AHAHAHAHAHAHAH *slapfacepalm*

So after around three hours putting the stickers (it's pretty hard putting them since most of them has no real helper to line it up perfectly, and the red on the black wings are really bad), I finally finished the kit. Pulled out the light and camera, and here we go!


I didn't like how some stickers actually goes over the panel line details, but then again it puts more character to the plane, so I guess we win some and lose some?
Also I applied red on the robot's horn (behind the canopy) because the sticker just doesn't work.


I painted pilot figure, mostly because it's totally visible from the clear canopy, and I pretty much blotched almost everything on it hahahaha. Oh well at least it doesn't look that bad behind the dark canopy and afar.
I also painted the whole cockpit in grey and added some silver on the monitor and small piping on the cockpit, but I guess it's too hard to see behind the dark canopy.


Not many details were lost over the stickers below the plane.


The front jet engines were first painted with silver because I wanted these wo be in the same color as the thruster in the back that I painted in silver since those were in a brown colored plastic, but later I colored the front jet engines with black marker, and left the rest of the silver since it looked pretty good.


Sloppy stickers aside (I'll readjust the black & SMS stickers later, and I probably repaint the red beside the cockpit), LOOK AT THAT SEXY CURVE!! LOOK AT THAT DETAILED PANEL LINE!! LOOK AT THOSE COLORS!! *GAAAAAASSSSSSPPPPPP*

There, I'm done orgasming.


Okay Bandai, I've built this kit, I loved it, and I can't wait for more.
Hold down on the Sherryl and Ranka (or any other girls) markings ver. though,
putting huge stickers over the detail of this kit felt like a huge sin ;^^.
If Bandai would ever release 1/100 VF-0, YF-19, & YF-21, those'll be must buy for me XD.


And here's a (sloppy) size comparison with SIC Kiwami Tamashii and HGUC(FC) kit. If you put the VF on a vertical position, from nose tip to thruster it's around the same height as a normal MG RX-78-2.


Well, I guess this christmas isn't so bad, though it'll gonna took a little while before I built RG Freedom because my thesis deadline is coming up. But then again we'll see. :)