With Kagami out the way, next on my list are 2 of the remaining stooges, Konata and Tsukasa!

This was the prebuild pic, before I started sanding the parts down and priming. The good thing is that Tsukasa looks to be the same scale as my Kagami, unfortuately, that doesn’t seem to be the case for Konata, despite the scale is being advertised as the same (Tsukasas scale wasn’t mentioned so I did it by height) but it definitely has the best pose of all the Kona kits I’ve seen thus far. The priming and cleaning has all been done now, so all that’s left is the paintjob.
Having said that, the build process was… Painful to say the least.

These 2 were recasts from E2046 and almost perfect examples for the reasons why I dislike buying recasts. It’s more of a dig at their suppliers rather than at E2046 themselves, since I’ve had other recasts from them before which didn’t have these issues but they were quite numerous and difficult this time round.

First up, Several parts didn’t fit properly at all!!

You can see the gaps in the 2 pics above. On the left is Tsukasas neck, where it joins with the body and the right shows the 2 parts of Konatas hair. Those gaps will need to be puttied and several other minor edits will need to be done underneath the parts to make sure they don’t slip. The gaps were present in other parts too, but those 2 are the most obvious.

Another issue was that there was flash in some really awkward places. Sanding them down would prove impractical as it would take an age, due to the size of the flash, but attempting to cut them off just ended up damaging the pieces!!

This is the collar of the uniform for Tsukasa. The piece proved too thin to withstand the strain of the cut so the whole area around the flash gave in. I have since repaired it with putty but it doesn’t lookas good.

Tsukasas skirt. This time, it was the angle which cause problems but the end result is the same as the collar, the area just caved in. Again, some putty was used to do a makeshift repair, but fortunately, the part there cannot be seen in the final build…

Now this one was just ridiculous. I’m not sure if it’s evident in the pic above, but there was a small amount of flash just behind the ring finger (the larger bent finger. Cleaning that one up was a real chore due to it’s really small size and difficulty accessing the area. I managed it in the end though. but the sum of the experiences would probably be enough to swear people off recasts for life!

But for now, the parts are primed and ready for painting. I’ll be doing them in tandem to try and minimize the pain of doing those accursed stripes on the uniforms again…
The fits of some pieces are still in question, but they should be easily solved just prior to painting the parts.

And on a completely different note, While I said that I didn’t do any model kit building over christmas, I lied…

I was able to do an out-of-box build of my MG strike rouge. An accidental purchase by a family member when they went to Hong Kong recently. I asked for a perfect grade but they bought a master grade instead. I wasn’t too chuffed with having to build what would be my 4th MG strike kit, but I couldn’t let it go to waste.

It also gave me a chance to try out my new toy. My Canon IXUS 870IS camera, to replace my Sony T9, which has been acting up very badly recently, esp with the autofocus. unfortunately, it would cost more to fix the sony than buy a new one, so I got completely different camera. It’s taking a little getting used to, esp the different layout and menus but the T9 really was getting to the point of being unusable so it’s all for the better that I get used to my new canon soon. incidentally, the “in progress” pics were also done on the canon.

What do people think? could you tell any difference to older pics?