Kimi The Builder

Taking on something that is out from my comfort zone. 

Release Date: 2014/03

Estimated price: SGD $ 24.00* (MYR RM 72.99* / USD $ 17.46*)

*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation

As you all may know already, the progress on the HG Moon currently is going quite slow but it was going at a good pace so I do foresee that we would be able to see the review for this kit being released by this week. However, I do feel that it wouldn’t be right to leave the week without a review so I decided why not go through my backlog and find something to do a short review of, and this stands out through all the cheap kits that I have in store.

To be frank this was one the kit that I snatched together with the RG Exia back when I was visiting Singapore and it was one that…I really didn’t expect to get or come across while I was going around trying to find a ‘Singapore’ special gunplas. But to be honest with you guys, I was at first a bit reluctant to get this when I saw it lying on the shelves Since I don’t have enough confidence to work on a plastic kit. But then I figured since I do have this under the “I want to try” list. Why not I do take the leap of faith and give this one a try.

And what I find when I got to work on this kit is to find that this kit is something that is both challenging, fun and unexpectedly good! What kit will we be talking about this week? You probably would be wondering, what do we have to review if the HG Moon is still in the works?

Well my dear readers, this week I will be doing a short review for the Tomytec’s 1/12 Scale Military Series, Little Armory M240B Type [LA002]!

Yes, for the first time in the history of this blog, that I will be doing a review of the rarest Tomytec kit this week and one of the rarest plamo kits to date as well. Not to mention this kit is still one that still strangely manages to be Gunpla related. Why so? Well just bear with us through this review and eventually we get to the ‘why its still gunpla related’ bit.

Anyways, without further ado let us get into the review bit, shall we?

But first please observe this box art.

Don’t you think that that is an awesome art there that was placed by Tomytec? Yes, I would be the first to admit that if it wasn’t because of the wonderful anime girl placed at the box here, I might not as driven to get it. The illustration which was illustrated by Techno Fuyuno here is really something. I do like both the Character design that was illustrated here and the actual weapon itself here too, I do think that the illustrator did a pretty awesome job in making one quite interested in getting this kit.

Though it should be said that ‘the girl’ isn’t the only thing that is making the box interesting to go through. As I work myself through the box I noticed that Tomytec did place some lore for the M240B at the back of this box,  in which does make to a very interesting read if you are a Japanese person.

Because all the freakking lore for this awesome weapon is written in…Japanese.

Regardless I was at first still quite excited on unboxing it since…well….I was assumed that there would be more…of them anime goodness as I opened this up.

Well……. which to those that have unboxed this kit, will know what happened next…

Yes, I was quite disappointed to finally know that…There isn’t any more anime person–goodness inside the box…..

The whole situation worsens as I moved on to the unboxing bit to realize….that only color that this kit comes as standard is just….. black. Even though, yes I do see some indications here and there that this kit will only come in…black… but it was still quite disappointing to open it up and really all you see there just….jet black…runner parts…

But despite the runners only come standard with a single color scheme. I would admit that the level of detail that could be seen on some of the parts is just insanely good. Though there is a drawback to all of that awesomeness…. that if they wanted to achieve that level of detail, the only way to get there is for them to have a kit with extremely small parts.

And oh boy, oh boy did I have fun working on all of them awesome parts. All of them, small and fragile bits, goddamn, while working on the small fragile bits of this kit, I could really almost feel like my heart could just burst out of the sheer tension working on them. Really this is definitely one of those kits that you can’t rush it through because if you do and you really fuck things up here….tough luck because there aren’t any more extra bits that are included with the kit here. So if you do screw things up…that it, you’re fucked

The funny thing is that even though it does only come with only 3 runners, but yet it had some of the most challenging parts that I had to deal with. Regardless of that fact, I honestly really didn’t mind having to deal with them so much.

That’s because, despite the kit having a lot of insanely small and fragile parts but when you do manage to get all of them together, the satisfaction of seeing everything falls into place is really one of the most satisfying feelings ever. Especially when the time comes when you needed to assemble all of the parts that you’ve worked beforehand.

Though through my experiences building plastic models, this was one of the only kits that I came across that really made me feel like assembling an actual firearm. The way on how everything works here makes me wonder if this is how one disassemble the real thing?

Another thing that I find to be…well, quite amusing here is that this is a mostly snap-fit kit, despite it looking like a more traditional Plamo kit. Yes, you heard me right, this kit doesn’t require any use of the ye olde trusty glue to get em all nicely together. I do really appreciate the fact that Tomytec does this since it does make the process of customizing /painting/modding the kit easier since you can opt to put them all together now and paint it up later.

What’s even more surprising that I’d find as I worked through the kit, that even though some of the parts here were gated quite badly. But never I came across parts that had a bad nub. Which does blows my mind, because usually badly gated parts usually lead to a bad nub that was a pain in the ass to deal with. However, that is not what I encountered here, because all the nubs here are is pretty easy to deal with.

Though it may be due to the fact that this kit uses black resin as the base of the kit, that may explain why the nubs wasn’t really an issue here. Since the color does help to hide all them ugly nubs and because I do notice here that the material is a bit softer then what I’m usually accustomed to does make dealing with the nubs to be a lot easier to deal with here.

The manual is really quite simple. You have only the cover, the instructional process on the middle of the manual and finally the diagram of all the parts included and the usual warnings and all in which had all the bits written in Japanese of course. There is nothing special about it, but yet I still appreciate the fact that Tomytec still designed the manual to be in the booklet form.

Though it isn’t much from them, it was definitely better than to get a bloody piece of crap plastic paper and have us having to deal with that nonsense.

However, the problem is that some of the visuals used in the manual did get me a bit confused during a few sections of the build. In which I do admit that it did cause me to waste quite a lot of time trying to figure out that I did wrong. Even though I still manage sort it out but I really do hope that this is only limited to the earlier versions of this kit.

The completed build is really a joy to behold, despite its all black look, you still will be able to make out all its awesome details. Looking at all the details and the awesome gimmicks that this kit has, you really start to appreciate the effort that was put down by the Tomytec design team to make this look as good as it did. They really did a pretty awesome job here, and I have to be honest I was quite impressed by their handiwork here.

But to me, what really makes all of this worthwhile is that…. despite this being marketed to cater to only Figma action figures types. Somehow, I still was able to mount this on an HG kit and the one that is getting the sweet weapon upgrade is the…

Yes, I gave the honors of mounting this glorious weapon to one of fav HG kits of this year the Leo. Even though the HGAC Leo does have a pretty sweet looking machine gun unit, but I feel that it wasn’t looking as impressive as what the other HG that he was surrounded within the home base premises. So I figured why not give it some awesome upgrades for once and as soon as I gave it the upgrade, it does manage to transform the HGAC Leo to become a real badass.

But I do admit that the HG Leo’s current manipulator set doesn’t really suit the whole look of the kit, well when you have it mounted that beast of course. So yeah obviously I do need to find a way to make it even more badass…in which would require me to be spending time doing some modding work to its hands…

So, yeah if you are thinking of making your kit look badass using weapons from the little Armory kit, you do need to mod some of the parts up to really make it both look awesome and functional.

Not like the makeshift way that I’m doing here right now.

Hmm, but when I really think about it closely… It would be really interesting to see which of my RG or HG kit that is able to mount this awesome weapon properly.

However, despite the praise that I have given it and despite how I feel about the whole kit. I have to say that as I look back at the price that was charged for this…..this is really not a kit that I would recommend for all of you to get. Why?

Firstly, because of that asking price. Well even though the asking price isn’t really that insane when compared to most kits out there… but for something that only comes with a weapon set and nothing more…well it’s pretty hard to justify getting. Not to mention with that the kind of money that you are paying for this, might as well go out and buy a cheap HG kit and you will be able to save a lot of money there.

And it should be said that this kit is HARD AF one that I wouldn’t recommend to those that is new to the hobby…no matter how tempting the look of the Tomytec anime models that you see posing with that sweet ass looking rifle.

However to those is on the collecting side, this kit may be one that you might consider getting since it is quite a rare kit to get. I would as well recommend this kit to those that might want to try something a little bit different or to those that are looking to add in some realism to their Gunplas. This would definitely be an awesome addition to your gunplas.

As for me, I might consider using this on my current Megami Device kit, since they do have the hands that are more suited for this kind of weapons. But am still quite taken with the idea of having my HG kits mounting a more realistic weapon so I might be looking for avenues to really make that happen.

Really all I need to get now is just a proper manipulator unit for the HG kits so they all can mount some modern weapons on their plastic bodies….

With that ends this week’s short review segment for the Scale Military Series Little Armory M240B Type [LA002]! What do you think of both the kit and the review? I’m currently doing some changes to the format of the reviews, what do you guys think of the new format? Do you like the current format or you prefer the old one? Do let us know down on the comment section.

Oh before I forget I told you guys that we would be making that Gunpla connection. haha.

Anyways, we will be back again this week more Let’s Talk Gunpla Segment on the coming Wednesday and we will be back as well on the coming Sunday with the definite release of the review for the HG 1/144 AMS-123X-X Moon Gundam! So, do look forward to that!

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We hope by sharing our love and passion for gunplas here, it’ll inspire you to pick up the hobby or reignite your love for gunpla!

Anyways, we shall see all of you again next week, and we hope that you all have an awesome week and weekend ahead! Have an awesome Gunpla building time there as well and until next time!

Ciao!