I’m fairly certain we’re making double time compared to previous years. I can admittedly feel myself slowly burning out and losing steam as we build every day back-to-back, but it’s good progress nonetheless. Thankfully the Gundam we chose to build this year doesn’t have a crazy big accessory tacked onto it or a complex design in each body panel to build out…oh wait.
Same stuff, different year. Kind of. Anime Expo is just two weeks away at this point and we just barely got started on this year’s armor. As usual, it’s mainly a two-man job – with some extra help sprinkled around here and there.
Ironically I can never remember when we start building each year – I assume it’s usually around the same time (previous year’s build logs aren’t super reliable because I upload one post per every several day’s worth of work) but because of school I think we’re starting later than usual this time. We always feel rushed but I’m pretty sure we’ve always given ourselves around a month of work time in the past – this time that’s right about halved, so we have to hope extra hard this year that we make it on time.
While I’ve always kept an eye out for a Racing Miku, I never quite planned on getting one of the many Figma variations available from Good Smile Company. My personal favorite costume variation would be the Sepang Version statue, but I’ve always managed to steer myself away from an impulse buy like that based on the reasoning that it would be too much of an odd-ball in my current collection.
So how did I justify this random Figma Racing Miku when I have no other Figmas in my current collection? By building a model car with Racing Miku livery first and using this figure as an accessory to that build, of course.
This project was a long time coming – I had the idea and urge to build a Good Smile Racing race car ever since I saw the displays and custom cars with liveries featuring Racing Miku and all the pretty bright colors at Anime Expo last year. Itasha itself is crazy enough, but a full-on decked-out Super GT-Style Itasha supercar? It’s the otaku dream.
After discovering the miracles that are Japanese car kits, I told myself that I would never go back to building plebeian American-made model kits. Revell was actually the reason I stayed away from building vehicles like cars for so long. I remember the first time I tried one when I was in middle school was an Audi R8 from them – an absolute nightmare. Japanese kits are leaps and bounds more builder-friendly, with better parts fitment and material quality. That being said though, I wasn’t left with much choice when the major Japanese companies didn’t make an Eclipse, and the iconic Fast Eclipse was on sale from Revell at around $15 USD.
