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.
I didn’t plan on building another GT-R so soon – I wanted to wait a while to better my skills and really see the difference between a better built GT-R and the old R32 that was my first recent dabble into car kits and just enough of a failure to be considered a learning experience. I’ve been eyeing this kit up for a while at my local hobby shop for a while though and just couldn’t resist anymore when I recently really got the itch to build.
Another seemingly random build straight out of left field – again, because it isn’t my kit. I’ve always liked to keep my project lineups pretty uniform – if I’m currently working on a HG All Gundam Project collection, I’m only collecting kits that fit that bill. The irony comes in that after I finished this kit, I realized it actually slots really well into a collection lineup that I’ve long since abandoned building – my 1/100 Customs category, of painted and mildly customized non-MG 1/100 kits.
First off – not my car, not my model. You’d catch me setting my house on fire before you see me invest any serious money in any fabulous German engineering, much less a Porsche. I’ll concede that they’re nice cars – no doubt a symbol of wealth and status and have the performance to back up their name – but if you ever gave me the choice between a Carrera GT or my Hyundai, I’d take the Carrera immediately. It’d be promptly sold, and the money used to buy a ’17 NSX, 3 or 4 GT-R’s (one for me, two or three for my pals), an STi and a GT86, and maybe a warehouse garage to build said cars.
