Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa

It has been a few months since I last update this blog. Today, I bring everyone my 4th newest model kit since my last entry - Nausicaa. I bought this model kit by Bandai from M Workshop at Sunshine plaza for 20 plus dollars. The whole kit comes in 3 colours, white, gray and beige. The whole of the complete model was painted by me, including the skin colour. The darker shade of blue comes from Mr Hobby Sky Blue. whereas the lighter shade was formed by mixing white with sky blue. Oh, I almost forgot that I did not fully paint the little fox riding on Nausicaa's left shoulder. I only use dark brown to paint the stripes on mow's body. Decals were provided for the eyes and eyebrows of Nausicaa, a very important feature missing in many robots or cars model kits that come with single-coloured(usually beige) pilots or character moulds. One good thing about Bandai model kit is that the kit is usually snap-fit, without the compusory use of cement to glue the parts together. For this model kit though I did use cement to glue the pieces together since they were not exactly tight. For instance, the arms of Nausicaa were separated from her body piece and since the hands play an important role of holding Nausicaa to the plane, I use cement as a precaution. As expected, the face of Nausicaa does not really look like the real character but at least the face features look decent and from afar, the whole model with Nausicaa with her trade-mark plane and clothes colour allows us to immediately recognise it as Nausicaa. The stand comes with the name of the Ghibli movie in which Nausicaa is featured in. Overall, the model together with the stand looks like a genuine Ghibli product, although it is painted by me. Colouring with paint is gradually becoming sort of irritating. When using a new bottle of Mr Hobby paint, the painting process is smooth, only in the beginning. As time passes and after using almost 3 quarter of a bottle, the thinner or solvent in the paint begins to evaporate, making the paint turns viscous. This greatly affects the painting process and quality. Being myself, I always have the habbit of point out the slightest error or small unpainted area on the model and trys to mitigate the situation - meaning that I use the paint blush to repaint certain areas which causes uneveness, and I will then try to repain the whole area to remove the uneveness, which causes even more problem as the paint becomes thicker and thicker and causes areas to 'sink in' or become smeared with my fingerprint on them when I accidentally touched them. In the end I will usually scrap off all paint and repaint it. Well, Nausicaa's face is a victim of this but fortuantely the re-painting process works well. I also have to use lots of transparent spray paint which plays an important role in evaporating off the excess paint to some extent and prevent dust from sticking to the model surface in the future.

I would give this model kit a 9/10. As expected of Bandai model kit, everything is nicely done and every pieces fit. However, since this model kit is more like a character resin kit which I have to paint using many colours, the rating itself does not say much about the model kit design. I believe in the future, perhaps when Ghibli 100th anniversary arrives, this model will become a classis and a higly valued piece of ghibli artwork. Perhaps it will become a one-of-a-kind ghibli model that only I possess.