For a number of reasons, this build is taking longer than the last one. One of those reasons is that the Kämpfer isn’t color accurate out of the box. Take a look at these images.
See the orange thrusters? The orange on the legs? Turns out that none of that is made out of orange plastic. If you want them to look “right”, you are going to have to paint. Since I don’t have paint or the necessary equipment, I tried to get clever by using colored Sharpies. I had great success using Sharpies on the antenna of the EZ8, and research indicated that they were considered OK for doing minor touchup work. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
Maybe it is due to the fact that these are fine point Sharpies (I used regular tipped markers on the EZ8), but the ink just isn’t strong enough. Here’s what the Chain Mine looks like after I tried to apply some yellow. It looks more like “yellow mixed with grey”. Some fans suggest that Sharpies are best applied after top coating, so I may come back and try again.
My attempts at using orange markers in the inside of the model’s thrusters was even worse. You can’t even tell there’s color in there from a distance. I don’t think I’m going to be able to replicate that bright orange look that’s in the manual with whatever supplies I have lying around. That’s a damn shame, but I just don’t feel like I’m ready to invest the time and money required to give my models a proper paint job.
Anyway, let’s look at what I actually built. Here is the chest, which is an interesting shape, even for a Zeon suit. It is almost like a trapezoid, where it is narrow at the front and back, and grows taller as it goes toward the middle. I really like the thin strip of grey along the front; it reinforces the notion that this mobile suit was assembled (literally) out of a box, and that the chest armor is not one, cohesive piece.
Next are the arms. They’re assembled very differently than the arms on both my Gundam-type High Grades. For example, on the EZ8, the shoulder and forearm are built normally, but the upper arm is essentially a large joint with an armor piece slid over it. The whole thing is built around that joint. On the Kämpfer, parts of the arm are assembled together as one unit, with the joint unceremoniously slipped in between. The overall look is less that of a humanoid robot, and more of a walking suit of armor. Like other Zeon mobile suits, this somehow manages to make it look both more and less robotic than its Federation counterparts.
The shoulder armor is highly reminiscent of the Zaku’s. It’s big and spiky and quite intimidating. The big difference from the Zaku is that the Kämpfer gets shoulder armor on both shoulders (though in keeping with tradition, the left shoulder of the Kämpfer is made bigger and spikier). The left shoulder also boasts a single white decal.
Other Thoughts
This is the oldest kit I’ve ever assembled, and I’ve noticed at least one difference in the instructions - the decals are identified using Japanese characters, rather than Arabic numbers. This would be much more difficult to read and interpret, but the Kämpfer doesn’t have too many decals, so I can figure out where they all go on my own.
I have a small jar of white touchup paint, and I was tempted to see what would happen if I applied it to the plastic and then used a Sharpie on top of the white paint. In fact, I still may try that on a piece of runner or something.
The darker colored Sharpie markers actually work really well. I used a nice green to fill in the scopes on the two bazookas, and the color is strong.
I thought my Gundam Markers might to be fading already, but it looks like I just needed to stand them upside down when not in use.
In regards to the parts of the kit that aren’t color accurate, I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or not. On one hand, there’s not much Bandai can do about the rocket boosters. To do it right they’d have to assemble them out of two pieces; an inner cone made of orange, and a grey outer shell. I don’t know if this is even feasible, so I can’t help but give them a pass.
On the other hand, I do believe they could have done something about the legs, using a similar solution the one they used for the shoulder armor (one of the few sections that does use orange plastic). There’s this semicircular piece with three orange dots on the perimeter. This piece actually slots in between the two halves the armor in a way that makes the three orange dots look flush with the blue armor. It doesn’t seem crazy to think the same could be accomplished for the leg armor. Maybe I’m wrong about that, or maybe it was a cost cutting thing. (but now I want to get a closer look at the Kämpfer Amazing from the Gundam Build Fighters line to see if it does anything differently).
That’s all I have for now. I still have to complete the head, legs and lower torso, so I’d expect at least another week before I may be finished. Here’s the gallery link for today’s post.