Fighter Mode
I built this kit by following the manual and this is the mode that I ended up with. At first I have problem to get it intake into fighter mode because of a few difficulties. The most notable problem that I have back then was to fold the arms to the back and underneath the fighter mode body. The reason is because I put the shoulder armor in reversed order - left on right, and right on left - thus making it impossible to close the arms together. So after fixing the problem, the arms are able to be folded underneath the fighter mode body. Still, it is not that easy because if the arms are not put into the correct posture as mentioned in the manual, the arms won't be able to snap into the plug underneath the fighter mode body, which the plug serves as a purpose to hold the arm in place.
The next big problem for me is to get shield connect to the body. This is quite difficult because the only thing that would hold the shield intake is the hand, and the pressure created between the hand and the body after the shield is intake that would sort of holding it. It took me quite a while to get it connected, but the result of that is a crack on the shield.
I painted the interior of the cockpit and the pilot figure as well. The following picture is what I have ended up with. The problem that I have is to get the painted pilot figure into the cockpit because I'm afraid of scratching off the color.
Gerwalk Mode
Following the step-by-step transformation guideline in the manual, the next would be the Gerwalk mode. In the Macross universe, the Gerwalk mode is a configuration where the fighter jet would have the legs and arms, which would give it much more mobility and capability to land anywhere. Transforming from Fighter mode to Gerwalk mode is quite straight forward, but still extra attention has to be given to handle the join because it is still made from plastic.
I remember the first Valkyrie in Macross would have the wings folder to the back, thus giving a lot of space for the arms to move. In this case however, the movement of the arms in my opinion is restricted by the body's wing sections.
Battroid Mode
The Battroid mode is simply the humanoid form or the robot mode. I remember when I watch the first Macross TV series (subbed in Cantonese) when I was seven years old, I was captivated by it because that's the first time I seen a robot; not just any robot, but a transforming robot! That's when my love for robot started.
The Battroid mode design has become much slimmer and sharper as compare to the first Valkyrie - VF-1 series, which I would say is much bulkier, and the transformation has become much more complex since then because the VF-1 would expose the cockpit whereas the VF-25 would have the cockpit hidden.
For a transformation kit like this, I don't expect much on the articulation, but Bandai has done quite a good job on this aspect because I could still do some decent pose on this kit. The arms articulation are on par with most Gunpla, whereas the legs with some extra effort could at least be lifted at 90 degree. I didn't snap any photo on the articulation because firstly I was doing it during my office hour so I can't do it too long; secondly the camera is running out of battery, so I need to do it quick to snap the other model kits that I brought along for this photo session; thirdly because of the damages that this kit has received, I don't really dare to do much posing.
Damages Received
When I've done with the kit and trying to put it into the Fighter mode for the first time, I noticed some parts are damaged or broken. I reckoned that almost each sections would suffer from a crack: the head, the shield, the arm, the body lower part(as shown in picture above), and the leg (as shown in picture above). I reasoned that it might be because I put too much force while I was trying to put the parts together that causing it to break. Still, the knee cap has much thicker plastic, so it shouldn't be broken that easily. It's quite puzzled because this is the first time that I'm experiencing this kind of problem. I'd reckon that I would see more damage in the future should I tried to do another round of transformation.
Experiment on Technique
For this kit, I tried to experiment with the things that I learned from a series posted on YouTube. Here are the main 2 things that I've done with this kit.
1 - Painting the red black stripes
Instead of using the provided decals, I chose to paint them instead. There are 2 decals provided: a marking sheet and a water slide decal sheet. I used the marking sheet as the cutting template by sticking the required marking onto the masking tape and cut it off with design knife to create the masking template. Then, stick the masking template into the appropriate location, and then do the necessary masking. This is quite a lengthy job, but in the end the result came out quite well.
2 - Panel line
The amount panel lines of this kit is tremendous, much like an aircraft scale model. I tried to fill it up with the thinned enamel color. Then, I tried to wash away the excess with the thinner. I learned from a video on YouTube is that sometime the excess may not be able to be cleaned with thinner only because the there might be a possibility that the color would be scratched off as well. I thought that it shouldn't be that bad, but at one point I did noticed that some of the color started to come off.
Thankfully however there's another way to clean the excess, which is to use the finest grit of compound to rub it off the surface. It works, but the side effect of that in my case is that the main body color seems to become much lighter.
Conclusion
Although there's a lot of hard work to build this kit, but the end result is good enough to bring joy to my face. Despite all that joy, as I mentioned in my earlier post, I don't think I would want to do another Messiah kit because I don't have time to spare to work on it. It is much difficult to work with comparing to a Gunpla because the transformation of this kit is the one that require the most attention. Still, in the end, it's a job well done at least in my own standard.
