Fighter Mode
The fighter mode is basically the same as the Alto unit. With the experience that I had with the previous Messiah unit, I was able to get the fighter mode done pretty quickly. Not to say that the problem that I faced with my previous kit is completely eliminated because this kit uses the same mold as well, so I'd expect the same problem i.e. connecting the shield to the body will still pose a problem.
The other problem that I have is the formation of the head. The head is much bigger in my opinion as compare to the Alto unit's head, thus making it quite difficult to get into its position. The thing that I need to pay attention to is not to force it because the head is connected to the body via a small piece of L-shape ABS connector, and if not careful, it could break.
Gerwalk Mode
The transformation process is identical with the Alto unit, so nothing much for me to say here.
Battroid Mode
As the transformation from Gerwalk to Battroid is the same as the Alto unit, I won't go into much detail about it. As I mentioned earlier that it is based on the same mold as the Alto unit, design is basically the same except for the head.
Like all previous Valkyrie, the design of the head would have 4 vulcan gun instead of 2 or 1. In my own opinion the design of this head is quite "unique". Unlike the Alto unit, which the head has to be turned around for the transformation, the head of this unit is just simply face-up, and head-down; no turning around is needed.
However, not all is well because the articulation of the head is not really as good as the Alto unit. The head of the Alto unit could at least move up and down, but this one would only allow up and down is totally impossible to achieve without lifting the whole head up a bit. So with this situation, the head will always looking upward in standing position, which I have to tweak the head join a bit to make the head look downward a bit so that it would not seen so awkward.
Experimented Technique
I did the same thing as I did for the Alto unit, except that the cleaning of the excess of the panel line is not as difficult as cleaning it on Alto unit because the excess could come out quite easily on this one. I wonder whether it has to do with the fact that white color surface are much more harder to deal with.
The other thing that I did on this kit is to have some of the easily crack part i.e. the lower part of the body to be glued with either cement or instant adhesive. I used instant adhesive only on ABS plastic because cement just doesn't do well on it. It might not help much, but at least it would prevent it from easily being cracked.
Conclusion
I must say that of all the Macross kit that I did, I'm satisfied with this the most simply because I need to work harder on this one to make sure that I don't make the same mistake as I did on the Alto unit. Even so, I'd still consider of not doing another Messiah kit again in near future because of the amount of work that involves in the making process.
