Bandai Star Blazers Mecha Collection EDF Destroyers

Here are some pictures of two complete Bandai Mecha Collection No. 12 EDF Destroyer from Space Battleship Yamato aka Star Blazers. Each kit comes with a pair of ships. One set I decided to accurize a bit. The nose is wrong, the aft engine cone comes to too sharp a point, and whatever that senson thing is on top of the bridge should be streamlined to come to a point at the aft end. I also sharpened up some of the details, like those wing-like things that support some sort of streamlined things on the end. I whittled them down so they have sharp leading and trailing edges.

I decided to make the other pair have wave motion guns. For some reason, all the EDF ships except destroyers have this, so I figured the wave motion gun would eventually end up on destroyers, too. I used Evergreen tube that I cut to shape and sanded down, and puttied the inside to have a smooth concavity.

I printed decals to try to upgrade the look of the ships to the standard of SBY 2202, which is pretty faithful to the look of the otiginal series but with far better production values. I don't think there were ever any hull markings in the original series, but these were added in SBY 2199 and continuing with 2202. I don't think there is anything about the look of these new series that isn't an improvement over the old.

I didn't want to bother with printing white on my ALPS printer (frankly, it's been so long since I used it, I would need a refresher). Instead, I drew all the artwork in AutoCAD 2013 and made sure white areas would be color #FFFFFF so nothing would print there.

For the modified destroyers with the wave motion gun, I modified the plaque by shaving off the kanji that say "destroyer." This I replaced with a decal with Japanese writing that's clear with a blue background, applied over white paint. These ships are named Ikazuchi and Inazuma, poetic terms for "Lightning" and "Thunder." Two Fubuki-class destroyers built in the 1930s had these names.

I really like the trick of lighting starships with fluorescent paint illuminated by UV light. I recall doing this on my MPC X-Wing fighter back in 1978, and lighting up the afterburners of my model jet fighters that way, too.

 

Yamato 2199 Size Chart

Here's a size chart I found somewhere of most of the ships seen early on in Space Battleship Yamato 2199. I just added the transliterated names of ships. There's more info in a previous post and at the official website (here's the mecha page). Unfortunately, if you can't read Japanese you'll have just as much trouble as I do understanding the official webpage. The American fan site is Cosmo DNA. This replaced StarBlazers.com, which you may remember and which is now accessible through the Wayback Machine. Go check that out to find stuff that still isn't at Cosmo DNA. Just remember to set the Wayback Machine to the year 2012 or earlier!

UN Combined Fleet in Space Battleship Yamato 2199, and the Bandai kits

Disclaimer: My knowledge of the Japanese language is pretty meager, but I keep learning.

I was surprised to find that in Episode 11 of Space Battleship Yamato 2199, a flashback to Daisuke's childhood shows his dad as captain of Murasame, which is subsequently destroyed in the first contact with the Gamilas. I thought Murasame was destroyed by the Gamilas in Episode 1, in the battle off Pluto.

I was mistaken. CAS-707 Murasame (written as むらさめ on the hull) evidently isn't shown or mentioned in Episode 1 as I was led to believe by its inclusion in Bandai's Combined Fleet kit and the fact that the first cruiser lost in the battle off Pluto has the same color scheme. (It doesn't make sense to me that any two ships should share a color scheme. The only reason I can think of for the colorful markings is visual identification at great distance.) BTW, Murasame was the name of several real destroyers.

CAS-253 Yūgiri right before destruction.

The first ship lost in the battle off Pluto is CAS-253 Yūgiri, which shares her name with a real cruiser. I may be misreading it, but the hiragana on the hull appear to say "Yuragiri" (ゆらぎり). I found a picture of Yūgiri's namesake from 1930-1943, and the side of its hull bears the katakana inscription (read fore-to-aft) ユフギリ "Yufugiri." I fail to understand why the inscription would not be ゆうぎり or ユーギリ ("Yu-u-gi-ri" or "Yū-gi-ri").


Episode 1 mentions cruiser Abukuma and destroyers Shimakaze and Isokaze (the latter lead ship of her class), all of which share names with real warships. Then Amaterasu and Uzume are mentioned. Even though the Combined Fleet's mission is a diversion to keep the Gamilas from noticing the recovery of the ship from Iscandar, it wasn't at all clear to me from the subtitles that Amaterasu and Uzume are the respective code words for the Iscandarian ship and the Mars recovery team. Thanks to Ithekro for clearing that up.

With of course Kirishima and Yukikaze, those are all the ships mentioned in Episode 1. (BTW, Yukikaze was a WWII destroyer that is still renowned for leading a charmed life and surviving the war.) Maybe you can make more out if you freeze-frame the Bluray disc. 

There are quite a few choices for ships represented on the decal sheet in Bandai's Combined Cosmo Fleet Set #1. In addition to BBS-555 Kirishima, CAS-707 Murasame, and DDS-117 Yukikaze, it also includes markings for the cruisers CAS-253 Yūgiri, CAS-266 Atago, and CAS-229 Abukuma, battleships BBS-551 Kongō and BBS-552 Haruna, and destroyers DDS-172 Shimakaze, DDS-103 Ayanami, and DDS-106 Shikinami. All of these have namesakes in the real world IJN (JMSDF as well in some cases).

Bandai's Combined Cosmo Fleet Set #2 came out earlier this year and besides what's expected, includes a Mini Mecha Collection Cosmo Zero and some decals that were missing from the SBY2199 1/1000 Yamato release. The expected items are two Murasame class cruisers and two Isokaze class destroyers. Markings are supplied for the following cruisers: CAS-702 Nachi, CAS-718 Murakumo, CAS-741 Ibuki, CAS-777 Tsurugi, CAS-854 Kurama, and CAS-890 Yakumo. Here are the destroyers: DDS-101 Isokaze, DDS-119 Ayase, DDS-144 Shiranui (uncertain--the decals are very small and appear to say either "Shiranui" or "Shiranei." Shiranui are a rare atmospheric light phenomenon, hence an appropriate destroyer name. "Shiranei" means nothing, but a real JMSDF destroyer has the similar name Shirane), DDS-147 Fuyusuki, DDS-148 Minazuki, DDS-149 Hatsushima, DDS-164 Kagerō,  and DDS-216 Tachikaze.

A complete list of ships at the battle off Pluto follows, according to this source. Note that not all the ships on the decal sheets above are listed here. Kirishima was the only battleship, so her sisters Kongō and Haruna were presumably lost before the battle, perhaps at first contact. (I need to rewatch Episode 11.) Murasame was also lost at first contact. Amaterasu and Uzume are also omitted. And it is curious that the decal sheet for Set #2 includes a DDS-144 apparently named Shiranui but the list includes a DDS-114 Shiranui. Which is right? One asterisk follows ships on the decal sheet for Set #1 and two for Set #2.


1 Kongō type battleship
Kirishima (BBS-555) *

8 Murasame type cruisers
Atago (CAS-226) *
Abukuma (CAS-229) *
Yugiri (CAS-253) *
Nachi (CAS-702) **
Murakumo (CAS-718) **
Ibuki (CAS-741) **
Tsurugi (CAS-777) **
Yakumo (CAS-890) **

12 Isokaze type destroyers
Isokaze (DDS-101) **
Ayanami (DDS-103) *
Shikinami (DDS-106) *
Shiranui (DDS-114) ? (or DDS-144**)
Yukikaze (DDS-117) *
Ayase (DDS-119) **
Fuyusuki (DDS-147) **
Minazuki (DDS-148) **
Hatsushima (DDS-149) **
Kagerō (DDS-164) **
Shimakaze (DDS-172) *
Tachikaze (DDS-216) **

Bandai 1:1000 Combined Cosmo Fleet from Space Battleship Yamato 2199

Here's a video peek in the box of the new Bandai 1:1000 Combined Cosmo Fleet. It's a kit of the Earth ships in the first episode of Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (宇宙戦艦ヤマト2199), from the scene showing the Battle of Pluto where Mamoru Kodai loses his life fighting the Gamilas, along with Yukikaze and every other ship in the fleet but Kirishima.

I preordered this as soon as it was available. I bought it from AmiAmi (they had the best price--about 10% less than HLJ) and since I knew I'd have other irons in the fire, I elected to save money with the slow shipping via SAL. It took exactly 3 weeks from the date it was shipped until it arrived.

This kit is fantastic! The detail is really crisp, and you get all sorts of extras. For one thing, they included decals not included with their 1:1000 Yamato kit released earlier this year. There's also a Type 100 Scout Plane of the sort flown by Susumu Kodai, and a docking port for it on Kirishima. (Sorry, no skis on the scout plane.) Another extra is a tree of purple parts, which took me a while to identify. It doesn't show up anywhere in the instructions, but what it is, is Kit No. 18 from the Mini Mecha collection, the triple-deck Gamilas carrier. The molding on this is excellent as well. I don't have this particular mini, but judging by the molding it appears to be a refinement of the original. Another clue: the tree could be broken down into three parts, but only 2 of the 3 would fit in the box used for the mini mecha collection. The molding is really crisp, though: better than those minis from 30+ years ago, not that they weren't good. Those were excellent, but this is up to today's standards. Unfortunately, there are no instructions to go with it, so much test fitting is in order. Correction: I do have Mini Mecha Collection No. 18 in my stash, and this is the same. (The part of the tree that looks too big to fit in the mini box will just barely fit.) I took a look at it and the mold is showing its age. However, on the kit included in the Combined Cosmo Fleet, the mold has been cleaned up, so surfaces that should be smooth are really smooth, and panel lines are sharper.

One Day Build: Star Blazers Mini No. 10--Finished on Time!

Okay, here it is with three minutes to spare as you can see by the time on my cellphone in this first photo. I'll add the usual blather about what I did after announcing it on SSM forum.

One Day Build: Star Blazers Mini No. 10

Last time I tried to do the one-day build (here's a link to the contest at SSM forum), I made like the hare in Aesop's fable and goofed off when I should have been modeling. Also, I don't know whether the hare had a wife and a daughter who wanted him to come to the pool with them.

Anyway, it was a bust from the one-day standpoint, but the model came out looking okay. Eventually.

Here's the victim for my current attempt: Bandai Star Blazers Mini No. 10, a Comet Empire missile ship. This sucker is just bristling with weaponry. I guess the Comet Empire is into massive overkill.


This time I've got it planned better and I only need to be done by 1:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Saturday, July 28, 2011, or in about 13 hours. And I've already got it completely assembled, primered with Tamiya grey sanding primer, puttied, sanded, puttied, sanded, etc.There was some flash, which surprised me--I don't recall ever seeing any flash on a Bandai kit, even ones this old.

I'm keeping modifications to a bare minimum. I hollowed out a couple of what appear to be gun barrels (2 parts no. 12), using a carbide bit in my Dremel tool, and scraped the guns on the 12 parts no. 6 (double-mount gun turrets) with an x-acto knife  to give the gun barrels a more cylindrical shape, where they had been flat-bottomed. Using AutoCAD, I designed decals for those compound eye scanner things on the front of the ship and printed them out on my Alps printer, and they came out looking good on the first try. Yay!

Tomorrow, I'll paint this ship, add the decals, weather it a bit, and write another post.

One Day Build: Star Blazers Mini No. 8--Finished in Eight Days

This isn't how Scotty would recommend getting a reputation as a miracle worker. Originally to be done in 24 hours (see previous post), this kit is finally done a week past the deadline. It's probably nicer than it would have been. I worked on it almost every day for an hour or two, and had time to think about what I wanted to do. Once the deadline was blown, I decided to replace the flight deck sticker with a homemade decal. As it turns out, this didn't take long at all. I scanned the sticker and imported the raster image into AutoCAD and traced a vector image over it, which I printed out on my Alps printer on decal paper. Here's a picture of the decal (right) next to the sticker.

I wrecked the decal putting it on and printed another, no problem. I didn't use any setting solution, just painted the flight deck with Future before decaling and PollyScale clear flat afterwards. The decal also needed a tiny bit of touchup with black paint before the dull coat. Here's the result, on the left. The Comet Empire twin-deck carrier at right is one I built in the '90s, shown for comparison.

One Day Build: Star Blazers Mini No. 8--FAIL!

Since last time...

Okay, I underestimated the demands on my time. Even on a Saturday! Here's how far I got in 24 hours. I also encountered fit problems attaching the small parts, which slowed things down further.

I'll keep on working on this and get it knocked out in pretty short order, but it won't be a one-day build.

To be continued...

One Day Build: Star Blazers Mini No. 8

There's a sub-forum at Starship Modeler Forum called "The One-Day Build Challenge." I started my one-day build at 10:05 PM, and it's the Comet Empire single-deck carrier from the Bandai mini kit series. So far, I've assembled four of the pieces (which number 13 including the stand). These are the upper and lower hulls, which will stay separate for painting. I've filled and sanded and sprayed on a coat of Tamiya primer. It doesn't look too bad. I wasn't going to modify it at all, but on both sides of the upper hull the kit is missing some sort of missile tube or intake--I can't tell what it's supposed to be--but it coincides with the sprue attachment points, and it wasn't a whole lot more work to hollow it out than to just clean it up. More pictures later, for now just the before picture of the unstarted kit next to my cellphone showing the time and date.

To be continued...

Star Blazers

Here are some photos of my Star Blazers mini ships. Bandai released these box-scale kits in 1979, and they were widely available in the US in the ‘eighties. (Read more about them here: http://www.starblazers.com/html.php?page_id=167.)

The spaceship designs, especially the capital ships, are ‘way cool, and Bandai did a really nice job molding them. My only criticism is the peel-off stickers they had instead of decals. I threw them away and painted on whatever markings they were supposed to have, trying to be reasonably faithful to the original, while using light weathering techniques to give the surfaces some visual interest.