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What can I say about this kit? Well, it's the YF-21 experimental fighter from the anime series "Macross Plus". The series takes place about a generation or so after the events in the original Macross. This fighter was piloted by Guld Goa Bowman, a Human-Zentraedi halfbreed. Suffice to say, he was an excellent pilot, but had anger management problems.
I picked up this kit off of Ebay some time ago, but though the price originally seemed good, the merchandise was less than such. It is actually a recast of the original Club-M release, and as such suffered from shrinkage, air bubbles, excessive mold release, warpage, and a lack of metal parts and decals. Not a problem to an experienced model builder, but a pain in the ass none the less. It took months for me to get the pieces sanded and filled and straightened out (though I must mention that it was done a few minutes or hours at a time, and not on any regular schedule). Parts fit was terrible, so I chose to forego the additional booster pack pieces and display the kit in standard mode. I scratchbuilt the landing gear out of various diameter brass, plastic, and aluminum tubing, and vacuum formed a replacement canopy bubble from Squadron clear thermoform. When the overall fuselage was finished to my satisfaction, I began painting.
Using grey primer, I found a few defects that I'd missed during assembly, so it was back to sanding and filling. Eventually, I got a smooth surface, and laid down a second primer coat. At this time, I found that the mold release agent hadn't entirely been removed, so the primer had to come off again. In fact, no matter what I did, some areas of the kit still seem to be slightly "greasy", and these areas proved problematic when masking. Eventually, using Tamiya white primer, I managed to cover the entire kit, and finally moved on to the color painting stage. Again, using Tamiya — blue, white, grey, black, yellow, and metallics were added. Each base color received a panel line accentuation with a slightly darker color via the airbrush. A coat of Future acrylic floor wax sealed the paint job and provided the glossy surface for detailing panel lines and decaling.
Panel lines were given a dark wash of dark grey/black. Since decals were not included, I managed to scavenge a few UNSPACY roundels from a Hasegawa Strike Valkyrie kit, and also used my Club-M Macross decals (specially purchased off the rack at a Yellow Submarine store in Tokyo when I was there on vacation in Nov '01). After applying the decals, overall appearance is fairly decent, and I have the kit on display now. I'm a bit nervous, as after all the work I put into the kit, it appears that Hasegawa may yet release a similarly scaled kit later this year.
Addendum: Yes, Hasegawa did release their own version of the 21, which I did pick up, but haven't built. The 21 picured here has since been sold on eBay to a collector.
