Guess who just spent their entire day doing a kit all in one day… again?
Oh, Shuremi—I wasn’t initially excited for her when she was first announced, but after building Sourei, I was eager to get her to pair with her, found the last one in stock when visiting Gundam Planet for only $30, and have come to believe in the hype. Shuremi is basically the better Sourei, with much less hindrances, a super cool mace, and one of, if not the best design that the 30MS line has to offer.
As the Red Oni Shuremi is to Sourei’s Blue Oni, they share similar aspects to each other such as their horns, ribbon shape, flame effects and their overall aesthetics, but the way that they build are entirely different. The torso area has a lot going on with great part separation and there are a few more parts than usual with the arms, where you build the basic limbs as you expect from a 30MS kit, but build a layer on top of it for the frills and the sleeves. Even the legs, which are probably the simplest part of the build, still has 5 pieces for each foot alone. And to top all of that off, there’s some crazy surface detail going on around the whole kit you’d be pretty surprised that this is from the same line that brought you Rishetta 4 years ago.
I partially painted Sourei, so of course I did a bit of spray painting for Shuremi, painting the red pieces with Tamiya Metallic Red and painted the flail a bit more traditional replacing the pink with Tamiya Mica Silver and the black with Tamiya Gunmetal just for more spice. I’m usually lucky when it comes to painting Bandai kits, and Shuremi was no exception, painting was a breeze. As for detailing, which I kinda just did right away since I was in a groove that I didn’t want to stop, I did a small amount of hand painting with Vallejo Chrome, but did something new for panel lining.
For the white, I just did it black with a good ‘ol Micron pen, but for the pink I decided to use a thin red marker I got at Kinokuniya. The problem about the marker was that it was really thick to use as a panel liner, so I had to improvise just drawing on the lines basically trying to rub off the thickness as much as possible with my finger, which got me a pretty nice result on the very detailed sleeves. I know people have been going HAM when it comes to detailing those sleeves, but having it lined with red was good enough for me. Lastly, just to be consistent with Sourei, I applied a total of 6 water slide decals, gave her a flat coat in not-so-great conditions, but got pretty lucky as she was flattened up just fine. It was time to pose her with her big spiked ball!
Not to throw Sourei under a bus, but the last improvement Shuremi has over her is posing, she is super fun to pose without much effort needed! For someone on high-ass platforms, she can stand on her own, but to do anything else you will need an action base. The hard point by her butt—oh, well that’s an unfortunate set of words—is actually functional which I don’t need to fight with the hair and the action base had I needed to put it on the upper hard point. Posing her is an actual breeze—her limbs can move wherever they want without them popping off, all the big parts like the sleeves and the frills on the forearm and ankles are locked in place, avoiding unnecessary floating piece problems, and she can use the flail really well, provided that you have another action base with a claw to hold the flail mid air. The metal chain is secure on both ends, and you can get Shuremi to hold the ball by just looping the chain on her finger and let the ball hang, it’s kinda crazy how effortless it takes to get ball poses going. My only real complaints with posing are that the hands are kinda hindered by the giant sleeves, along with the sleeves tending to pop out when you try swapping the hands, and the metal chain drooping down due to gravity, which can’t pull off a swinging pose like you can with the Red Gundam. And this goes without saying, she pairs really nicely with Sourei, contrasting in colors nicely and having matching aestehtics. I probably could’ve done more with them, but I didn’t feel like posing Sourei as her head kept popping off and if I continued I’d probably lose my sanity.
Overall, Shuremi is an amazing 30MS gal. She’s solid, beautiful and really feels like a complete kit compared to other 30MS kits, even if she was as easy to build as the others. To be honest, I am going to say that I still like Sourei’s design ever so slightly more, but Shuremi is by far the better experience, but I’d say if you’re getting one, you might as well get the other. Well, I’m off to do Rydira, which is gonna take more time as I’ll be doing a custom color scheme for her, but thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon!
