WIP
I’m back with another mecha girl, and it’s not the NM Fox, which I haven’t gotten yet because I’ve been too stubborn to buy her for $75 where most US stores sell her for. Instead what I have here is the Siren, which technically isn’t mine—it’s my dad’s. My dad is a Gunpla enthusiast just like me, and he was so impressed with Lirly Bell and that I got her for $58 at Gundam Model Center, he went on the site to see if there were any other kits, saw the Siren for a similar price, and instinctively bought it. Now I wanted my dad to build the Siren on his own to experience how I felt building Lirly Bell, but he’s been extremely busy while I’m extremely bored at home when I’m not working, so I’m building the kit for him at his request.
Despite the sheer amount of plastic and size of the Siren, I actually found her easier to build than Lirly Bell. The inner frame limbs are exactly the same from Lirly, so I knew where to sand the joints, but the Siren doesn’t come with the exposed spine, but comes with a little surprise that made my jaw drop once I realized. The manual asks to choose between B7 or B8, and I saw no difference. Once I found out what exactly what I had to choose between, I was like, oh. Other than that, her inner frame mode is underwhelming and it’s easily outshadowed by her armored form which transforms her into a mecha mermaid, and my god it fucking rocks.
I spent at least twice as long building the tail and the backpack alone compared to her frame form. It’s just parts and parts layering over each other, there’s so many points of articulation, Nuke Matrix once again leaves me astounded as I asked myself what in the hell was I building. The fitment of the parts left me surprised as I didn’t have to sand as many joints as I had to with Lirly. Moving the parts strikes the perfect balance of being tight enough to not be finicky, but also not too tight that the plastic might crack. The only real issue I have is how the backpack connects. The backpack is made up of 3 parts, two being connected in the middle part with a really small peg for something quite large. The connection of the backpack to the body
also doesn’t really spark any confidence, so if you’re building this kit, keep in mind this shortcoming.
Other than that, the Siren is one hell of a build out of the box, she’s the closest thing to a Master Grade I’ve built this year. Now I just gotta paint her up, panel line, and decal her using this ginormous sheet. I’ll be back once I finish her up!
Completed
The Siren is complete! Since I’ve already talked about the build process in my previous post, I’ll continue where I left off. With the OOB build done, I disassembled the kit to paint, panel-line and decal her up. I found many places where she could be painted, so I went all out, using Vallejo Model Air Steel for her inner frame, VMA Gunmetal across her mecha-mermaid form and VMA Red in a few spots, but damn, the pictures don’t do the red paint justice :( There was a lot of panel-lining to do, especially because I also panel-lined the dark blue with a black pen like a fucking idiot, but I still managed to complete it without a fuss.
As for the decals… My honest reaction:
Now, the decals don’t have a problem of being terrible quality like Bandai’s waterslides are, it has a huge fitment problem. Don’t get me wrong, the large, Real Grade style decals add a lot to the kit, but putting them is a huge pain. Most of them are larger than the surface that it’s supposed to stick onto, making them really slippery to put on as you’re drying them up and creating air bubbles because they’re just ever so slightly bigger. If I’m not dealing with that mess, I deal with another problem where I have to wrap a decal around a sharp angle, and those are just annoying as well as they’re abundant and it takes quite some effort to get the other half to stick on the other side of the angle. The nail in the coffin is when I have to deal with both problems. But despite the agony I went through applying them, once they stick, they’re there for good as after playing… uh, the kit around and taking pictures of the finished build. I am aware of the womb tattoo decal that they did include, but, I ain’t putting that on the Siren
Now that everything was done, it was time to take pics, and while I didn’t think so before, she is finicky to pose with. Her inner frame mode is fun to pose with her microphone, but trying to balance her in those poses takes some work. In her mecha-mermaid form, while there are many points of articulation, it’s difficult to move her around because of her big tail in the way, so I didn’t go crazy on taking pictures like I did with Lirly Bell, but the few pics I did take give the Siren enough justice.
Overall, like Lirly Bell, this was one hell of a kit, but in my personal opinion, it didn’t have the same magic as when I built Lirly. I mean, obviously Lirly was my first Nuke Matrix kit, but she’s also more fun to pose with, has a dog, a better inner frame, and imo cuter, that’s why I wanted her over any other NM kit. But, the Siren undoubtedly has a lot more shelf presence than Lirly, I mean, even my sister found her cool while she looked at me weirdly when I showed her Lirly for the first time. NM really put the mech in mecha-mermaid. And my dad’s really happy how it turned out, and that matters more than how I personally feel.
So, will I be getting the Fox soon? I don’t know, I’m still too stubborn to pay her above $70, and I need something other than NM if I want another mecha girl kit so I don’t get tired of them. My eyes are really looking at the Frame Arms Girl Kongo, I’ll let you know if I get that or not…
Ranking: ={yellow}B=
