Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to the Limited Edition of MS General’s Sloth and her two giant companions, Bamboo Bowbow and Coconut Knock. Clocking in at 3 weeks straight of work, this is by far my biggest mecha musume kit yet, and may be my biggest solo project… ever. Sloth was always interesting to me as her entire package was somehow bigger than Wrath’s school of sea creatures and was going for an unbelievable price of around $100 only. I wasn’t too big on her color scheme though, until they revealed the Limited Edition version where the bear becomes a panda and the color schemes goes from pink/yellow/silver to green/black/white, and I honestly haven’t had any green mecha girl besides Asra Tama. Getting her back in January for $130 on Gundamit, she arrived on my doorstep 30 days later and I started her pretty much right after I finished my Falcon. And oh boy, building this kit is an entire journey.
CMIIW, but from what I read which I can’t remember where, Sloth and her buds come with a total of 113 runners, with 10% being Sloth herself, 45% being Bamboo Bowbow and 45% being Coconut Knock (the rhino). Unfortunately, the girl itself is the worst part of the kit. While I do find her cute and appreciate that she comes with 5 different faceplates, she’s surprisingly the most difficult to build due to her joints being inconsistently tight, some pieces fitting in like a charm, and others not so much. Her elbows suck out of the box as when you try equipping her with her armored paws because the joint likes to dislocate as it’s not really secured in place. The knee pegs need extreme sanding, connecting it to the lower leg is super tight to a point I thought I was never gonna get it out, and getting literally any ball joint is a struggle no matter how much sanding I do. Luckily, none of Sloth’s joints ever broke on me, but she is a pain to build, and it sucks that her joints are more on the barebones side. Her accessories are kinda lacking as well, only having a tiny bear that’s hard to hold, a lollipop and a bat. Also she can’t really stand cuz’ her feet got barely any grip
Moving onto Bamboo Bowbow, he builds very similar to a late 2010s Master Grade, having a full, highly detailed inner frame and even having entirely separate runners for joints, but instead of being polycaps, they’re all POM. Would I say he’s on the level of a Bandai MG? Nah, not even close. Some parts don’t fully fit together, the engineering’s pretty basic despite all the detail that goes into the parts, but the build does go smoother than Sloth since he’s a lot bigger. There’s somewhat of an ab crunch which his giant torso, his elbows and knees are single jointed, and many of the joints are tight, but I’m fine leaving them un-sanded as he weighs a whopping 2 pounds (900g) when fully equipped. A third of that weight goes to the two giant cannons in his back, which are too heavy for what they are. I like that it comes with LEDs and an extending gimmick, but there are so many dense parts to it that it somehow makes the panda, who is already heavy af, somehow back heavy. He can stand on his own with the cannons, but they have to be angled towards the front as much as possible, and you better not poke him at the slightest or he will fall on his back.
Something that caught me by surprise is that the black is actually translucent and the green replaces both the clear yellow and silver pieces from the original kit. While it gives the kit a unique look, it makes nub cleanup a fucking nightmare, as cutting the nub with my red GodHand always leaves a stress mark that’s almost impossible to remove and because the plastic is transparent, you will see the nub marks pretty visibly, which is quite annoying. And the injected metallic gray is here like on Falcon, where you will see streaks and can’t do anything about it other than painting it completely. I did not do that, because if I had to paint all that gray, I probably would’ve cried as I’d have to mask all the joints, pin all of those gray pieces, and be extra careful when it came to hand painting. That would not be fun, and oh god this kit gets exhausting the further you get with it.
Anyway, assembling Coconut Knock is very similar to Bamboo Bowbow engineering wise, but is quite unique as it’s not the typical body shape. You first build a giant head, then a gigantic body that somehow has the slightest articulation, two front legs with big shoulders, two back legs very similar to but not exactly like the front legs with big shoulders very similar to but not exactly like the front shoulders and a spiky tail. On top of the rhino is this giant railgun that has two giant gatling guns attached on each side, which have two giant missiles attached to each. The weaponry on Coconut is a lot cooler, and unlike Mr. Panda, the rhino can hold his weapons just fine. I mean, he is on his fours. Surprisingly, although the rhino does come in a separate box, he actually weighs less than the panda by about 2 ounces (~850g). However, the rhino is a brick as it’s basically impossible to raise his two front legs as his back legs would not sustain the rest of the weight at all. You can move the guns around, have him sploot, open his mouth, and that’s about it.
Overall, it took almost 2 weeks just getting the kit built. 10 days… just assembling the kit… out of the box. 10 days is already a lot for getting a kit done completely. Having Sloth and her gang all together is one sight to behold, especially when you consider that Bamboo Bowbow is the size of the MG Sazabi and Coconut Knock… having the same amount of volume horizontally. I was thinking the build was going to be the most time consuming part of this build, but we just made it halfway through the journey.
Despite the Gatling barrels being the only thing I spray painted for this entire kit, hand painting and decaling this kit took forever. I first applied the included stickers out of laziness and thought they’d do most of the job for me, but oh god they barely scratched the surface. As a Chinese kit, there was an abundance of surface detail and micro details that were screaming to be painted, and I sure did go ballistic using five different colors extensively. There are so many little ticks and other surfaces I painted light green, a bunch of areas with metallic gray, metallic blue for any details that were grouped in 3, and Vallejo Red and Chrome for inner frame pieces. It took me a total of 5 days just to hand paint everything, and I’m pretty sure I missed a spot or two. Luckily, panel lining was non-existent as only Sloth and a few areas of Bowbow had white parts, but it’s a whole different story with the included decals.
For Sloth, Bamboo and Coconut, there are at least 250 numbered decals, several of them having sets of 2 and even 4. I’d say there’s at least 300 in total, and holy fuck the experience is just above the level of Bandai and Koto decals. The decals look great, but the quality of them are not. I don’t know how I had such a good time with Falcon’s, because Sloth’s decals take longer to come out of the sheet, has a tendency to dry the fuck up as soon as it exits the sheet, and pretty much disintegrate if they split into two. Also, because so much of this kit is round, it is extremely annoying trying to dry the decal in place as the surfaces are slippery AF, causing me to readjust the decal several fucking times before it finally stays in place. The decals took me another straight week to do. I was cursing, screaming on the top of my lungs, I can’t believe I was still working on this after so long. My mind was melting. My patience was long gone. But eventually, I got them done. The last decal had to be a pain in the ass, but it was finally time to get Sloth over.
Now, with the armor being translucent black and clear green, flat coating the kit was not an option, but I didn’t really want to make the whole roster glossy either. I would like to keep the kit as it is, but it’s prone to grease and fingerprints. Luckily, I recently bought a Mr. Hobby Super Clear Semi-Gloss can, and the coat looks exactly like the bare plastic without any of the grease. With a glove and careful maneuvering of the giant pieces, I was able to topcoat the entire kit in a single session, used at least 75% of the can, and finally… finally it was time to pose everyone.
The final photoshoot went well for the most part. It was somehow easier to pose Sloth than she was out of the box as her elbows didn’t dislocate at all. As you can might tell, she now has black hands, which don’t come with her OOB, I actually stole the regular hands that come included with Falcon. While there’s not much you can do with her, she came out pretty cute in the end. I somehow got a few poses off of Bowbow. Balance issues were as troublesome as ever, but when I got him balanced with a custom 3D-printed stand, he could pull off some pretty nasty poses, and Coconut Knock was there standing pretty, I guess. Getting Sloth to be held by Bowbow is a real pain in the ass though. At least everyone looks really cool, and god do they have a whole bunch of aura.
Overall, I’m exhausted. The whole kit is one damn spectacle—it’s big, it’s full of detail, but it really takes a lot of effort to get to the finished result. It wasn’t a terrible experience like Kaname Shadow, but I had quite a few issues throughout my long journey getting the project over with. Am I satisfied with the end result? I am, but oh god I am so burnt out. This ends my current girlpla backlog, and I don’t think I’m gonna have any more in a while since Sloth’s taking pretty much the rest of the space I have left to display my girls. Is she worth it? For $130 or less, you do get a PG and a half’s worth of plastic. There are problems, but the whole package is one of a kind experience. Anyway, thanks for reading, and I’ll see y’all later.
