Behold the 30MS Holy Grail, which I managed to find at a mall in Flushing, NY back in April, who is now extremely hard to find, especially at a good price. My dad and I are currently working on a big project with Yolopark’s 30cm Optimus Prime, but as always, I’m waiting for him to paint all the pieces before I can assemble it, and because he is a busy man with other lucrative projects going on, I was in the need to actually build something and found the perfect opportunity to finally do Sourei!
Like most other 30MS, Sourei is really easy to build, with the only weird part being the hips kinda just floating below the skirt pieces until you sandwich the two stomach parts together. I dig the sailor uniform with the sorta sci-fi samurai aesthetic with the flared sleeves, the shoes, the really nice flame effects and the oni armor which looks awesome, but as people have stated, it causes MAJOR hindrances with movement which I’ll get into a bit.
I was always kinda keen about Sourei’s bare thighs and hips, as while the hips are like the big selling point of Sourei, I thought that making them black or painting them as tights would be better. I had a can of Tamiya TS-90 JSGDF Brown I bought for another kit to try out, and well I’ve made a match in heaven—I like it a LOT more than leaving them bare as it reminds me of Ayatsuki, probably helped by the fact that her color scheme is also blue. While I was painting the thighs, I thought I would just go ahead and paint the blue as well with Tamiya TS-19 Metallic Blue since the shades lined up almost perfectly. With just a little bit of spray painting, Sourei was looking top notch!
As always, I did a little hand painting, but got into a little accident when I was preparing to paint. I’m not sure if you can see it or not, but I had forgotten to close the cap of my Tamiya Thin Cement bottle which unfortunately spilled on my cutting mat, spilling onto the sword and its flame effect, which, made the clear effect quite ugly. I tried fixing it by cleaning it up and giving it a topcoat, but if seen at certain angles, you can see the residue inside the clear part :( Hand painting itself went pretty smooth, which I used Vallejo Steel and Royal Blue, really detailing the legs as the channels were screaming to be painted. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you, I did use paint on the hilt, as for whatever reason, it is just really easy to remove excess paint from black Bandai plastic. What I did was dabble the paint into the channels of the hilt, and wiped the excess with a paper towel; it was that easy to do. I also did a bit of decaling, I’d probably been fine not having any, but I just wanted a bit to spice up the design even more.
All that was left was the topcoat, which I coated everything flat but the sword, which I used gloss for the blade and the flame. I’d unfortunately go through a very strange problem where the coat on one of the arms was not flattening at all, maintaining a glossy finish even though I had shaken the can to its limit. I had to go through an ugly process removing the coat as I wasn’t able to override the glossiness in any way, but weirdly enough, after I got all of the coating and residue off, the surface became flat, its flatness matching the rest of the kit. I’m not sure what the fuck happened, but since it was flat, I didn’t even try to recoat the arm. Does anybody know what exactly happened here?
Finally, it was time to pose, and this is where the problems of the actual kits begin. Don’t get me wrong, Sourei is absolutely adorable, and I just really fuck with her color scheme, it’s super nice, and she looks really good. However, for as solid as 30MS kits have been recently, Sourei is kinda not. Her shoulder sockets are not super secure on the torso, which the right arm basically droops down because so much weight is placed on it. I tried fixing it with a bit of double sided tape, but it only fixed the problem temporarily. It’s worse with her armor on, but she’s surprisingly hard to balance, even without holding anything. It’s awkward to position her ankles due to the floating ankle armor, and unless her feet a far apart widely angled, she’s gonna fall. Now, get her on an action base and that goes all away. But what doesn’t go away is her massive shoulder armor, which hinders the head SO MUCH, which is not helped with her relatively unstable neck joint that causes the head to pop off frequently. There are still plenty of ways to pose her with the armor, but you really have to maneuver them around to get a good shot, which even then you’re now only seeing the back of the armor. It is a pain, it does limit movement, but it wasn’t agonizing. I’m pretty satisfied what I was able to do, somehow getting her to hold her sword with both hands, and getting a lot of shots even if she only has her sword as her sole accessory. Well, there is the oni mask but it looks incredibly goofy on her.
Overall, I’m glad that I did get Sourei when I had the chance. I have the huge urge to get Shuremi so they can be together, but I also want Rydira, but I also have a huge backlog to finish which includes 4 more girls, because I got two more since I finished Izumo. Who did I get? That’s a surprise :) I’ll probably be doing another girl while I’m at it, so stay tuned for next time! See ya!
