Tukirna-Diearth, the Mochi Smasher!

WIP

I’m back with another mecha girl kit, and jeez, Bandai’s hit a new low localizing their names in English with this one. Tukirna-Diearth might make you believe she has a turkey-earth theme to her, but according to this comment she’s actually named Tsukiruna Dears, meaning her design is based on the moon instead. But seriously, how did Tukirna-Diearth end up as the final result? I’m just gonna refer to her as Tsukiruna from this point onward.

Anyway, I’ve been interested in this kit since she was first announced last year, mainly because I vibed with her color scheme. However, I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with the mustard gold that came out of the box. Either way, I wanted to get her locally because I hate paying $10 shipping+tax for a single kit, and when I spontaneously dropped by Lunar Toy Store when I got my Acerby, I was actually looking for her to see if she was there, which obviously she wasn’t. It was only until Mecha Warehouse had a sale on their 30MM/30MS kits where I finally copped her at a cheap price with shipping, and they even provided a Sousai Shojo Teien booklet, which is a pretty cool inclusion! though idk if I’m ever gonna try a school girl kit in the near future

Let’s finally talk about Tsukiruna herself—for a 30MS kit, she comes with quite a bit of plastic, having two entire sets of limbs, but for as for her actual stature—wow, she’s ^smol. When I built her arms up, I was like, “What? That’s it?!” when it came to the length of them, and when I finished her normal form, I kinda went on a frenzy doing size comparisons between her and other kits to demonstrate her lack of height. The build doesn’t come with any surprises (outside of her size), she’s as simple as Rishetta when it comes to articulation, but the skirt does hinder forward movement on the hips. The kit comes with a raised skirt to fix that issue, but even then the legs still feel quite limited, though it could just be the hip joints itself not being amazing in the first place. I wonder how the Buster Dolls do it…

Despite that hindrance, Tsukiruna’s very fun to pose! You get a lot of mileage with her smiling and open mouth faceplates, it adds so much to her character. Her open mouth makes her look so dumb, I can only see a soyjak in her. Had she come with pointing fingers, god, I think this entire album would have been that one meme. 

Her Innocente Form looks absolutely rocks, but her arms become quite busy that it’s a bit tricky to move them around. Her sole weapon, the mallet, brings it all together—she’s ready to bonk, or pierce the heavens with her spear. This is where her color scheme shines, the gold is the secondary color rather than the accent, it’s in a unique shade, and it goes well with the black and her hair being beige. To top it all off, she’s a complete kit—no additional parts necessary to make her look “full”, like my Rishetta which I bought two sets to get the look I wanted for her.

Welp, now that I’ve built her OOB, it’s time to disassemble her to paint up that gold. The color itself is fine, but plastic is not. It has those lines, it has those bad, dark nub marks, and that’s gotta go. I also want to paint that mallet custom badly. I’ve been waiting for my chance to airbrush again, and it’s never been a better time than now with Tsukiruna. I’ll see you again with the finished result!

Completed

Mochi mallet? More like Mochi Mjölnir.

No seriously, that’s the concept behind the custom color scheme of Tsukiruna’s mallet. Initially, I wanted the head and the spear to be aluminum, but making them dark instead vibed with me more as Tsukiruna is a black and gold gal after all. 

Anyway, Tsukiruna is finally complete, and it’s not like she was a long build to do, I’ve just gotten busy as I’m finally employed again for the summer. This is my very second airbrushed kit, painting up that injection gold to a very similar Alclad Pale Gold, and the mallet with Alclad Steel and Mr. Hobby Sazabi Red. There’s not too much of a difference with Tsukiruna herself, but the weapon is entirely different. As always, I also did a little detail painting here and there, smudged some gray paint on the gold which you may spot in one of the photos, panel lined, got a few generic decals here and there which goddamn—the sheet I’ve been using is almost a year old at this point—and a flat topcoat as the cherry on top.

Overall, this ain’t the best work I’ve done, but not the worst I’ve done either. There are a few areas where the injection mold lines are still present (y’know how injected plastic looks cracked sometimes?) and I kinda shot myself in the foot with my ambiguous paint job with Mjölnir. The bottom half of the handle is actually one piece with the spear, and me not wanting to deal with masking, I decided to just hand paint the bottom half of the handle with Vallejo Model Color Red, which looks really similar to Sazabi Red but they are still two different shades of red. Also, the handle OOB already has a snug connection with the hands and the insertion which transforms the mallet to a spear, so with it painted up there were two problems—1. the spear basically couldn’t be transformed without the red hand paint being stripped off completely, and 2. the hands can rub the paint off, which was quite a bummer. A surprise, but an unwelcome one was that the middle steel part somehow got its paint chipped off badly, that I had to repaint it and wait for it to dry until I could make my final poses.

Alright, I should stop being pessimistic about the itty bitty imperfections, but I wanted to be transparent anyway. Tsukiruna was a fun build, posing her was not a problem, especially using Bandai’s Action Base 7 I recently got which works wonders over its smaller counterpart AB6, and she oozes with style amongst Rishetta and Neverlia, which yes, they’re all being propped on the same base in the photo they’re in together.

That being said, I think it’s time that I splurge on a big girl. My finances are finally on the rise, but, my collection space is still mighty fucked. I don’t know why Mad Wolf hasn’t come out yet, so Susanowo Guren might be the next kit I grab once I get paid. Thanks for reading if you made it to the end, and I’ll see you soon!