If you asked me who the superior bike girl is between Wilber Nine and Yefuna Malkina, Wilber Nine takes it hands down, both bike and girl. Wilber Nine was a Frame Arms Girl I was immediately captivated with when she was first revealed, but a problem I immediately recognized even before getting her was that there was gonna be no space for her if I got her… and then I got her anyway on as soon as she appeared on Suruga-ya in the fear that she’ll be sold out and never return like Stylet Swimsuit Ver… and then discovering that she became a shelf warmer for months.
Originally planning to build her as is, I saw this super cool custom from @komonoya_4190 that unified the black between Wilber Nine’s outfit and her bike and had my mind set to do exactly what they did. However, what I thought was going to be a fun time customizing Wilber Nine ended up becoming a painting nightmare, mostly to blame on my part by doing rookie mistakes and being impatient, because what’s new with me?
Cutting up the entire kit and leaving the hair, skin and white parts behind, I first painted the bike’s gray inner frame with Alclad Aluminum, the first time I airbrushed since my Cal-re.A back in February, which went fine other than the cleaning up the nozzle which takes longer than actually painting the parts, painted the red with Tamiya Metallic Red and for the gray outfit and dark gray bike pieces, I painted both of them with Tamiya Rubber Black. However, I decided to get a bit ambiguous as I decided to mask and spray paint for the first time as I needed red on the bike’s fork, and it wasn’t color separated out of the box. In addition, the inside of the wheels were white but were only the dark gray pieces, so I tried using white prime on the inner ring, and masked the ring so that I could paint the wheels with Tamiya Semi Gloss black. And so, the problems begin as taking off the tape from the pieces did not produce clean results, especially with the wheels as black paint leaked a LOT on the white ring, and for whatever reason I somehow overpainted the wheels that there were paint blobs everywhere and made some of the wheels look really ugly…
Anyway, it was time to start building, and I just realized that I painted a bulk of the parts without masking the joints, which pretty much each joint required heavy amounts of sanding just so that the piece could go in all the way. Some parts definitely snapped from being too tight, but surprisingly the only joint I cracked within Wilber Nine herself is this shoulder piece, which was luckily not fully cracked, which inserting some double sided tape as putty did the job for most of the part. But yeah, the kit was awfully tight, probably not helped that I gave every piece a clear coat to protect the paint. However, manufactured joint tightness aside, Wilber Nine is a surprisingly simple build, probably helped that her transformation only needs you to part swap with like 5 pieces and her boots, and her bike is well thought out, providing both form and function that honestly put’s Yefuna’s bike to shame, despite how much stuff is put into her bike. W9’s bike is definitely the more involved part of her build, and to be honest, I prefer leaving them separate than transforming her, where Wilber Nine loses to very cool boots and does a poorly implemented cosplay of a motorcycle Transformer or something.
Next up was detailing, where panel lining became non-existent due to dark appearance, but I really went out there with the hand painting, doing all the required yellow bits with Tamiya Lemon Yellow, fixing up the white rings with some Vallejo White, and a whole bunch of Tamiya Metallic Grey and Red to spice ‘er up. I even added Semi Gloss Black to her belts, which unfortunately became too subtle after all the final coating I did. I of course sprinkled some good ol’ DelpiDecal caution waterslides, and all she needed left was just some final clear coats!
And of course… it had to be the most damning part of the painting process. I gave Wilber Nine one last clear coat just to protect the paint one last time, left it to cure overnight, and then at the next afternoon I tried wrapping her up in a flat coat… and it didn’t wanna be flat, nor did it want to dry up. This was the same problem I was having with Sourei where the flat coat basically wanted to stay glossy, but I couldn’t fix it by just dumping Wilber Nine into isopropyl alcohol—it’ll ruin my entire paint job! Instead, I basically gave up and dealt with the satin finish she ended up having instead… only to find out that the coat hadn’t completely dried yet even after hours of waiting and I had been smudging the damn coating, and instead of being reasonable and waiting for the coat to fully dry, and I had become so impatient and aggravated with how much trouble I’ve been having with her paint, I just said fuck it and started posing her, even if that led to the coat chipping and smudging a lot as the posing went on.
After all that trouble, posing with Wilber Nine was not all that bad! Sure, her articulation is rather limited compared to other recent FA:Girls and I could see the paint go to ruins, but she can stand extremely well and can pull of a lot of poses excluding her transformation, because I didn’t have the patience to change her into that and I already didn’t like it anyway. I completely forgot to mention it, but she just oozes in style and I’m super glad that I did paint her gray outfit to the same black as her bike, giving her a much more cool and badass look well, unless you pose her with her crybaby face. Wilber Nine is super solid that didn’t give me any trouble of joints popping off and she can mount onto the bike really well, allowing her to the Akira pose, pop some wheelies, and even let Kuuga take it for a spin. My poor handling with her paintjob is sorrowful, but she at least still looks super awesome and I got a lot of great shots with my Nikon D5300.
Overall, I never learn to be patient this journey has been quite a mixed bag, but I got myself a pretty nice end result. She combines the cool and sexy with her cool jacket, rare shorts on a Girlpla kit, and actually cool bike. I still have no space to put her in my collection, but I found the solution with my father, who is also really enamored by her design, and because she is considered 1/10, she’s gonna be another model for my dad’s RC cars. Anyway, that’s about it. I now dread the Lang custom I’m probably gonna do next. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time!
