u/Galaxy_Dive

Recently got in the Pladelu Drill and Crane set. Considering the limitations of Infinity’s aux vehicles, it probably worked out nicely that suruga-ya didn’t have this in stock at first and I wound up getting the more premium Dolnado between Saber/Laser and this lol.

The Good: The plastic color is a real nice green. The size of these should be appreciated; compared to recent sentai auxes, even these simpler arm parts have all been pretty bulky.

The Not So Good: Again, only one color per, so all the black etc is painted. No movement besides the swivels. Gone is the extending crane of something like the Trigger Machine. This (nor Drill) doesn’t include a new lightbar for the right side of the chest. Only Saber did (and I guess because that’s the only one without any other sort of chestplate being added?). I’ve wound up with extra Saber, so will probably use its extra chest insert to paint whatever assault mode configuration I like the best, whether it’s one of these stock ones or a kitbash I do. The pre-assembled head that came with the Cosmo Gavarion itself was beautiful. Everything since, not so much. But Crane’s head is easily the worst of the bunch. There’s a dot of black paint on the little crane overhand and that is it. The face is completely smooth, which means you’re forced to use a (bad) sticker on what I think is probably the coolest Cosmo Gavarion face. And to top it off, you either have to be careful/lucky putting it on or take the pre-built head apart to get the sticker on well.

The Ugly: You’ll notice the only shot of Cosmo Gavarion &C with the chestplate on is it laying on its back. Which is because the peg is… too small? I haven’t really looked into the issue I’m having much. I watched a youtube vid or two where it seemed to work fine. I’m curious if anyone else here has Crane. Otherwise when I have a chance I’ll try searching around on the Japanese side some to see what’s up.

As I wait for my RV Robo, V-Rex, and more to arrive soon, I’ve (just about) finished up the start of my next kitbash project. It’s a bit of a vaguely 80s-inspired jet robo called Mercury Wing, comprised of Wing 1 (Red), Wing 2 (Blue), Wing 3 (Yellow), Wing 4 (Green), and Wing 5 (Pink).

Part of the project was to see how viable the Robo Universe frame was for kitbashing… and short answer is, not very. There are some very specific ways you could probably leverage the Robo Universe parts, but at the end of the day how they’re basically a skeleton for you to put parts over is really limiting. I wound up kind of throwing in the towel by not using the arms (replacing them with a lightly modified OG Gridman Thunderjet) and being crafty with the moveable parts on Black Daizyujin’s legs to just use them as the basis of very blocky throwback jets. The way I was putting together the puzzle pieces also made it so it was hard for me to work in the fifth component and I had to go in a direction that I’m nominally not much of a fan of, using one component primarily as a weapon - but I supplemented the pink jet as being “necessary” by working both the robo’s feet and head into it.

I still have a bit of touching up to do as I also consider any final tweaks, but I’m pretty happy with how it came out. It’s a bit uneven across each component, but I mostly hit on the intention to do a sort of Bio Robo thing where the jet modes feature a decent bit of white while the robo itself is mostly black - I’m not quite sure I hit the balance of balancing the black on the robo with the 80s blue, I think maybe the chest could have used some more black in the end (especially with how its sternum isn’t visible in jet mode, I could maybe paint the gap between the engine intakes black). And while I think the head looks cool, it’s admittedly a little big - I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future, it’s assembled from a Kotobukiya MSG option parts kit that’s basically mixing-and-matching head parts that I nominally intend to use more of.

GaoGuardian has gotten me really excited to get back to some sort of animal-based project lol, but I’m not done here yet. As I start building and painting recent SMP acquisitions, I have some support jets that make a secondary robo plotted out, as well as some ambitious plans for a carrier robo that I can hopefully pull together. But it’s also entirely possible that you’ll see another black version of an older minipla or something before those lol.

No V-Rex yet (won’t be shipping it in from Japan until RV Robo’s out), but I do have another big boi in the meantime. Assumed that I’d never get my hands on a Lion HaOh because they tend to be incredibly expensive… until I scored one for less than half of the cheapest price I ever saw one going for.

Given all of the plastic being used for the sheer size, he is, at the end of the day, a pretty damn hollow brick. Color separation is… okay-ish. About on par with the Ninninger line in general. Pretty sticker dependent, with a handful of pieces left to be the wrong color. Mine, as always, is painted to favor the show suit in model, which meant just a bit more black over grey and darker treads.

At ~9” tall, LionHaOh is about the same size as Jet Garuda, but about twice as wide lol. He’s 2” shorter than Grand Liner. I think he’s also about the same height as V-Rex, or maybe a little shorter?

Despite being so big, he’s barely big enough. It’s a bit of a pain to get Shurikenjin inside, you need to position the arms (and parts of them, like Dragomaru’s head) just right. GekiatsuDaiOh is a bit more slender and easier to get in (though the attachment point on its back is a bit more finicky). A couple pics of HaOh Gekiatsu DaiOh will come later. When I built my GekiatuDaiOh, I was confused why there was a second face that went on the back of Genbumaru’s face, and now I realized why lmao. I never painted it or put it on (it may have been included on an orange runner? I forgot). So I’ll have to dig up where I put that and paint it.

A recent acquisition inspired me to get around to destickering and painting my Bison King. Unlike the rest of my Ninninger kits (which I all painted while building), this one was acquired secondhand, already built.

As usual, the gold paint really makes everything pop. Aside from a small thing or two, there actually weren’t really any details to add not covered by the stickers (the biggest thing was just painting the Bison Rifle and the backplate/ATV engine their proper silver color).

I opted not to paint Rodeomaru’s face. Way too small for something that’s not visible most of the time. The other sticker left is BisonKing’s chestplate behind the bison head - because the plastic beneath it is a hollow honeycomb.

Giving the kit another appraisal, Rodeomaru’s small size is one of the only real flaws. Because of his sizing for BisonKing, he looks tiny riding the ATV mode. BisonKing of course shares the same flaw as everything else in the line of not being able to move its head. The legs have more articulation than Shurikenjin (especially since the way the feet sort of give him some ankles), though the flip side is the minipla not really having actual upper arms limits what you can do there a bit.

I forgot to take a pic of King Shurikenjin with the Bison-Drago Sword, but that’s included with Bison King Drago. This was the era of the super gattais I like the least, where things just stack together into a monstrosity lol.

Here’s the new Pladelu Gavarion Dolnado, fully painted.

The Dolnado itself looks really damn nice. Definitely closer in quality to the Cosmo Gavarion itself, as opposed to the auxes so far (I’ll grab Crane and Drill eventually when I see them cheap). Like everything else thus far, if you are relying only on stickers, there are going to be a few parts without the full/correct color detail, but I think overall, it’s the most “accurate” Pladelu Neo to date. My only general gripe is two years ago, this would be a minipla with killer articulation in terms of neck movement etc.

I always go for the show suit in terms of color choices. Dolnado, however, is CG-only. Everything on it is basically gold, but it kind of varies because Toei’s CG is inconsistent depending on the lighting it’s being rendered into lol. So I let the DX/weapon prop inform me more here, where there’s a bit of a separation between gold and yellow. I went with a more neon yellow than usual (that actually matched the color of the stickers included) since I felt like it paired with the blue plastic and the vibes of the original Gavan’s Dol pretty nicely. Express is coming next with plenty of gold, anyway.

Despite how good Dolnado itself looks, it unfortunately emphasizes all the problems with the Cosmo Gavarion. As Type KI, the Dolnado parts are way too heavy for the left arm. You are also left managing the tail, shoulder-grip, and backpack wings whenever you want to try and move the arm. Any adjustments to the arm will almost assuredly make the arm (or Dolnado’s tail) fall off, and fixing it runs a high risk of making the backpack fall off and/or the Gavarion’s hips explode (I should probably just glue the hips shut, I think that would solve all those problems without any real drawbacks).

And while the combined Type Dolnado ship mode looks cool (that was the last thing I took photos of, I forgot to put the chest plates back on over the back of Dolnado’s legs), the weight balance is a mess. Dolnado is positioned forward and there’s way too much weight from the Gavarion behind it for it to stay level. I think I just need to find something small to use to prop up the underside of the Gavarion to keep it level.

With all the odd shapes and sizes of the Cosmo Gavarion ship and these later robo modes, the Pladelu would have really benefited from some proper action base compatibility. A peg hole here and there like some of the Sentai minipla featured would go a long way.

Finally decided to get TimeRobo Shadow Alpha together. This wasn’t ready to go when I finished Shadow, as I still had to paint the Pro Divider - it’s an orange-y plastic, like the DX, but I wanted it yellow to match the show prop (shhh, technically I should have painted the helmets yellow, too, but the dull gold plastic is a lot closer than the orange).

Alpha’s hips popping off a couple times when putting it together had be in no mood to transform it into Beta, so I’ll do that another time lol. I usually don’t leave super gattai on my shelf (Super Galaxy Mega being the exception), but this is nice enough to leave for awhile. I’ll probably do the same with Beta for a bit before diverting back to TimeRobo Alpha and Time Shadow being displayed.

The steal among the cube animals 1-6 lot that I bought a little while back was that it included a cube gorilla, who is typically quite the pricy monke. So, while the rest were marked for black customs, gorilla got destickered and a proper paint job.

Some of the recent posts inspired me to fiddle with my Gaoranger SMP. They’ve been on my shelf in their base configurations forever now.

The ability to swap stuff around like this is one of Gao’s stronger appeals, and this does kind of push me a bit more to wanting to grab a dupe or two with the reissues. I think that’s going to mostly depend on the pricing. But the other thing that’s always been a bit of a nagging issue for me with wanting to customize power animals is, whether you are abiding by the official list of 100 power animals or just doing your own thing, a good handful of the components are kind of inflexible for kitbashing.

Gaoranger already has one less pair of legs than it does torso + arms (even if you’re going with centaurus, lion’s still in two places at once) and while bison and rhino are really unique designs for legs, the problem then becomes that you’re pretty damn limited with what you can turn them into lol.

Finally finished my Time Shadow. Well. Mostly. No TimeRobo Shadow yet; the Pro Divider’s orange plastic is to match the DX toy. I’m going to paint mine yellow to match the show prop and may well paint the helmets to do the same.

And here’s my painted Pladelu Saber. I do like this more than Laser, but it needed more paint (including more detailing). Some minor sticker use again - I cut out the wing stickers, the purple on those is surrounded by steel (which the DX is colored, but the series and suit are more silver. The silver canopy details are also freehanded on.

In addition to the purple plastic, the chest plate swap was white plastic.

I got in the Pladelu Saber & Laser set, though so far have only painted Laser.

I’m unfortunately not that impressed. Hopefully the Pladelu line will continue to improve, but these aux don’t really seem too much better than the nerfed minipla.

Aside from the head/emogear, all of Saber’s parts are magenta plastic. So all the blue and black (plus details) are painted. Since the solar panels aren’t molded on, I also used those stickers.

And unlike the Cosmo Gavarion itself, which has a transforming head with a pretty beautifully pre-painted face, these don’t transform. The emogear is just a white chunk, hollow in back, with stickers for the emogear eyes. The robot head is two pieces, but the only thing painted is the magenta disc in the middle and the other details are left colorless.

Beyond that, for some reason they chose a moving hinge to attach the chestplate pieces of the solar panels, even though I don’t think those sections of Laser ever fold etc, so it’s basically just asking for trouble if you transform it too often.

Following Cereberios, I decided to paint my Orion Battler. This wound up 95% painted - I was too lazy to do the stripes down the middle with those stickers still holding up really well at the moment. But overall, it feels like a big improvement between the combination of gold paint over the dull mustard and replacing a bunch of stickers that wrapped over molded, non-flat surfaces (numerous of which were starting to peel).

There were a few details added - the white space is now properly there between the gold and the red in the middle of the chest (instead of being gold plastic) and the bottom portion of the star-shaped hammer is now gold instead of blue. I also opted to paint the tank treads a darker color to better match the appearance of the show suit.

Also included some bonus pics of Orion Voyager on RyuteiOh.

Like at least a couple other people around here, my Cerberios has spent most of its time on my shelf without its secondary heads, to instead display the three other voyager (and Kojishi used as an arm) not on KyurenOh and RyuteiOh. I’m in the process of rearranging my collection and, since I now have a fully painted (and lightly modified) set of the initial 11 voyagers, I decided to take my original SP Kyuranger set and display it as Kyutamajin. This basically freed up my Cerberios, which I decided to paint and then put back together in its intended configuration with the now extra SP Voyager bodies.

Besides the silver adding a lot of pop like normal, Ceberios is also more sticker-dependant than KyurenOh (as its turquoise thigh inserts and knee frames used stickers, as well as the silver on the inner shoulders). My super metallic red Dspiae marker was a pretty close match for the intended sort of wine red found on Cerberios’ face and I had an Arrtx marker that was a really close match for the turquoise plastic.

With the exception of Kajiki, which I used the SP since my painted one has the gigantic sword, I used my recently painted Chameleon, Oushi, and Hebi for these pics to better match, but it’s gone on the shelf with the stickered SP Voyager bodies. Since the SP kyutama are being used for KyurenOh, I did paint an extra Oushi and Hebi kyutama I had leftover from kitbashes to use with this.