New pics, old model: J7W Shinden from the 'Aa Megamisama!' manga

[Dizzyfugu]

New pics of an old kit, but one I hold pretty dear: because it was an accidental find (and never expected that such official merchandise existed at all!) and because I like (if not love) the manga where it comes from and in which the J7W has a brief appearance in one of the series' early stories.


Flying over Tokyo:


Oh, my goddess +++ 1:72 Kyushu J7W "Shinden", 2nd, resurrected prototype (Hasegawa/based on Aa megamisama "On a wing and a prayer" manga) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


Oh, my goddess +++ 1:72 Kyushu J7W "Shinden", 2nd, resurrected prototype (Hasegawa/based on Aa megamisama "On a wing and a prayer" manga) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


Oh, my goddess +++ 1:72 Kyushu J7W "Shinden", 2nd, resurrected prototype (Hasegawa/based on Aa megamisama "On a wing and a prayer" manga) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


Oh, my goddess +++ 1:72 Kyushu J7W "Shinden", 2nd, resurrected prototype (Hasegawa/based on Aa megamisama "On a wing and a prayer" manga) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


Oh, my goddess +++ 1:72 Kyushu J7W "Shinden", 2nd, resurrected prototype (Hasegawa/based on Aa megamisama "On a wing and a prayer" manga) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr

...and on the ground:


Oh, my goddess +++ 1:72 Kyushu J7W "Shinden", 2nd, resurrected prototype (Hasegawa/based on Aa megamisama "On a wing and a prayer" manga) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


Oh, my goddess +++ 1:72 Kyushu J7W "Shinden", 2nd, resurrected prototype (Hasegawa/based on Aa megamisama "On a wing and a prayer" manga) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


Oh, my goddess +++ 1:72 Kyushu J7W "Shinden", 2nd, resurrected prototype (Hasegawa/based on Aa megamisama "On a wing and a prayer" manga) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


I found this Hasegawa kit in a model kit shop for Japanese animation in Berlin (or, maybe, the other way around...?  ) , in a really dark shop corner. The kit itself is the standard 1:72 Hasegawa scale model of the WWII Shinden prototype. New water sliding decals and painting instructions were included, and the kit has been mostly built "out of the box". The kit itself is of high quality (typical Hasegawa standard) and the parts fit well.

The "paradigm" for this machine, which is supposed to be the (fictional) second Shinden prototype which had been buried before the American invasion and lost, stems from a special edition of the "Oh, my goddess" manga, a one-shot story during the first or second series of books called "On a Wing and a Prayer", around 1997, where the machine "calls" from its hiding place, wanting to fly again (animated things in Japan are not uncommon), and finally it is re-assembled again by some tech academy students (the machine bears their club's colors) with some, err, divine help, and soars again through the sky.

Actually, I was a bit suprised by the kit's colors, since the manga mentions a "green fuselage" - but this could also have been a translation error. But it is actually not: later I found out that "green" and "blue" use the same word in Japanese, so the confusion comes from the outsiders' point fo view. 

Hasegawa recommends white and a dark petrol blue, which is a non-standard color and has to be mixed. Other weird color details include the brown propeller (O.K., it's IJN primer, but looks pretty weird in the overall combo!) and the bright red landing gear insides... but since there are no other color references available (the manga is B/W), I stuck with Hasegawa's official instructions.
The tricky job is the painting process, though, with lots of white (*shudder*) and the very complicated blue contrast areas with hard and straight demarcation lines, which are especially hard to paint on the round fuselage, because of the air intake bulgings. I did not get it as good as I wanted to...
Another tricky part are the decals for some of the blue areas. While the idea of having some of the delicate shapes as a water decal at hand, matching the color of the printed decals and the rest of the paint is another task - you will recognize some areas with color differences

Besides these troubles, some details in the cockpit and at the landing gear were added - overall a very good kit, but due to the delicate color scheme nothing for beginners or those faint at heart!


As a side note: In the meantime (well, many years have passed since I built this one), there's an 1:32 OOB offering of this specific bird from literature available, from Zoukei Moura. Funny to see that the company chose a much brighter blue, and it differs in some other details (e .g. having a white canopy framing), too.

[TheChronicOne]

Ooooh  yeah, I like that one....    Finding it hard to find any pictures of the kit box though! I'd like to try to find one myself to build.  Googling isn't doing me much good other than finding your flickr pages and stuff on the 1/32 one. 

[Dizzyfugu]

It must have been really rare, kind of promo one-shot? IIRC, it came with a pink and red box, pretty bright - and I also never found or saw another one of these.

[TheChronicOne]

Found this on Scalemates but is this what the box looks like?

[zenrat]

Nothing to stop you painting a "normal" Shinden like that Brad.  Decals could be a problem but you could transpose it into the Star Trek universe...


Good job Dizz.

[TheChronicOne]

Yeah, now that you mention it!  I bet if I DID find one of these they'd want a million bucks for it. I saw plenty of the "regular" ones. I really likes these colors and stuff but you're right, I could do one a lot like it but put my own spin on it instead of driving myself nuts looking for THIS one. 

Here's a thought... I know I have some "racing" transfers I could put on there and turn one into a racin' plane. 

[PR19_Kit]

Here's a thought... I know I have some "racing" transfers I could put on there and turn one into a racin' plane. 

The Shinden looks like one anyway!

[Dizzyfugu]

Found this on Scalemates but is this what the box looks like?

Yes. I dug through the basement, where I keep some of the "valuable" boxes, and found it. Hah! I remembered correctly: the box is red on the flanks, and the aircraft is depicted on the box' flanks on a pink background. Price tag still there and says DM 59,90,- - which is today roundabout EUR 30,-. Steep, but in my affection to the manga and the one-of-a-kind occasion I obviously paid it...  I guess that these will go today, complete and in good condition, for a LOT more.

Also confirms that I bought and built the kit before 2002, when the Euro was introduced!

Glad you like it - pretty exotic.

[TheChronicOne]

Certainly!! You did it justice with a beautiful finished product. 

[DogfighterZen]

Here's a thought... I know I have some "racing" transfers I could put on there and turn one into a racin' plane. 

The Shinden looks like one anyway!

I agree, even more so with a scheme like this one, looks great.

[Dizzyfugu]

Domo arigato gozaimasu, gentlemen.#

And as a late addendum, some pics of the original box (from 1996 or 1997), including the flanks:

Oh, my goddess +++ 1:72 Kyushu J7W "Shinden", 2nd, resurrected prototype (Hasegawa/based on Aa megamisama "On a wing and a prayer" manga) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr

[Dizzyfugu]

...and as another addendum, I was able to dig out some online scans from the original, japanese manga for reference.
If you do not know the characters, this will certainly be confusing if not irritating, but this is where the abovementioned Shinden comes from:

http://manganites.com/ah-my-goddess/24-on-a-wing-and-a-prayer


BTW, the author, Kosuke Fujishima, is a true tech nerd, and this passion shows up everwhere, in every episode. Just note the Koenig-tuned Porsche 928 as an object of desire from the competitive tech club (plus the bunnies, but who'd notice them)... 

[PR19_Kit]

'The Shinden's green fuselage trembled with joy.....'

But it's white with a blue stripe!

[Dizzyfugu]

Yes. As mentioned above, it is a "cultural misunderstanding". The translation is correct (and I also assumed, when I read the English manga first, that the basic color would be a deep IJN green with white trim), but in Japanese there is only one, common term for green and blue ("Aoi", AFAIK). 

[PR19_Kit]

Yes. As mentioned above, it is a "cultural misunderstanding". The translation is correct (and I also assumed, when I read the English manga first, that the basic color would be a deep IJN green with white trim), but in Japanese there is only one, common term for green and blue ("Aoi", AFAIK). 

Ah right. Does that mean that Hasegawa got the colour scheme of the model wrong, or does one part of Japan think it should be green and the rest think it should be blue?

It's a good thing that traffic lights in Japan don't have a blue phase......