Felt like my Meltina needed to be painted, mostly stuck to the original colors

This is Kotobukiya's Front Mission Zenith Girl.

I painted the inner frame and the gun with IPP Metallic Iron, and finished the rest with a flat matte topcoat.

The sculpt in its unarmored state is pretty decent. In my subjective opinion, her hip and glute sculpt is the second best-looking among Girl Plastic Models, right after Magatsuki.

However, once you put on the armor, there is almost no articulation left. The hip joint range of motion is severely limited, the shoulders suffer heavy interference from the added armor pieces, and the head is practically fixed in place—you can hardly turn it left or right.

Now I completely understand why there were barely any posing examples in the manual....

I painted zero tortoise and gave her the mask of Shingen. Now she reminds me of a masked character repeatedly appears in Gundam series.

https://www.kotobukiya.co.jp/en/product/detail/p4934054071135/

https://kotobukiya-us.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/190526066809

Finished this one up tonight (minus waterslides....ill get to those...). Big kit wow, simple colors but solid separation and great finishes right out of the box.

For those who also have the kit: did you also receive copies of a bunch of the runners in clear orange? I got copies of the gold and clear blue runners in the clear orange used in the kit. Not listed in the manual from what I can see so thought I would ask!

All in all, really liked the kit. Wish there was a pegged mount for sitting on the flower canon, but its workable.

https://www.goodsmile.com/en/product/1139114/PLAMATEA+Armored+Soldier+of+Unknown+Affiliation

the start of a new month, the start of a new series of posts! i, rookie translator Alexroob "Alexus" Tensaier, have spent three restless nights looking into the girls' names, with the help of the trusty Dictionary-kun! and today, i shall share it with everyone!

a bit about me: i'm a high school senior from Indonesia with a passion for language. i have been mostly teaching myself Japanese for four-ish years, but i have a good general understanding of the language! although i still rely on a dictionary to read stuff i can't, i especially love looking into Japanese names.

today's edition is on Sousai Shoujo Teien first year girls! all photos from Kotobukiya. Dictionary-kun: jisho.org

1. Yuuki Madoka (結城まどか)

(also romanised Yuki Madoka)

• Yuuki (結城) is a common surname. Yuu (結) means to tie or to bind, Ki (城) means castle. Yuuki is also a city in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan.
• Madoka (まどか) is a common given name written in hiragana and has no meaning, but can refer to 円か meaning round (as in shape) or tranquil.

translator's note: i speculate that Madoka’s name might reference illustrator Morikura En (森倉円)’s name, in which, per the second point above, Madoka can refer to 円か, which features the same character as Morikura-sensei’s first name En (円).

2. Takanashi Koyomi (小鳥遊暦)

• Takanashi (小鳥遊) is a common surname and a classic example of jukujikun surname, a case where a set of kanji is read entirely different from each kanji’s readings. 小鳥遊 would be read as "kotori-asobi", meaning “little bird(s) play”. however, it is read as Takanashi, which would be the reading for 鷹無し, meaning “no hawks”. the idea here is that, when there are no hawks in the sky, the little birds come out of their nests to play. thus "kotori-asobi" being read as Takanashi.
• Koyomi (暦) means calendar or almanac.

there's no short explanation for Takanashi so it's my favourite Japanese name tidbit. don't ask me why she's Calendar-chan.

3. Saeki Ritsuka (佐伯リツカ)

• Saeki (佐伯) is a common surname consisting of the kanji Sa (佐) for assistant and Eki (伯) chief. It’s also the name of a town in Okayama prefecture, Japan.
• Ritsuka (リツカ) is a girl's name, written in katakana and has no meaning.

it's super simple, but befitting of an ojousama~

4. Nijimura Eimi (虹村映美)

• Nijimura (虹村) is a common surname, consisting of the kanji Niji (虹) meaning rainbow, and Mura (村) meaning village.
• Ei (映) means reflection, Mi (美) means beauty. a perfect name for a journalist character.

she's one of my blorbos, i love John SST.

that's all! did you find them interesting? stay tuned for Vol. 2, where i will show name etymologies for the second years!

https://x.com/gsc_mechasmile/status/2094341925860155576

This is te black and purple version of the seven deadly sin-01 and i cut off 1 wire in an attempt to expose more of the wire to make sure i could secure it and i have absolutely no clue if or how to fix this any help would be much appreciated

https://www.kotobukiya.co.jp/blog2/megami/article/detail/330/

https://www.kotobukiya.co.jp/en/product/detail/p4934054071128/

https://kotobukiya-us.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/190526066793

Here is Kotobukiya's Front Mission Zenith Girl. The whole time I was building it, it felt like I was working on a Chinese girl plastic model kit.

Almost every part was molded with undergates, and the pin holes were hexagonal. It seems like Kotobukiya outsourced the production to a Chinese company.

That being said, the outfit is seriously wild.

If you translate it into 2D anime style, it becomes even more obvious—it would take a massive amount of courage to actually wear something like this in real life...

※all photos from Kotobukiya.

is this my first post? i think it is! hello everybody! model kit enthusiast with too much on their wishlist, i'm Alex!

i've been really into SST recently. and since September is tomorrow, i wanna pray to Kotobukiya gods for who i wanna see next month... which is either or both of these!

1. the twins, Naruse Takuto and Naruse Shiki!

if you don't know, Takuto is the producer for the legendary songstress Tsuki, aka Kisaragi Yue. she has a unique way of speaking and high aspirations... her number one supporter and so-called "translator" is her twin sister, Shiki!

"they're girls!?"

Shiki is explicitly mentioned to be Takuto's younger twin sister on the Naruses' profile, while Takuto is mentioned to be her older twin sister in a blog post; Shiki's official profile and the profile on the blog post differ in exactly one word, which is the use of "big sister (姉)" instead of "Takuto (タクト)" in a part referring to her sister!

they are seniors of Ryoubu Senior High School, the same school as Koyomi, Seira, and Eimi. announced back in 2024 with Yue, they're due for their model kit debut! i hope they get released as a set!

2. Yue's school uniform!

also if you don't know, Yue is older than her classmates. she's actually 20 attending St. Iris Girls' Academy due to missing two years of school from of an illness and major surgery. since 20 is the legal age, she also drinks! this is mentioned in her profile! i wonder if Ritsuka or Emma know her, as fellow St. Iris girls themselves.

i hope her school uniform kit gets released soon~ she hides her true self, a selfish girl, from her fellow classmates, a real 180° from her as Tsuki! but i like her in that she appreciates every minute, every second of her life. she almost lost hers after all, i think it's really inspiring!

if i have a nickel for every SST third year student with a "different self", i would have two!

who do you wanna see next in the SST lineup? thanks for reading!~

https://www.goodsmile.com/en/product/1145409/PLAMATEA+Hurricane+Honey

https://www.goodsmile.com/en/product/1138610/PLAMATEA+Honey+Chaser

https://www.kotobukiya.co.jp/blog1/labo/article/detail/658/

Damnit i pressed the wrong button...the preorder date should be 3rd not 2nd......

https://www.kotobukiya.co.jp/blog1/megalomaria/article/detail/657/

she is partially done, just need top coat and a few more accents and she is complete (per say).

a few things notable and a slight review:

1. Heavy and Spacious - she takes tons of space and it is heavy; i caution you about displaying her with wings spread and effects.

2. fragile parts - be weary where you press; as they say, you break it, just cry lol; but yeah a few parts are brittle and the wing connection is scary that it might over twist and then break. Anything I can do to reinforce it?

3. read the manual 4x - had a few incidents that some connections are confusing, ending up hours trying to disconnect both parts without breaking it so be very patient and read the manual more than enough.

overall, fun kit!

Haven't posted anything here in ages.

Finally got my hands on my Arcanadea waifu from the reprint. I can't wait for the anime and game to come out! Luckily my wallet is safe for now since I'm only interested in Refilka lol. DAT legs, noice~

I also got my first 30MP kit, and I was surprised by how small the box was. I'm so used to Kotobukiya's thicker boxes filled with loads of parts, so it definitely felt refreshing and less stressful when I opened the box lol. So I decided to build Asuka just because she has very few parts.

When I looked at the runners, I was just amazed by how beautiful the parts were. The gloss injection parts are gorgeous! Bandai used so much slide molding to create parts without seam lines, while at the same time reducing the part count for an easier assembly.

And when I looked at the hair runner, I noticed there was a runner switch on it. It's very interesting to see how Bandai arranges the parts on the runners and how they decide to omit certain portions of the runner to release different variants.

Which makes me think they plan to release another variant of Asuka... maybe Asuka from the third Rebuild movie? Or maybe I'm just overthinking it, who knows. But since we're getting Ayanami Rei in her school uniform as a P-Bandai kit, it's safe to assume we'll be getting a school uniform variant for Asuka as well.

Are any of you like me, who likes to "read" the runners before building? Or do you never care about the runners at all?

I bought an airbrush and decided to do a gradient on her hair! It didn't turn out well, but I want to do gradients on armor in the future!

My build took First place in the Mecha Musume category this weekend at Plamo Alabama 2026