Introduction Scale 1/10 Sculptor Maker Club M Completed 3/24/01 Parts Many Retail 4500yen Lana is from the 1978 show "Future Boy Conan"　未来少年コナン. One of Hayao Miyazaki's earlier works, and one of my favorite series. I can just go on and on raving about how incredible the show is even when I view it today, but that would be ranting. If you have the chance to see "Laputa - castle in the sky"　天空の城ラプタ, Conan is almost a prototype and shares a lot of elements with Laputa. Lana is the heroine of the story and has telepathic ability. She can communicate in mind with the sea gulls. The one sitting on her shoulder is her friend Teki. The diorama depicts the scene in episode one when she woke up at sun rise and talked with the birds. This is one of the earliest resin kits I purchased. I lucked out when I asked Rainbow 10 if they have the kit in stock even when it's not listed in their inventory. There's also a Conan and Jimsy set; while I like Conan a lot, it wasn't a spectacular like this kit is. I fell in love with this kit the moment I saw it.   Kit Review Seam lines: 3/5   Pinholes: 2/5   Casting: 2/5   Fit: 4/5   Part Break: 5/5   Help As you'd have guessed, the most difficult part of this kit is the gulls. There are 20 in total, to surface prepare each, paint and anchor them was a lot of work. Most of the gulls are one piece, with flash between the V tail and between the legs. Given how small and delicate these pieces are (each gull is about an inch), removing the flash is a very stressful operation. The instructions say cut the buggers with knives, either they're crazy or I'm just bad with blades, it's too dangerous. So I took the dremel engraver to remove those. A few gulls has missing chunks of resin on their beaks and feet, and a few has a lot of pinholes on their back. In short, it was MURDER. But as usual, "the result is worth it".   Building Lana: Miyazaki characters are not easy to 3-dimensionalize, but I think the sculptor did a decent if not perfect job. I used a little bit of interference green on her blue hair to give it a nice highlight color. Base: Standard routine of base coat, shade, wash, drybrush. The moss/bushes are major paint brush destroyers since they're so rugged. Originally I wanted to mount her on a larger base, but it didn't work out. Gulls: I used my new weapon the custom micron to paint their heads and shade their bodies. The brush is pretty amazing. The most frustrating part however is mounting them. Putting 20 of these critters on such a small area is a huge hassle, not to mention their feet are so small. I used epoxy glue to stick them on. The gulls have varied poses and they look really nice when put together. The kit would not be the same without them.