Introduction Scale 1/4.5 Sculptor K. Piero Maker Realize Completed 9/99 Parts 12 Retail 14000yen I fell in love with this kit when I first saw it. It's a sculpture based on the cover of Eva LD vol. 2. I thought this kit looks better than the 1/5 Misato by Takanori Kawai, mostly because it's more anime-like (while Kawai's more life-like) and looks cuter. It also looks more dynamic because she's off balance.   Kit Review Seam lines: 4/5   Pinholes: 4/5   Casting: 5/5   Fit: 5/5   Part Break: 4/5   Help Parts: Hat, front hair piece, head+hair, hands (left&right), arms (l&r), body, legs (l&r), cross (white metal), jacket. This is a pretty good casting with very little pinholes and mild seam lines. The killer seam lines are along the skirt... they aren't too bad but took a lot of care to get them right. The visible parting lines are along the joining surfaces between the arms and the jacket, they require filling. The thin hair strip was broken off main hair during shipping - not a big deal and honestly it could be better this way, since there was a big piece of flash running across it. I thought the white metal cross was very neat. I wish the face is separated from the hair tho, so that no masking is needed.   Building Since the kit is off-balance, I learnt from my mistake in Nuku Nuku and use a 7/64" brass rod for pinning (+ 1/16" rod for fixing position), and it holds the figure pretty well. I also use the left-over base-plate from 1/8 Ayanami for base with some cutting and sawing to fit the base. Made a decal from the box cover and some photoshopping - I'm surprised the decal film is so thin. A little impatience caused some messiness on the decal but nothing major. The printer seems to have some trouble printing perfect area color on the decal films... hmmm. But then I'm too lazy to print another one. I also wanted to add some stray air strands, but since this figure would travel I wasn't sure if I should. Painting - I used Mr. Color entirely to paint this kit just for fun, and it's really good to know you can hold the piece after 30 seconds after you paint. Without worrying about paint scratching off it's a breeze to paint the kit - I think I spent about 15 hours doing that. Only difficulty is I needed to mix the skintone - I use the traditional white + red + yellow + blue + brown (for deep shadows). I got sick of the poor opaqeness of flat white and decided to go with Mr. Base white 1000... they seems to work ok. The problem skin tone would be the deepest shadow color, and I still haven't got it right (too red). Because of parts division not much masking is needed except the face and the hair. I applied some rouge make-up powder to the face and it looks so kawaii. Colors - skirt: black for shadows, midnight blue middle color and navy blue highlight. jacket: brown for shadow, red+brown (3:1) middle and shine red for highlights. Disasters - very minor ones and not too difficult to fix. Got finger prints on the hair a couple of times - lightly sand the surface with 1500 grit paper and respray fixes it. The left face was dirtied by some masking error and one thing lead to another, was a little unsmooth, but nothing major.