- Product Name : Good Smile Hatsune Miku Z4 2014 SUPER GT
- Product Number : 170152
- Manufacturer : Fujimi
Let me apologies first for the bad pun but after doing this kit, it indeed gave me a good smile. Being a modeler who has not done a car kit since a few years ago, it was a breeze to be back to do a car, and of course what kit did i choose to do? Well one that has quite some hellish decals to work with. The first race of 2014’s SUPER GT racing season has come to an end, with Good Smile Company’s own Good Smile Racing team emerging with a 1st place victory at the Okayama international circuit. GSR’s vehicle is a BMW Z4 wrapped in 2014’s Racing design for Hatsune Miku, and competes in the GT300 racing class.
To all car modelers out there, i think you would know that for a car, especially a GT or Le Man based car, decals are really what brings the cars to life (yes engine details too but sadly Fujimi did not include that in this kit of theirs, more on that later). Hence, doing the decals is a delicate process knowing that some decals are bigger and more fragile to handle, and requires quite a bit of patience, which i had managed to loose on several occasions due to the amount of trimming needed. But before the decals, lets start with the kit itself. This was a really nice kit to begin with, as with all Fujimi kits (being one who makes a ton of their ships i standby it), sadly as with this series of kits, yes there are more, there isn’t any engine details included. Hence, there was not too much to build, but still the build at least was not as tedious, again as expected by Fujimi.
Disclaimer however, to whoever wants to do this kit, instruction number 5 and 6, as seen in the picture, do take note to put the roll cage first before the dashboard, as if not, you will have to do some edits to the roll cage in order to fit it at the designated location. But other than the few noogles here and there, the kit fitted quite well.
Now, a special thing about this kit, unlike some other car kits, is that you will need to do the decals before assembly, like how you would do to the spoiler of other cars, but instead its the whole body, since the decals provided is for the whole car (speaking of, biggest decal sheet i ever dealt with, it was as big as the box in came in).
Hence doing this was a first for me since i was more of the, build first, decals later, but this was instead the opposite. Hence, this is where the hell started. The first thing you should take note of for this series of kits (i say that as there are more like this one), is the amount of trimming needed for the decals, which is absurd. Hence unlike other brands, which decals are nicely engineered to fit without much or any trimming needed, Fujimi requires you to trim parts of the decals if you want it to fit nicely. Not to also mention, having Mr Mark Setter & Tamiya decal adhesive softener type, was really helpful in making this kit.
Then after all the decals are done, it was back to assembling the kit together, including the front spliter, spoiler etc. The rims decal was also rather unusual for me, as other kits i did years ago, they were dry transfer decals, but for Fujimi it was water slide decals, doing them both now i am actually not sure as to which i would prefer as both have their pros ans cons. But once that was done, there was only one more thing needed to do after all the final assemblies, which every car needs, is a final coat of clear varnish. The one i used was the Mr Premium Top Coat Gloss, and i would say it worked like a charm, although i would say lacquer based varnish would have made it more shiny. But with that, i can say with fair confidence that i finished one of the more challenging car kits i have. Only 2 more of these to go, looking forward to them. To see those future GTs, will be posting them when i make them on my Instagram @tankmando. Signing off, and wish you guys a good day and have fun modeling. (Mind the pictures, am currently building a photo booth but not yet available)
Mainly you will need:
Normal tools as per with normal kits i.e Nippers, Glue etc
Mr Mark Setter
Tamiya Decal Adhesive/Mr Mark Softer
Clear Varnish
Lots of patience
