>>11612913Its the 1/100 Bangdoll of the IMS line by Volks.
It is a infamous kit due to being the first, let's say, affordable plamo of the Five Star Stories mechas, which were exclusively resin kits by that point. It is like 15 years old since its release I think?
Being a plastic model it was easier to purchase and build than a resin one at the time, but it also suffers from being the first release and its bad fame is associated to plenty of issues related to things than range from flash remnants in the parts, fitting issues, large seamlines and overall fragility, especially during the assembly process, for which yes, glue/cement is a must, no other way around it.
As I have been building it I can attest to those issues. I'm basically doing a straight out of the box build, just using metallic black for the inner frame parts and flat topcoat for the light blue ones, but holy shit dude, the closer I get to completing it, the more fragile it feels.
The joints of the shoulders and arms connectors are really bad compared to shit like Bandai's or Koto's, in the sense in which they favored aesthetics first over practicality. The moment I manipulate them the parts are prone to fall off.
I'm still not sure I want to also use cement there because the problem is that they are composed by a series of parts that fit into each other like a tetris game and out of that mess comes the one with the polycap that houses the should balljoint, so even gluing them might end up making the whole thing brittle and prone to breaking.
Despite all those faults and issues, it remains a relatively popular kit because the design of this particular mecha is something else, even among the more modern Volks releases
