Update (10/30/2009) : Just finished building this kit, finished shots of the Rick Dias can be found here.

This just arrived yesterday for me from the post office. Bandai’s Rick Dias in 1/100 Master Grade scale. When I was introduced to Gundam in 2005, via the Zeta Gundam Series in Animax, I never really was into the Gundam’s design. I thought that it was too flashy, the Rick Dias however I came to like immediately.

Update 11/08/2009: Finished model pictures can be found here.

I went back to the mall and bought a bootleg GN-002 Gundam Dynames to review in this site from a stack of bootleg gundams that I had seen. It cost me about 1078 yen. At Hobby Link Japan (HLJ) this was selling for about 2300 yen. I’ll probably buy this from HLJ in a couple of months in order to better differentiate the quality of the pirated versus the original.

Judging from the box shots you can see that they had copied everything down to a T except for the pilot which was visible in the original Bandai product. Instead of the red Bandai mark, it was replaced with a “TT Hong Li” tag. Also they missed out on the “Gundam” tag. I am shooting at the dark here, but assuming that Bandai has already trademarked the term “Gundam” in China. This could be some sort of a defensive tactic by the Chinese bootleggers to circumvent it since when they get caught they could always say that its not a “Gundam”. This way Bandai will have to start suing in the individual product level for copyright infringement.

There’s a saying that you only get what you paid for. So I’m quite happy that I only paid Y2400 for this toy since it was on sale at HLJ. Ok so I think its a still bit overpriced but almost anything with a Macross tag tied to it nowadays is overpriced and selling like hotcakes.

The toy comes in 1/100 scale and stands roughly 15cm tall in Battloid mode. With the aid of additional parts it can transition to Fighter and Gerwalk mode. So you could say that some assembly is required for this toy. Its very light because its mostly constructed of plastic.

Not sure why this was on sale though. Whether it was because it was the last few remaining inventory, so they’re trying to get rid of it to make some shelf space for the VF100’s version of Alto’s Armored VF-25, or because its really not selling only HLJ knows.

If I were to base this review on the Y5040 price tag that Bandai is touting it for over at the Bandai Site, definitely its overpriced given the quality of the plastic and the workmanship. Design wise its a fine design for a display model and because of the size they had to work with. Because of the high price of Oil I’m not surprised if they had decided to cut corners on the quality of this product. Plastic is made from oil so its price is pegged proportionately with the price of oil. And oil hasn’t been that low these past few years.

Update 11/03/2009: Finished building this wonderful kit, shots of the build can be found here.

I was antsy in the house because my EMS package hadn’t arrived yet after two weeks, so my wife, the ever loving wife that she is, told me that maybe I should drop by the post office to check if the package was there already, since I was going to run errands anyway. And I was, “You can do that?” So I did and to my surprise it was indeed there already. Yippee!

Update 11/19/2009:Spoke too soon. Turns out that there is a problem with Hobby Search and Paypal, so they had to cancel all orders that were to be paid via paypal. Of course, since I was in one of the banned countries that Hobby Search will only allow to pay via paypal, shopping is officially stopped for me till their troubles are fixed.

Update 11/18/2009: Hobby Search announced that they are lifting the ban on shipment to certain countries due to the implementation of their Paypal payment system. Just sent in my order and will post an updated review once my order gets through.

Was planning to conduct a review of Hobby Search of Japan by purchasing an item off of their online store but was stopped short at user registration. Turns out that they do not ship to my country… hahaha… good thing I didn’t fill up my cart yet, that would have been a good waste of time.

I fired off an email to ask them about it and after a minutes I got a reply from them, they said that the reason they weren’t selling items to my country was because of past instances of “credit card trouble”. Ok that answers that, its sad that a few schmucks in your country commit credit card fraud putting the rest of you honest citizens in bad light. Not to mention I’m totally embarrassed as a citizen of my country.

Its been 11 years since Cowboy Bebop came out in 1998 but its only now that I was able to watch it. I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed, only slightly, not by the story or the characters, but rather by the ending. I hate it when series creators leave the major plot line hanging in the end. So did he or didn’t he?

Cowboy Bebop is a story of a group of bounty hunters who go around the solar system catching people with bounties on their heads. I’m not saying criminals because even in the future one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. “Cowboy” is the term that is used to refer to a bounty hunter. Bebop is the name of the ship that everybody resides in and uses as their base of operations.

After tackling the top brass of Cobra, we head on down to middle management. The Baroness, intelligence officer and sometime 2nd in command of the Cobra organization. The Baroness is not just a pretty face with a self made title, she really is aristocracy. In the comic book series by Marvel Comics, the Baroness entered into the world of terrorism and the Cobra organization after mistakenly thinking that the Americans were responsible for the death of her relative.

I think it be fitting that I showcase my beloved GI Joe collection by starting with the main man himself, on the Cobra side that is. None other than Cobra Commander.