Nichimo Regult

[tetsujin]

Hey,

Toward the end of 2002, finishing my first Hasegawa Battroid seriously renewed my interest in Macross, and for a while I wasn't too enthusiastic about Gundam. Along the way I was happy to discover that Nichimo had re-released most of their old Macross kits, as it offered an inexpensive and convenient way to get a lot of the classic Macross designs in kit form. The Nichimos are generally pretty good, too, so I eventually collected all the re-releases and one of the original issues.

The Regult is one of my favorites in the line. Although, like all the Nichimos, it's crude in some areas, I think it looks nice with a relatively small amount of work. As with all the re-releases, it includes some piss-poor stickers in place of the original decals. I would not recommend using the stickers. A good alternative is to have someone print decals for you.

The main shortcomings of the kit are the screw holes, the deep panel lines, and the minor molding defects, such as indentations which appear at the top of the pod. All the Nichimo kits can be held together with screws: while this is an effective system for keeping things together, at the small scale of the Nichimo kits, the screw-holes are all-too prominent. In the case of the Regult it's fairly easy to fill them in if you're good with putty. I used Super Glue/talc mixture to fill the screw-holes on mine after screwing the kit together.

The panel lines are a bit of a problem because they are oversized. That's particularly bad on a kit that's this small. The panel line that separates the gray and blue areas of the pod is inconsistent, as well: the line disappears as it wraps around to the side of the pod.

The feet have a few irregularities, as well: each is molded from two halves, which should be the same. However, one half is molded with a screw-hole, and lacks the panel detail present on the other half of the foot: so if you build the kit as-is, the inner half of the foot will look too-plain compared to the outer half. This could be solved by mating two outer foot-halves and discarding the inner halves, but then you'd also need a new way to attach the foot to the leg.

Assembly-wise, the kit is reasonably modular. I recommend against using the screws that go in the hips. If you do that, and cover all the screw holes, you'll still be able to remove the legs from the pod for painting purposes. The booster housings on the sides of the pod are attached with plastic-on-plastic joints, but you can make those, and the head-top lasers modular as well with some trimming. This greatly simplifies the painting process. When assembling the model, a little work to drill out the cannons and make the barrels more circular will also do a lot to improve the looks of the model.

I'm not perfectly satisfied with the look of the model, I think the pod should be a little larger, and the points where the cannons are attached should have a more regular shape. Overall, though, it's a nice little kit and a lot of fun.

I have an older review of this kit here:

http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Reviews/1_200_Regult/

Also, I have recently completed one, and photos and information are here:

http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/models/Works/Workshop_Regult/

Presently, the only place I know of where I can buy Nichimo Regults is Akihabara Toys:

http://www.akitoys.com/

[HWR MKII]

my wife got me a 4 pack of these pods and a gulag in 1/100 scale for christmas. i think your wash looks perfect on the pics. it gives the pods that unmaintained war weary effect one would expect a zentradi vehicle to have. i cant wait to get mine.