Written by 1:46 pm On the Bench

WIP : Bandai 1/35 TA Shinden Pt. 1 – Construction

My next build is a shelf queen that I’ve assembled and kept in its box for perhaps close to a decade. This is Bandai’s 1/35 take on the Shinden from the anime Gasaraki. I’ve never watched it but I really like the designs of the Tactical Armors. In the story, the Shinden is a mass production and improved version of the Raiden. I’ve always planned to put this kit in a vignette with it advancing along with a figure but it never happened as I was intimidated by figure painting and the Shinden didn’t really look right in a running pose. In any case, earlier this year, Masterbox released the ‘Under Fire’ set of figures and I was inspired to finish this kit up with a different idea for the vignette. I’m still not sure I can pull off the figures but hey, if not now, when?

For its time, the Shinden is a very good kit with nice details and decent poseability. As usual with a Bandai kit, it is thoroughly snapfit and fit very well. Through the years, I’ve slowly worked on it by filling the hollow areas in the armor with epoxy putty and fixing the prominent seamlines. The joints have held up relatively well and while one leg is slightly loose, it can still hold the final pose I had in mind. The kit comes with various weapons for the arms and I went with the chain gun and rocket launcher.

The Masterbox figures are molded quite nicely. Details are crisp and each figure comes with various accessories to dress it up with. The box came with 4 figures but I decided to go just the wounded soldier and the combat medic dressing his wound. Some cleaning of mold lines are required but fitting is good with the combat medic needed some minor seamline fixing but it’s easily done with Perfect Plastic Putty. The fact that the putty shrinks once dried is even better in this case.

So my idea for the vignette is pretty much the same as what Masterbox intended for their set to be: covering fire for an injured soldier. Except in this case it’s the Shinden doing it instead of a SAW gunner. I don’t intend this to be a complex vignette. The base is probably going to depict wacka-wacka-kistan or somewhere semi-arid with the 2 soldiers behind some barely-there cover and the Shinden standing close by providing covering fire while the injured soldier is being worked on. Sort of like this:

I think I’ll need to add some sort of height in the terrain to make this more interesting.

I like being able to show 2 focal points with this vignette.

I received a suggestion to try closed fisst for the Shinden instead of the open ones. Unfortunately the fists that came in the box have holes in them for holding equipment. So I tried adapting some closed fists from the Bandai 1/144 MS Hand 01 (Federation) set. The balls on the set were too small so I chopped off the ones from the Shinden’s spares and pinned them onto the MS Hands with brass rods and superglue. I then superglued the Shinden hand covers onto the MS Hand. I think the end result looks quite good although just that slightly oversized.

OK, so the general concept is now done. Next up is painting.

Postscript: So it turns out that I had the shoulder binders upside down when I took these photos. It’s lucky I didn’t cement them in place. 🙂

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Tags: , , , , , , Last modified: 25 February, 2020
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