I decided to finish this before I started posting, but here it is, from start to finish.
Parts laid out, and the first mod started.
The MA-04X Zakurello is an oddity, even by the standards of Giant Robot anime'. Appearing in one brief segment in the original series, it has also shown up in variations in a manga, video game, and novel, but never again in an animated series. Mobile Armors are roughly equivalent to 'level bosses' in video games-large, formidable opponents far more dangerous than typical opponents. In the original series, they are characterized by non-anthropomorphic designs,
but even with that, the Zakurello calls back to the 'Super Robot' shows of the 1970's with design elements and a model a bit out of step with the rest of the series. Resembling a giant demonic head with stumpy sickle arms where it's ears would be, it looks a bit like something out of folklore. I don't know Japanese
Yokai* folklore well enough say it has a direct analog, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. The model is unusual in a number of respects:
DSCF1312 by
VileDr.Yo, on Flickr
For starters, the box is an almost unique size, a one off larger than many of the nearly one hundred kits issued for the original series. The box actually contains three kits. The main is a Zakurello in the odd scale of 1/250, with a second Zakurello in 1/550, the scale in which all other Mobile Armor were kitted, and a 1/550 Gundam with a 'Core Booster', sort of a rocket sled. The kit design is a little odd as well. Bandai would begin adding polycap joints with the second Hundam series (Zeta Gundam, which premiered in 1985, but in contrast to the simple plastic on plastic joints of the earlier kits, the Zakurello used some unusual plastic 's' springs to hold tension on the moving parts at the shoulder and wrist joints. Finally, while almost all of the Zeon (or Jeon, or Jion depending on which box or art book you're looking at.) mechs use a red cyclops kind of sensor 'eye', called a mono eye in the series, the Zakurello uses big 'bug eyed' visual sensors. The build images:
DSCF1316 by
VileDr.Yo, on Flickr
DSCF1317 by
VileDr.Yo, on Flickr
DSCF1313 by
VileDr.Yo, on Flickr
One of the first things I wanted to modify was the four clusters of what appear to be rocket pods-while I liked the concept, the execution on the design made it look more like a beligerent set of salt and pepper shakers. So the faces of the two engine pods got replaced with a 'mega particle beam cannon on the left, and an 'I-field generator' on the right. Physics in Gundam employs a fair amount of handwavium. The latter term refers to a force field generator, which works against energy weapons.
Oh, you noticed the wings? Those are the outer wing sections of the Academy 1/144 B-52, which is another project I hope to get back to in the coming year. Couldn't leave the surfaces unadorned, so an extra barce of missile tubes and auxiliary engines below, and a nebulous open 'equipment bay' on the upper wings, along with a quartet of maneuver thrusters on the wingtips. The engine bells came from a WAVE options parts set.
DSCF1319 by
VileDr.Yo, on Flickr
I'm going to split this into a couple of posts-I need to take a short break.
