Mobile Doll May

Bandai has been on a roll with their figurine kit with Mobile Doll Sarah quickly becoming my favorite. I was excited when this kit was announced because she looked awesome when she was introduced in the anime series.

Boy was I disappointed when I finished this kit.



Well, let's start. Here is the box art. Beautiful box art as usual.

Instruction Manual. A lot of information crammed in there. 

This kit has both foil sticks and water slide decals. The foil stickers are used for small details and color corrections and water slide decals are for the eyes. I am glad they used water slide decals as separate. They look a lot better than dry transfer or stickers because when they dry, they conform to the surface.

One thing that popped out from the box was this really bright effect part for shield and beam saber part.

The build was very simple and easy like other Bandai's HG kits. Parts were easy to separate and clean up was easy due to small and smartly located nub marks.

This is how the kit looks like built straight out of the box without any decals included.

The kit looks good in the picture but it hides a really bad problem and its the articulation. The other kit had the same problem but for some reason, this kit does not bend well. The torso is a big problem too. I had to disconnect the parts halfway just to get a bit of rotation on her torso which is important to make good action pose.

Another disappointment was her proportions. While I do like her adult look, something is off about her proportions. The main thing is her hips. It's too small. And her torso is too long stretching her arm and leg as well. In other words, she got no sex appeal. Even her large breast which could have been her weapon is shaped sharply making it look weird. Its as if whoever designed this kit doesn't know anything about sex appeal which is the main selling point of these kits. Maybe it's done intentionally to sell it to kids. I don't know, but I am disappointed since this could have been a lot better.

I did paint this kit as the original color.  I used a mix of Vallejo and Tamiya acrylic paints. I panel lined the mechanical looking parts using Tamiya Panel Liner. I gave subtle shading to each part to give some depth and added highlights in a few areas. I also did this to her breast area to make it look better but I don't think it worked.

As for the skin color, I left the original plastic paint but I did pastel shading to give it more color. The water slide decals were a godsend as it makes the eye looks like it was painted on without really painting it.

Please enjoy the gallery.

The kit came out looking great however, I don't think you need to paint this kit to look good. The water slide decal itself makes this look great even built straight out of the box.

Here is the video of the build.