Sky Girls: Vic Viper Personal Red Ver. Model Kit

As opposed to the only other reviewer so far, I AM a bit of a model elitist. The facts up front - this thing is snap-together. If you want a durable snap-tite kit, you don't want this one.However!If you have a standard hobby setup, including some clippers, a few diamond files, and some plastic glue, you should do just fine. The pieces feel pretty good, overall. It's certainly not Tamiya quality, but do you really expect it when you're paying 1/3rd the price? I would recommend using an airbrush or spray cans to get a nice finish over the kit, though. The white parts are semi-translucent (as if the manufacturer didn't put enough white die in the batch, but had they done that, the plastic would have weakened). The grey parts are a bit on the shiny side, and I don't much care for that. The "colored" pieces are pretty ugly, too. So really, just tossing a clean paint job on this sucker with a little love and care on the pieces, you'll get a pretty nice model for the money. It probably won't look as good as the Atelier-Sai versions, but you'd be paying about 6x as much for those.The SkyGirls figure is another thing entirely. The transformable robot's socket joints are just a wee bit too tight in some areas, causing the balls of them to pop right out. If you want the model for this little thing, then I guess you'll be disappointed. If you just want the Vic Viper, you should be just fine.

This kit is horrendous.I don't pretend to be some model kit connoisseur, but I know poor quality when I see it.The plastic is cheap, translucent where it shouldn't be, and feels nasty in the hand. The parts are numbered seemingly at random, don't fit together well, and require a superhuman amount of patience and effort to get together, and the decals don't quite fit where they're supposed to. Though this kit would probably look great with a new paint job, it would just be like hanging an air freshener in a landfill.Unless you're both a dedicated-bordering-on-clinically-insane Gradius fan and an experienced builder, don't bother. Go get yourself a Master Grade for twice the price and an infinitely more enjoyable build.