Deathscythe’s weapons came together with a bit of strife, but maybe now I have “The Messies” out of my system. Let’s move on start putting together the body.
Feet and Legs
This is by far the most complicated section of the body. Just look at this pile of pieces!
And that’s not even all of them! (I forgot to add two to the pile when I took this photo)
The key to good melee weapon poses is good footwork, and Deathscythe lives and dies on its ability to pose with its scythe. It isn’t surprising, then, that this model might have some complicated articulation in its lower body.
But let’s start with the feet:
They actually look quite a bit like Sandrock’s feet, as seen below:
I’ve been trying so hard lately to dissuade myself of my old believe that Sandrock and Deathscythe look too much alike, but now there’s this. Ah well!
Let’s take a look at what’s going inside the leg. There are a pair of channels on the inside of the leg armor:
The inner frame plugs into these channels, which means it can move along them:
Clearly this has something to do with the articulation, but I’m not entirely sure how. At least, not yet.
But we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s put the legs together and see how they look:
I’ll never understand why the five Gundams from GW all have plain white legs. At least Deathscythe’s are kind of interesting. There are some bits of visual flair here that you don’t get on the others. I’m thinking particularly about the big, flared ankle guards, and the big boxy knee armor. The former in particular look a bit like a set of wings, and contribute to the whole “devil/vampire/whatever” motif of the mobile suit.
Now back to that special articulation. Normally the knee armor is locked into place, but you can unlock it by pushing up:
This allows the inner frame to move along those channels we saw earlier, which in turn extends the leg:
I’ve messed around a bit, and I honestly can’t figure out how this increases the articulation. The knee appears to bend extremely well in its normal configuration. I’ll have to do some research - if I figure it out, I’ll do a followup.
Lower Torso
Pretty simple to build, but boy does it look good:
The lower torso really leans into the theming. Those front skirts look an awful lot like teeth, while the rear skirt looks vaguely like a bat, or a long cloak:
The rear skirting is also extremely long, but this is mitigated by the fact that it can move.
Side note - I love the red colored Crotch-V. It feels quite menacing - it almost looks like an eye.
Upper Torso
Up until this point, this kit has been pretty good about color accuracy. Aside from normal panel lining, there are only a few spots on the model that “need” to be painted to make it look color accurate. I’m thinking the two spots on the foot, maybe that tiny bit on the knee armor, and that’s it.
That changes with the chest:
You will notice that there is a whole lot of inky black space in between each yellow chest vent. That’s not there by default - you have to paint it in:
(This is why the right vent looks a little less clean than the left one)
Part of me feels that Bandai could have done this in a different way, so as not to require painting. Maybe they could have engineered these pieces so that they plugged in from the inside of the chest, with the vents sticking out. Or maybe that’s harder to do that I think. At the very least they might have been able to provide some decals. I just can’t imagine the vents without any color separation. It would look weird.
A few more thoughts on the torso:
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The vulcan cannons are on the shoulders, rather than the head, which makes them much easier to paint:
- I love the chest vents. They kind of look like fangs, or claws, or something.
- There is a tiny triangle embedded in the center of the chest. It isn't supposed to be painted, but I did it anyway. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why it's supposed to be plain, because it looks great.
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We just saw that there is some special articulation in the legs, but apparently there's some in the chest too:
So I guess the arms can extend out ever so slightly. I'm honestly not sure how this is going to work.
Conclusion
So far, so good. Everything is coming together nicely on this one. I’m really looking forward to getting it finished up, so I’ll (probably) see you soon.