This build took a pretty decent amount of effort, and yet looking at these runners in retrospect, there’s not a whole lot of parts:
Which, you know, it’s a High Grade IBO kit. That’s par for the course.
Accidental Waterslides
When I first bought the Astaroth Rinascimento (which sadly remains on the backlog for the time being), I also bought Gundam Decal Sheet #103, as it contains the family crest featured on the Rinascimento’s shield:
But as you can see, there are a couple other versions of the crest in different sizes, as well as some white chevrons. As it turns out, those decals are for the Astaroth Origin. So the decal sheet I bought for one model ended up being useful for two, which is quite the happy accident.
And it’s a good thing I have them, because Bandai did the thing where they added a red outline to the equivalent crests on the sticker sheet:
Any time they add a colored outline to a sticker, it never quite matches up with the color of plastic it’s trying to imitate, making the outline extremely visible on the finished model. I applaud the idea, but not the effort.
Looking closer at the sticker sheet, there are a number of other color correcting stickers, including some for the arms, the backs of the feet, and the top of its backpack/tail. I ended up using the light grey ones, but not the darker ones. That’s because the grey ones have panel lines and markings on them, and I find it’s usually just easier to use them than to try and recreate those markings.
(Meanwhile, the dark grey stickers are easily replaced with paint)
Sword
This is weird one. The whole thing is red, and as far as the instructions tell me, it is supposed to be all red.
(give or take a whole bunch of panel lines)
But when I tried to do the same, I didn’t really like how it looked. It was both way too busy and way too monotonous all at once (maybe it would have looked better if I used a brown panel liner?).
If I knew it wasn’t going to plug into the hammer and get all scratched up, I might have used a chrome Gundam Marker across the edge of the blade. Instead, I opted to add a bit of extra color, including some metallic-looking panel lines:
My hope was that this would make it look a bit more like a circuit board or something. Judge it for yourself, but I’m pretty pleased.
Hammer
This has a nasty seamline running right down the middle, so I cleaned it up as best I could, and sprayed the whole thing down with gunmetal paint:
I’m not sure if I actually like this particular spraypaint. It makes surface details pretty hard to see, which I don’t want. But on the other hand, I’d hate to just let the can go to waste, as it wasn’t cheap. But that may be for the best …
Side note - I love how this gigantic weapon has such a tiny grip on the end. Though in all seriousness, be careful - I can easily imagine the grip breaking off with even just a little bit of pressure.
Here’s the hammer with the sword plugged in:
It’s snug without being too snug, in the sense that it doesn’t really feel (or sound) like it’s getting scratched up when you pull it out.
Shotgun
It’s the same story here as with the hammer - it’s a got a (not quite as nasty) seamline, and the gunmetal paint makes the details hard to see. I filled some of them in with metallic paint, which only marginally helped:
It’s a bit small relative to the size of the model, and it’s also pretty simple looking, but it also has a bit of a “Steampunk/Wild West” look to it that I enjoy.
Head
This is the start of a running theme with this build - the head has a ton of surface detail, and it would behoove you to try and bring as much of it out as possible. Not only does it make the model look that much more intricate, but it’s also needed to break up the monotonous, toylike red plastic that the kit is made of:
With those tiny little white horns, it doesn’t exactly scream “demon king”, but I still think it looks cool overall. Plus, I appreciate that it doesn’t have a traditional V-Fin.
Upper Torso
I forgot to take photos of the upper torso! Oh well.
I’m always amazed at just how small and slight the torsos are on these Gundam Frame-type mobile suits, but I’m especially amazed here, considering how the Astaroth has a huge tail on its backpack, and huge wings on its shoulders. To think all of that is being supported by something so narrow.
Nevertheless, it looks good enough. It’s a darker red than the rest of the body, which adds some much needed color contrast.
It’s also one of the few places on this kit that doesn’t require any color correction (though it does have one decal to apply).
Lower Torso
Here we find our first instance of color correction; the area between the rear skirt armor needs to be painted grey:
If you look at the color guide in the instruction manual, you’ll find that this particular grey is supposed to be a mix of 40% mahagony, with roughly equal parts black and white and just a touch of khaki. I’m not really sure how the heck that’s supposed to create dark grey, and found that I had to add a lot more black to make it look the way I wanted it to.
As for the overall look of the lower torso, it’s fine. A lot of IBO Gundams have fairly boring skirt armor, and that’s once again the case here.
Backpack
Is it a backpack? Is it a tail? Is it both? Who knows!
What I do know is that it requires a lot of color correction, including:
- A grey sticker along a small section on the top
- Grey paint for the thruster mounted on the bottom
- Black paint for some additional thrusters in the middle
- Black paint for the vents running along the top
- Lots and lots of panel lines
Suffice to say that it was a lot of work, though it certainly paid off, as it now looks much better than it did out of the box (where it was basically one big hunk of red plastic)
Legs
This doesn’t look too bad from the front:
Nice details, some markings, and no apparent seamlines.
But flip it around, and you’ve got some work to do:
The area behind the thruster (which is the bit I’m pointing at) is supposed to be the same color as the thruster itself. The kit comes with a sticker for this purpose, but it looks awful when applied. Instead I just painted the whole thing, thrusters included.
Feet
This is weird - there’s a seamline in the back of the foot:
I found it to be just a little too hard to remove, which ended up being a problem, as all the paint I applied on the bottom of the foot began to bleed through the seam.
Speaking of which - I’m not really sure what these things are on the bottom of the feet:
Are they thrusters? Suction cups? I mean, I painted them in and all, but I wasn’t really sure what I was painting.
There’s one bit of addition color correction, which it appears I did not capture in any photo - you have to paint the very back of the heel in grey.
Arms
As you can probably tell, there’s a big, light grey, wraparound sticker that goes around the elbow:
… it looks worse in this photo than it does in person …
Anyway, there’s not much else to say here. There’s plenty more to panel line, and some bits you can paint in for extra color separation, but it’s all in black, so it’s all nice and easy.
Oh, one more thing - the right arm has this little connector thingie:
For whatever reason, this connects to the sword hilt when it’s equipped.
Shoulder Armor
Out of the box, this armor is made of only two colors - red, and the light grey that makes up the fold out wing. That means that all of the dark grey you see on here had to be painted:
In terms of sheer surface area, it’s the biggest paint job on the entire model. But in terms of difficulty, the backpack was worse, if only because it requires a bit more finesse.
In any case, easy or not, this is the kind of color correction I’ve sadly come to expect from High Grade IBO kits (but more on the at in the next post …)
Conclusion
So, does this make it 4-for-4 for awesome builds in 2025? Not quite. I’ll explain my reasoning when we take a look at the photoshoot.