There was a giant sucking sound when Konami’s Mechamusume trading figures were first released last March, and almost before they hit store shelves the entire production run was gone – drawn into the ether of private collections or the gaping maw of greedy auctioneers. HD resisted the draw of double-priced resellers for thirteen months, and the wait was worth it: we now present Mechamusume Volume One, for your viewing pleasure.
Original Design: Shimada Fumikane (島田フミカネ)
Sculptor: Vice (バイス)
Source: Original
Scale: Non (10-13 cm tall)
Material: PVC, etc.
Release Date: March 25th, 2005 (April 20th, 2006 reissue)
Production: Konami
Price: 6,090 JPY (box of 10, tax included)
Current Availability: Out of Stock
Valentine Tank (Royal British Army)
P-60 Fighter
(Soviet Air Force, based on the P-39)
Shinden Interceptor (Imperial Japanese Navy)
Shinden Interceptor (alternate coloring)
Ms-462 Fighter (French Air Force)
Ms-462 Fighter (alternate coloring)
Third Assault Armored Infantry Support Tank, G-type (German Army)
Third Assault Armored Infantry Support Tank, G-type (alternate coloring)
Final Verdict: 9/10
After longingly eying this collection for the past year in overpriced reseller’s shops there’s not much I can say now except BANZAI. Moe is at its best when it’s at its most juxtapositional, and while I could rant on and on about the cultural and artistic significance of pairing cute girls with weapons of war, I’ll set the topic aside and leave it at this: Shimada Fumikane knows what he’s doing, the sculptors at Vice know what they’re doing, and Konami’s production team was more than able to pull off a polished product here that will be the pride of any collector. Here’s hoping HLJ and other vendors recieve enough stock for these to propagate at retail cost to those who want them.
Note: I don’t know my WWII-era military vehicles, and neither does Shimada, apparently – I scoured the ‘net for a Russian P-60 to no avail, there is no French MS-462, and the Panzer is a shot in the dark. If any military otaku out there would care to enlighten me on these discrepancies it would be much appreciated. Edit: according to the character notes written by Shimada some of these aren’t meant as direct takeoffs of the original vehicles, and are merely inspired by them – hence the fictional model numbers. Still, I’m not confident that I’ve picked the closest matches and would appreciate correction if they’re off the mark.
>> Shingo, I believe that the P-60 was a derivative of the Bell P-39 “Airacobra” that was built in the US and shipped to the Soviets as part of Lend-Lease during WWII. . . .
>>loplop
Thanks, I’ll fix the reference accordingly.
Shingo:
Of the three aircraft represented by the figures, only the Shinden is based on anything even remotely approaching accuracy.
The REAL P-60 was built by Curtiss, and was a seriously ugly upgraded version of the Curtiss P-40. It could have been mistaken for a very fat P-47 (it had the same engine), but it looked nothing like a Bell P-39, or the P-39’s younger bigger brother, the Bell P-63, both of which had mid-ship mounted in-line engines, and were provided to the Russians under the Lend-Lease program in WW II.
The real P-60 incorporated a laminar flow wing, and at various stages of development, was to include either the British Merlin engine, an experimental inverted-vee Continental engine of 1600 hp, a turbo-supercharged Allison V-1710 engine, or an experimental Chrysler XIV-2220 sixteen cylinder engine. In it’s final iteration, a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 radial engine was employed. Performance was good, but not as good as the P-47 and P-51 which were already in production.
The sole surviving P-60, an XP-60E, was heavily modified to race in the 1947 Thompsony Trophy race with a total of 10 feet clipped from the wings, and it’s R-2800 engine hopped up to deliver 2440 hp. On a test flight, the tail surfaces failed, and the pilot had to bail out. The aircraft was completely destroyed.
The MS (Morane-Saulnier) 463 is probably a take-off on the MS-406, the last production fighter produced by M-S before the Germans invaded. Morane-Saulnier did develop an aircraft called the MS-450 which was supposed to replace the MS-406, but it never made it into production in France. It was produced under license in Switzerland as the D-3802.
>>Mike
Wow. Thanks for the explanation, that’s an amazing amount of detail. I shouldn’t have assumed that the designer was going for faithful replication of existing planes – these sculpts are pretty disfigured, by necessity, after all. I think I’ll leave the links as they are unless you have an alternate suggestion, your comment is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to know more.
I’m guessing the “Third Assault Armored Infantry Support Tank, G-type” is meant to be the StuG IIIg. This was taken from wikipedia:
“* StuG III Ausf. G (Sd.Kfz 142/1; 1942-45, 7,893 produced)
The final, and by far the most common, of the StuG series. The G-series StuG used the hull of the Panzer III Ausf. M and, after 1944, a second machine gun. Later versions were fitted with the Saukopf (Ger. pig’s head) gun mantlet, which was more effective than the original box metal structure at deflecting shots.”
Her gun does not have the “Saukopf gun mantlet” mentioned in the description, but it matches up well with the earlier one.
nice review, i got these when they were originally released. they are sweet.
Wow. I regret missing out on these.
>>Port
Thanks for the info. I’ll update the post to suit…
>>LiK
Truth. I got word of them a day or two after they were released last year, and by that time it was too late. Way, way too late. :(
>>Chikushou
Some online stores still have them in stock, it seems (HobbyNet among them). If you really want the set it’s probably still available without costing an arm and a leg.
I just got myself a set of these great Mechamusume today and they’re great! Great finishing (well, with the occasional warp here and there) and superb attention to detail. Only gripe I can find in the set is the lack of proper designations for the vehicles they represented. (Well, it IS in japanese, so I guess that’s as proper as it gets for someone who doesn’t know how to read it~) Well, I don’t think I’m 100% accurate, but this is what I think they are~
1. MkIII Valentine
2. Yak-3
3. Shinden J7W1 (the alternate colour being the jet engine version that was supposed to be the Shinden Kai. It scared me a little when I came home with a Shinden with no propellers!!)
4. MS-406 (or some equivalent. MS-462 just comes up with no results at all…)
5. StuG IIIg