A few days ago I finally finished this kit, it took me allot more time than I was planning.
After the initial assembly I was so surprised and amazed by the kit that I had tons ideas, one was a color scheme that implied adding panel lines, custom details and decals, other was to invert the red and the white, at the end I decided to go for the normal colors with just a small changes here and there, I'm pleased with the result, I'm still not sure if I should add a little weathering, but I stopped there because it might hide a few details, plus, on the anime we never see the red five dirty.
The first run of this kit comes with a few extra weapons, the multi launcher (posed on the one on the right arm on the picture bellow) the longbow (the two big canons on the back) and my personal favorite the heavy machete. Personally I think the three are the best weapons of the kit, It is a shame that future buyers will miss these cool looking weapons, that's why I hate limited models, if you don't buy them you'll miss them, just as I missed the VF-0 with ghost from hasegawa, the VF-0 with reactive armor, the Armored Core Ambient, the Nobleese Oblige, and so many others.
As you can see here, the kit requires allot of paint to look like this, but, that's to be expected, the design has so much colors and details that if all the pieces were color separated the price would be 3 times higher. The model I think it's made of ABS plastic, so that makes it an easy kit to work with, but also very easy to break on it's own if you are not careful with the glue, thinner, and top coat.
The decals included with the kit are a bad joke, they actually make the kit look worse, and kotobukiya only includes like 3 of them so, even if you use them, youll still need to paint allot more, so, don't use them, it's better to take your time masking and painting.
I mentioned that I was planing on adding some waterslides to the kit, but I didn't, I realized that I currently don't have enough waterslides to do a decent job, so I skipped that idea, If I become millionaire and buy this kit once again, I'll do a custom paint and add some decals, pinky promise.
The mode you see here is the full burst mode, the super-duper mode if you like, for the normal mode the kit include a few parts that close and others that you'll need to change, but they are very easy to swap and you wont need to exchange polliycaps or disassemble anything like on the poorly designed Eva 02 beta by Kotobukiya
Red Five might look pricey at first glance, but once you finish with it, you can see why the price tag it's a little high, you'll get a combination of a sleek and bulky kit with tons of weapons, awesome looks and great possibility.
On my final thoughts, I think this is the best Kotobukiya kit I have builded, it is awesome, and although it requires alot of time and paint, you'll be rewarded with an extraordinary looking kit, it has great looks, great articulation, decent color separation, and a few gimmicks, an eye catcher for sure, a few caution sign waterslides could improve this kit. just be careful with the delicate plastic when you use glue, don't use thinner, and do a soft top coat, otherwise the plastic will break on it's own.
9/10
