Building The Tsugumori - Or Demonsub's First Gunpla

Ever since John peaked my interest in several episodes of the XLBS with his various Gundam kits I’ve been on the lookout for one of my own. Rewatching the anime, The Knights of Sidonia, I really liked the look of the garde units they use in the show and the main character’s garde unit, the Tsugumori was available as a kit.

After several days (or weeks) of humming and harring I ordered it (with the help of some eBay money I made from selling my old Vampire Counts army). I reasoned that it would be a birthday present to myself.

The kit was a Japanese import to the US and via Amazon to me.

While waiting for this to arrive I knew I wanted a stand to support my model in a variety of poses once it was built. After a quick check with John on Discord I ordered mine from https://www.kikatek.com (which was the least expensive I could find that was also in stock in the UK, Amazon was asking for at least double the price). Their dispatch was really fast and the base arrived in a few days.

So a day ago my model kit finally arrived, all the way from Japan via the US. As I had my birthday week off work I’d build it over the course of that week.

There was slight damage to the box but a quick check and there was no damage to the plastics inside.

I checked the contents to make sure nothing was missing. All was present and correct.

Looking over the instruction booklet it was all in Japanese but the diagrams seem to be easy to follow so this wasn’t going to be an issue. Anything that I would have problems with I can use my phone to machine translate (by taking a photo and highlighting the text on my iPhone).

Now I’m going to take this slowly, have a look through the book and make a start.