Kit Review

Straight build + Panel lining

Size comparison with a cigarette pack. Length is roughly 60cm.

Shot on the floor, so the lighting varies a bit depending on the angle;

Close-up detail shots. The panel lining is intense..

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser (1/2)

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser (2/2)

The underside of the front section. The Komusai is attached there.

Mass production type bridge.

Char's custom bridge. It's designed so you can swap them out.

The thruster molds have a pretty nice feel..

The Komusai at the front is of course detachable.

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser - Even the inside of the front section where the Komusai docks is packed

Even the inside of the front section where the Komusai docks is packed with molds..

The Komusai's landing gear and cover are detachable.

Landing gear attached.

The Komusai is roughly that size..

Hatch open on the rear section.

The top hatch of the Komusai just lifts straight off like that.

The inside of each cover is packed with molds..

Detail of the MS hangar.

It can carry up to 4 Zakus.

MS hangar at the front of the bridge section.

Char's Zaku loaded inside.

Hatch on the rear section.

You can slide the MS hangars out in two rows, top and bottom.

Zaku loaded.

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser - Look closely and you'll see a total of 3 are loaded. There's one hangin

Look closely and you'll see a total of 3 are loaded. There's one hanging up top.

The main body carries a total of 4 Zakus.

Engine section with the cover removed.

Decent enough engine molds.

Molds on the inside of the engine cover.

The 3 main cannons can rotate.. (Isn't that a given? ;;)

The part that plugs into the stand can be covered with a cap..

When removed, it can be stored under the stand like that.

A very plain and simple-looking stand.

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser - This kit includes a total of 4 static-pose Zaku Gundam Collection figur

This kit includes a total of 4 static-pose Zaku Gundam Collection figures.

Char's Zaku.

Mass production type Zaku.

The Gundam Collection stand has molds on it too..

6 clear support rods included as optional extras. Their purpose is..

There are a total of 20 holes on both sides of the body..

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser - They're for plugging in Gundam Collection MS figures like that to creat

They're for plugging in Gundam Collection MS figures like that to create a diorama-style display.

Studio close-up shot.

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser - Of course, the Gundam Collection figures plugged in up top aren't the o

Of course, the Gundam Collection figures plugged in up top aren't the ones included with this kit — I just stuck in some random ones I already had.. ^^;

Rough size comparison. It's big, alright.

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser - The unavoidable comparison shot with the Gundam Collection White Base.

The unavoidable comparison shot with the Gundam Collection White Base.
It's way slimmer in volume compared to the White Base~.

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser - It's not easy to store something 60cm long as-is, but thankfully the ma

It's not easy to store something 60cm long as-is,
but thankfully the main sections are designed to come apart and go back together easily.

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser - If you disassemble it carefully, you can fit the whole thing into a ¥30

If you disassemble it carefully, you can fit the whole thing into a ¥3000-class MG box.
Seems way easier to store than the White Base.. ^^

Following the White Base, the second entry in the 1/400 Gundam Collection warship kit lineup is, of course, the Musai. Given the scale, it's once again a massive 60cm beast, comes in a PG Zeta-sized box, and was released at a steep ¥13,000 — PG territory pricing.

First off, this kit has one notable quirk that sets it apart from other Gundam Collection injection kits in the series — it's an original Shizuoka factory product. The Gundam Collection line is generally known as typical China-made stuff, but the Musai alone is the exception: it was designed and produced in Japan, making it closer to a proper Gunpla lineup release. That said, it doesn't have any pre-painted sections the way Chinese-made kits typically do.

Because of that, it shows a clear quality difference compared to the earlier 1/400 White Base. As you can tell just from the review photos, the entire kit is absolutely packed — or you might say overwhelmingly covered — with molds. It's essentially built on the same concept as the EX Musai released for the MS IGLOO version. But this is a massive 1/400 scale warship kit — in terms of sheer panel line quantity alone, it's the Best of the Best among all Gunpla in existence;

One thing that feels a bit anticlimactic once you actually build this kit is that there aren't many parts, so you can knock the whole thing together in an hour or two; It's a little deflating when a ¥13,000 kit goes together that quickly. But regardless of the part count, the detail is great, and it actually gives the impression that it's been well-designed for easy assembly.

For this kit I panel lined every single mold to make the lines stand out clearly.. but as you can see, the sheer volume of panel lining is overwhelming (it feels even more intense when you're actually doing it than it looks in the photos;), so just the first pass of panel lining alone took roughly 12 hours or more. Because of that, I couldn't bring myself to do my usual double panel lining with Gundam Marker + Rotring pen, and just went with Gundam Marker alone at a slightly lighter shade. With this many panel lines, I also think a slightly lighter touch actually suits it better than going really dark.. (self-hypnosis in progress..;)

After going through all that painful panel lining, I was left wishing I'd just done a full paint job instead. The color layout on this warship is so simple that a single can of spray paint would probably cover the base color with barely any masking needed. It's definitely a very easy kit to paint.. but from a "review" standpoint, showing the original molded plastic surface is probably the better call :-)

One thing to note — when you've got this many panel lines, it can actually be faster and more effective to flow enamel paint into them and wipe it off with thinner rather than going line by line with a pen. But when I actually tried it on a section, the plastic surface felt a bit rough and the molded color seemed to get affected. In plain terms, the paint should wipe away cleanly everywhere except the recessed panel lines, leaving only the lines behind — but it just didn't wipe off cleanly. Because the molded surface isn't smooth, the paint doesn't come off completely, so this method isn't really one I'd recommend for this kit.

The kit itself stays faithful to the Musai's specs — the Komusai detaches, and you can swap between the mass production and Char's custom bridge. The MS bays on both the Komusai and the main body are all faithfully reproduced, and as a bonus the engine section is rendered in fine detail too, showing a clear step up in quality from the earlier White Base. The power of original Gunpla over Chinese-made product! -_-b

Anyway, aside from the fact that the panel lining requires the kind of brutal grunt work you'd put into three or four MG Gundam Ver. O.Y.W. 0079 kits, the overall feel of the kit is really fresh and satisfying. The detail, build quality, and optional parts are clearly a cut above the Chinese-made stuff.. Sure, it feels a bit sparse compared to the precision of MG-class Gunpla, but given the sheer size of the thing, that's unavoidable. ^^

For old-school fans, the real thrill seems to be that *the* Musai has been faithfully scaled up in big format at a quality level that far surpasses the White Base in the same series. The only lingering regret is that the price couldn't have been a bit lower :-)

1/400 Musai ~ Musai-Class Light Cruiser | 2006.2 | ¥13,000

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.