Bandai 1/144 Scale Hime Brain Powerd

The anime industry is one of evolution. By that, I mean that one studio will come up with a fresh take on things once in a while and the rest of the industry will then spend the next decade or two trying to live up to that original by tweaking different aspects or downright ripping it off. There have been a few landmark series in the last 25-30 years. Yamato was important, as was the original Gundam (heck, they've been flogging that horse forever, it seems). Macross made transforming mecha the in thing in 1982, and for a while that was where it sat. Then Neon Genesis Evangelion came along and, with its string bean organic mecha and psychologically tortured cast, became THE thing that studios wanted to replicate, both artistically and in terms of its commercial success.

The creator of the original Gundam series, Yoshiyuki Tomino, declared that he would put newcomer Hideaki Anno (Eva's director and main driving force) back in his place with a new series that would be 'better than Evangelion'. Well, when you're spouting that kind of smack, you better bring it all to the party, or you're going to get beat, hard. Tomino's answer to Eva was a strange series called "Brain Powerd" (yes, Powerd, it's misspelled that way on the intro and the model box). This series also had characters with a lot of issues, and weird looking organic mecha, called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Brain Powerds.

Despite his best efforts, Tomino's show never could stand up to Evangelion, and Brain Powerd couldn't best its chosen rival. As a result, there were not a lot of kits produced for Brain Powerd. In fact, I only know of one, the Hime Brain Powerd, named after its pilot, Hime Utsumiya.

The Kit:

The Hime Brain is a very strange little kit of an equally weird mech. I was impressed by the box, which has some beautiful artwork on the front. However, the artwork doesn't really do the strange mech within justice. Upon opening the box, you are treated to a few sprues of beige-brown plastic and a few of blackish plastic. There are 4 polycaps in the entire kit and a small sheet of decals. I was immediately struck that this was not going to be like any mech kit I'd built before. I was right.

The Brain seemed to be constructed in a relatively orthodox manner. There's good part separation and almost no build around. All the subassemblies can be completed separately and then combined at the end. This is, of course, a good thing, and makes construction and painting simple. There's one exception though, and that's the upper body.

The Brain's upper body has an inner frame, similar to that of a 1/60 Patlabor kit. The neck joint and arm attachment points are all on one cruciform piece. Normally, this is not a problem, but it is here. The upper body halves sandwich around this frame, but it's a tight fit. There's very little room to sand the body halves when you're done, and masking for painting would be next to impossible. Thus, I made the bold (and misguided) decision to break the neck and arms off inside the body, then glue them back when I was done.

I say misguided because this only sort of worked. I was lucky that the arms were able to attach back to the body correctly - there's a big enough flange on them to glue to the body itself as well as back to the shaft inside. However, the neck didn't work well. Despite using Ambroid Proweld, I couldn't get the neck to stay on. It took a lot of Epoxy to basically cocoon the neck in place inside the chest. If you build this kit, you're better off just leaving the frame as it comes. Complicating matters is the fact that the frame is ultra hard ABS, a plastic that model glue doesn't always work that well on.

The rest of the kit is very straightforward to build. The legs and arms are all easy to assemble, and sanding, while required, is made easier by the Brain's rounded shapes. Poseability is excellent, because most of the kit is ball-jointed. This little guy can sure bend! However, nearly all the joints are ABS-on-ABS, which means that they're very wear resistant, but also very tough to move. With the 'broken' arm posts, I found posing the arms an exceptionally delicate procedure, and not one I'll be doing all that often, lest I break them off. If you leave the upper body frame alone, though, you'll be fine.

Painting:

The Brain is not as colourful as many other mecha. Owing partly to its organic nature, the Brain is mostly muted shades of beige and black, with highlights of orange to spice it up. All the 'armour', which is more akin to rock, is painted using a sandy beige colour. I have no idea what it is, other than it's an old (first generation with the grey lid) Testors Model Master Acrylic, and that I've had the paint for years. I don't know the colour because the label was destroyed when I had to soak the jar in hot water to get it open! However, the colour was typical of old MMs in that it was very much prone to 'carpeting' and dried very quickly. I actually like the old MMs for hand painting, and I found that with a little bit of sanding the paint could be made to be very smooth.

The 'exposed' parts of the Brain are done in Virsago Black, which is a mix of Aircraft Interior Black, Jet Exhaust and Gunship Grey (all Model Master second generation acrylics). The trim is done in Badger Southern Pacific Daylight Orange acrylic paint. All outlining was done using the smallest tip black Gundammarker. The Brain's rifle, actually referred to as a "Brain Bar", is done in Virsago Black and Gundam White (made from Tamiya XF-2 Flat White and a pinch of blue and purple). All inner surfaces are painted Tamiya XF-50 Field Blue, which dries a dark greyish colour.

There are decals provided, but only two were used - these were the decals for the orange 'breathers' on the fronts of the Brain's 'ears'. The area was too small to be able to freehand outline such details, so the decals were applied instead. Of course, the decals' colour didn't match the paint, so they were painted and then outlined around. That's about the only use for the decals that I can think of.

Once the paintwork was finished, the Brain was coated with numerous coats of Future floor polish. I had originally intended to make the Brain flat or satin coated, since its organic nature would lend itself better to that. However, because the Brain is so rounded, the Future went on perfectly. I just couldn't bring myself to flat over such a smooth gloss job, so I didn't. As it turns out, at certain points in the anime the Brains are drawn with a lot of 'shine' on them anyway, so I guess I was right in the end after all!

The shock was really twofold. Firstly, the figure is that much smaller to start with, making detailing more difficult. Secondly, Hime is a particularly small and slender girl, so the figure is correspondingly waifish. Cleaning up the flash was a bit more difficult, since the rubbery plastic that Hime is cast in really requires some hard sanding to force the excess to peel off. However, because the figure is so slender, there were times I was worried I was going to rip parts right off of it. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

Hime is a redhead, and I used the same orange-red mix I use whenever I have to paint Asuka from Evangelion's hair. I have a big jar of this, so I didn't have to worry about running out. Hime's overly baggy jeans are done in Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey, and her shoes are Testors MM acrylic Guards Red (the soles are the same colour as the Brain, as is the tag on her jeans). Hime's shirt is the same pinky colour I mixed for the Aegis Gundam, with Guards Red striping. As with Athrun, the skin is done using Testors # 1116 'Cream' (aka 'flesh') from the 7ml bottle. She was coated in Future, but that looked kind of weird. To make her seem more realistic, she was finished in Microscale Microflat.

A particularly difficult part of Hime was getting the edges right. Because she is so wasp-waisted, there is a lot of 'overhang' on her jeans. I had to very carefully paint the 'pants' so that they met her shirt, without going over. I had to be likewise precise when painting her hair, since it intersects not only her face, but her shirt, pants and arms as well!

Conclusions:

The Hime Brain Powerd is one of the simpler mech kits I've built in a while in terms of piece count. It was well engineered and is remarkably poseable. One drawback is that the ABS joints don't hold the paint once they're flexed, so you have to make sure whatever you paint the stuff near the joints is close to the plastic colour. The kit itself was well made, except one foot block seems to be too small, and doesn't actually touch the ground.

Still, for those looking for something different, both in colour and design, from a standard Gundam, this is definitely a good kit to build. Finding it might be difficult, though. Since Brain Powerd wasn't the commercial success hoped for (and the fact that the North American dub SUCKED), I don't think the kits were produced in the numbers, or distributed as widely, as subjects from more successful shows.