Above: This is the finished version of my modified ship of the line from the Irresponsible Captain Tylor anime.  A very difficult to find kit, it is technically very simple, although it also requires a lot of work.

The anime series "Irresponsible Captain Tylor" is about a laidback, unemployed bum who gets a job with the United Planets Space Defence Force (UPSDF), hoping to score a job in administration and while away his time doing nothing and collecting a paycheck.  While the titular Tylor gets his dream job, he soon finds himself at the helm of a destroyer full of misfits - the proverbial dumping ground for the UPSDF's trash.  Of course, a series of wacky hijinks ensue, and eventually Tylor is given supreme command of the UPSDF forces in a final showdown with humanity's enemies: the Raalgon.

Tylor is a fun series, chocked full of comedy and action both.  The best part of the show is probably the massive fleet battle that Tylor commands (I won't spoil what happens, but let's say Maaco would be bankrupt at the end).  Of course, you can't have a fleet battle without lots of ships, and the mechanical designers on the show have a field day drawing in all sorts of ships of various configurations.  The show is a partial parody of Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers, in English), and the designs show it.  However, despite all the potential for great sprue, only trading kit company Furuta seems to have stepped up to the plate for modelers on this one.

Furuta issued four different kits for the Tylor series.  One of Tylor's ship, the Soyokaze, one of the ship Tylor's nemesis helms (the name escapes me, maybe the Melva, actually), one of the command carrier (the "Ho-oh") and one of a large, yet generic, UPSDF ship of the line.  It is the last of these that I am reviewing today.  As for its name, I've got nothing.  I can't read that script of Japanese, so you'll have to figure it out on your lonesome.

The Kit:

The Furuta drugstore kits are basically overgrown Kinder Egg toys in their simplicity.  They are designed to be bought at drug/convenience stores and given to kids right away.  They even come with a confection!  That's right: all Furuta Tylor kits come with chocolate covered rice crisps, which is one step above anthrax, but not much.  Thankfully, Shane, Dave and Pete had already disposed of the biohazard by the time I picked up the kits, so I was saved.  I'm assuming alcohol MUST have been used to kill the taste, let alone work up the nerve to eat this stuff, which looks like a rabbit got to it first.

As for the kit, it's really not bad, although it is simple.  The main hull is in two halves, and the bridge, fins, engine clusters and some small aerials fit onto the hull afterwards.  Or at least that's the plan.

Detail-wise, the kit is adequate, especially given the size.  There aren't tons of details, but there are little blisters and bumps on the ship.  The model comes moulded in a rather sickening beige-green, reminiscent of a Kleenex's worst nightmare, and there are no multicoloured mouldings on any of the parts.  This isn't a Bandai Master Grade kit, and it shows, but it's now worse that what we would have seen 15-20 years ago.

Above: Gesundheit!  This is the unpainted, but largely assembled Tylor kit.  The hole at the back is for the bridge, the 'benches' on the side are just wrong and the nose - well, I have no idea what goes on there.

There's a single sheet of instructions, which are a bit vague and hand-drawn in appearance, but they suffice.  There's no text on it, so no worries if you can't read Japanese.  Parts come on two sprues, and are quite tough, for the most part (more later).  There are no painting instructions save for one shot of a similar ship on the back of the box.

This one small picture, however, lead me down a long and torturous road.  The reason: the ship in the picture is quite different from the ship the kit builds into!  You gotta love it!  To make the kit and the picture match required considerable effort.  There was lots of Milliput and CA in my future.

Building the Kit:

After gluing the hull together, I discovered the massive discrepancies that the kit embodied.  There were a few problems I noticed right away:

1.) Large 'benches' on the side of the ship that should have been rounded flares.
2.) The bridge was too far back on the hull.
3.) The 'aerials' on the ships 'hump' were WAY too big.
4.) The nose of the ship was just WRONG.

It was the final problem that promised to be the biggest issue.  The kit had some kind of weird hole in the front of it, similar to the Yamato's Wave Motion Gun.  The box shot had the ship with a very archaic looking double bow, like the old ramming bows but with a bullet fairing on top.

To correct the problem, I took a big whack of Milliput, filled in the nose, 'benches' and the flat spot where the bridge should go.  I then spent a LONG TIME sanding, filling re-sanding and contour blending with Zap-a-Gap CA to get the desired effect.  I also had to fair in the bridge, which was a bit of a tricky proposition, since it wasn't designed to fit where I ended up putting it near the front of the ship.

Above: This shot shows the bulk of the modifications made to the hull.  You can see the new double bullet bow, the fairing over the port 'bench' and the sculpting on the rear hull for filling in the bridge mounting.  The white is all Milliput.  Milliput rocks.

Above: This close up shows how the bridge is faired into the first 'hump' in the hull.  It's not supposed to fit here, and more Milliput was used to fair it in smoothly.  Squadron Green Putty also came in handy, and some CA was required too.

The rest of the building was easy, except for one of the top fins.  It broke while I was putting it in place.  I glued it, like the rest of the kit, with Ambroid Proweld, and it seemed fine.  A bit more sanding and the kit was ready for primering.  It sounds simple, but it took a while to get that far.  I had originally intended to just build this as a quick diversion while I awaited the arrival of my 1/100 Freedom Gundam.  However, the Freedom was half done before I finished this guy.

Painting:

On the box, the ship is a dark, inky, purple blue with red stripes on the engine pods.  I didn't like the colour, so I went hunting.  I found that in the anime the ships were largely a blue-grey colour, similar to the movie-version Deathshadow.  Thus, I used the same paint on this ship as I did on the Deathshadow.

(As an aside, I also discovered a ship very similar to the one the kit actually was designed to build up into as I was scanning through the anime.  All those mods were unnecessary, I suppose.  Still, you won't see many of these kits to start with, and you won't see another one like this anywhere!)

The red stripes, however, didn't turn my crank.  For one thing, there should only be two of them, but the kit has three marked in.  On my brother's suggestion, I decided to make them into invasion stripes.  Once I was done with them, I was impressed how good they made the kit look.  I painted the engines in old Testors Model Master Jet Exhaust, with a black wash.

Above: This shows the rear of the ship, with its six engines (three times the installed thrust of the Soyokaze!) as well as the invasion stripes.  The stripes help to brighten up what would otherwise be a somewhat dull ship.

The fine detail was outlined with a filed down mechanical pencil, and the entire thing was gloss coated using thinned future.  The stand was painted MM Aircraft Interior Black, and the nameplate was picked out in Humbrol oil gold.  Everything was done by hand - no airbrushing on this one.  I was tempted to flat coat it, but it was so nice and smooth that I decided not to bother.

The only other problem was that broken fin.  It broke FOUR (4) times!!  I tried Testors liquid and tube cement, CA and Proweld, and nothing held.  Finally, I resorted to the GMD - Glue of Mass Destruction!  It is a tube of glue I got with my free Ford Trimotor kit (garage sale find, obviously), and is made by Super Glue Incorporated.  It looks, smells and flows like Testors Balsa Glue, but it sticks plastic.  BOY DOES IT STICK PLASTIC.  This stuff can weld and hold stuff that even CA can't touch.  It is capable of fusing very heavily loaded cantilever structures without failing.  Ask my old EVA 05.  Needless to say, the small fin posed no problem for the GMD,
and all was well.  Almost well, I should say, since the constant breakage had contributed to the fin no longer fitting together quite right.  So, now one fin is at a different angle, but it's better than no fin, so I'll take it.

Conclusions:

If you were to just build this kit right out of the box, you'd get a booger-coloured spaceship that really doesn't stand out at all.  However, with some attention to detail and care, it can be made to look really quite good.  I'm pleased with the result I got, and I think most modelers could make something worthwhile out of the kit.  It is not a kit I'd recommend to those new to Sci-Fi, since it's more work than it's worth for a casual fan, and it's not a kit that  novices/beginners will really like either.

Still, if you want a ship from the Tylor universe, these are the only game in town.  Cheers to Furuta for turning out these little goodies!

Above: This shows the ship from head on.  You can clearly see the chined appearance of the forward hull, very similar to an SR-71.  In addition, you can clearly see the two 'points' of the bow and the new, lower, placement of the bridge.