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Reviewed by Adam Rehorn
1/1000 Arcadia
Maker: Bandai
Year: 1982
Type: Injection-moulded styrene
Aftermarket: None
Price: It’s out of production now,
so whatever you’re willing to spend (I paid $30)
Above: : “I
live in freedom, under my own flag…” This
is the completed 1/1000 Arcadia when seen from the side. The characteristic mix
of ultratech and ancient is clearly visible, and this makes the Arcadia instantly recognizable in a world of cookie-cutter
spaceships.
In anime, as in any medium, there are some characters that go beyond being simply well recognized or
‘famous’ and become icons; instantly recognized by people in different lands, of different cultures and even across
generations. One such character is Captain Harlock, the space pirate forced to
abandon his home on Earth and wander the sea of stars.
Captain Harlock is one of the all time greatest characters to be found in any anime. The fact that he is the creation of master story teller and mechanical designer Leiji Matsumoto also means
that the good captain is guaranteed a cool ride. This takes the shape of the
space battleship Arcadia, which is a chimera of ancient and ultra-futuristic design influences. It has everything a good Matsumoto ship needs: huge triple turrets, pointy bridge windows and too many
masts. It also has everything a brooding, yet impossibly honourable space pirate
needs, including a stern that looks like it came from a Spanish galleon, complete with bay windows and gilding, and a lot
of REALLY BIG skulls-and-crossbones in bas-relief on all sides of the ship!
Above: Who are you calling
a pirate? Oh, yeah… There’s
no mistaking the Arcadia’s allegiance. If the skulls on the side don’t
clue you in, then the MASSIVE one on the front “mailbox” should clue you in!
There are two different styles of Arcadia to choose from. One
is the blue Arcadia that was seen in the old Captain Harlock TV series. This
ship has a very pointed nose, and kits of it are very rare and expensive. The
second Arcadia is the green Arcadia, as seen in just about every other Matsumoto work involving Harlock. In my correspondence with Mr. Ben Dunn, I found out that the Green Arcadia made its first appearance in
the first GE 999 movie from 1979 (if I remember right).
The green Arcadia is the one closest to my heart, since it is the first Arcadia I ever encountered. I first came across it while looking for cheap manga at Heroes Comics downtown. While digging through the bargain bins some 10 years ago, I came across a comic entitled
“Leiji Matsumoto’s Captain Harlock.” It was drawn by Mr. Ben
Dunn, and was clearly done in the Japanese style. I picked up all I could, and
was instantly a fan of the good Captain, his crew and his ship.
It was about this time I began to seriously investigate what anime was, and what was available. It was then I learned about the movie “Arcadia of my Youth.” I found I could actually rent it, and when I watched it I was mesmerized: it was, and still is, one of
the most powerful and epic anime movies I have seen. Also around this time I
learned of the blue Arcadia. I must say I don’t like it as much.
The Arcadia is a symbol of people’s hopes, dreams and determinations, and really is the indomitable
human spirit given mechanical form. For this reason alone, I have always wanted
to build a model of it. Then, one day, I wandered into the old “Your Time”
hobby shop in Northland Mall, and saw a huge model of the Arcadia on display in a glass case.
This kit was built by our own Peter Fay, as it turned out!
I finally secured my own Arcadia a few years ago from David Guertin’s stash. However, it took me a while to get around to building it. I
wanted to make sure that I had built up enough skill to at least try to do it right.
It wasn’t until I awoke on the morning of Saturday, November 26, 2005, that I felt I should start the kit. That was the morning after my Ph.D. defence.
I felt that I had a new kind of freedom, and if it’s one thing the Arcadia symbolizes, it’s just that!
There’s one thing I need to explain before you read the review of this kit. I call this version of the Arcadia the “mailbox” Arcadia, because of the large “mailbox”
shape at the front of the ship. In the old Ben Dunn comics, there was a letters
column. At the header of the column was a little drawing of one of the characters
pulling letters from a mailbox. The mailbox was a little Arcadia on a stick,
and the front of the ship (where the big skull and crossbones are) was folded down like the front of a country mailbox. From that time forward, I have always referred to the green Arcadia as the “mailbox”
Arcadia, and the light green portion at the front of the ship has always been called the “mailbox.” Now you know.
Above: This view from the
wing root forward shows the two top turrets, the rocket box and the rear/side of the mailbox to good effect. The blue Arcadia just doesn’t have this sense of style about it.
The Kit:
The Arcadia is, despite its size, a fairly straightforward kit, and anyone who has built a space battleship
before will be right at home. The kit comes moulded entirely in a dark green
plastic, and there are no stickers, decals or any other kind of decoration provided with the kit. Well, actually, that’s not quite true: the Jolly Roger that the Arcadia so proudly flies on her flagpole
actually comes with the kit. However, it’s right in the instructions! You have to cut it out and mount it to the flag pole.
A better idea is to scan it or photocopy it a few times, because you’re definitely going to screw it up the first
time.
Above: This view shows some of the middle and rear of the ship,
and you can clearly see the flagpole rising from the rear deck. I replaced the
flagpole with a piece of spring steel, for durabilty reasons. I also made a few
copies of the flag from the instructions – the one you see on there is the third attempt!
The plastic the Arcadia is moulded in is very much unlike almost every other Bandai kit I’ve ever
built. In fact, it reminded me more of the plastic that the old 1/48 Monogram
P-40 or B-17 came moulded in. Unlike most Bandai plastic, the Arcadia’s
is quite soft, and this means that it glues together quite easily. This is a
welcome change from a typical Gundam, where getting the pieces to stay glued is actually a bit of a challenge.
The main part of the hull comes in halves, right from stem to stern, and the back plate is separate. The bottom part of the hull is included in the halves, but the top decks are not. That having been said, the “mailbox” at the front of the ship is fully
moulded on the hull halves, except for the endcap with the skull and crossbones on it.
Most other major subassemblies come as halves as well, such as the bridge, wings, wing roots, drop tanks,
engine pods and turrets. The gun barrels are all single pieces, as are the engine
nozzles, main radar mast and side guns. There are two single-piece top decks
for the ship as well.
This is not a new pressing of this kit, and it shows. The
single piece guns and masts all show significant seams on them, and a dry fit showed that there were going to be some fit
and alignment issues. None of the round components (guns, engine nozzles) are
actually round, either.
The detail on the kit is quite good given its age, however, and the planking on the deck was nice and
straight. Unfortunately, due to the age of the moulds, all of the panel lines
were very soft. Thus, they all had to be re-etched. This was done using the trusty old ‘pin in an X-acto knife handle’ that I use for all my other
re-etching tasks. This was the first anime kit that I’ve had to completely
re-etch, and I was glad I’d had practice on some of my old FROG airplanes, like my Ta-152H, Uhu, and Mistel VI.
While building the Arcadia, I dug out my old Ben Dunn Harlock comics.
I was astounded to see that every detail on the kit was reproduced in Mr. Dunn’s excellent drawings. Because I had been building the kit, I knew exactly what to look for, and it was uncanny how exact the
drawings were! I asked Mr. Dunn if he had a model of the ship in front of him
while doing his manga, and he said he had fairly good references at the time. Clearly,
the folks at Bandai must have been looking at the same drawings!
Building the Kit:
Building the Arcadia’s main structures is quite easy; you simply glue the halves together and sand
when finished. This holds for the hull, bridge, engine pods and drop tanks. As mentioned before, the fit is less than stellar, but for these assemblies, some
normal heavy sanding is all that is required to get them into shape. On this
kit I used Ambroid ProWeld for glue; it really fused the soft plastic well.
The real problems in building this kit come in when you try and attach endcap pieces. One example of this is the back plate. It doesn’t really
fit into the cutout in the bottom of the hull very well, and a lot of putty was needed to get it to fair smoothly into place. However, this was NOTHING in comparison to the horrible fit that awaited me at the
front of the ship! The endcap of the mailbox, which bears the Arcadia’s
trademark skull and crossbones, is a separate piece. This is, on the surface,
a good idea, since it means you don’t have to sand the complex contours on the skull or bones. However, the endcap doesn’t fit worth a toot. In fact,
I’d say that it was a FROG level fit if I ever saw one!
Above: This view of the front
of the kit shows just how bad the end cap fit on the “mailbox.” I had to pile on a tone of CA to get it to even START to mate flushly.
There was a very long battle to get the endcap to fair smoothly into the rest of the mailbox. The first few attempts at getting a fit used Zap-a-Gap cyanoacrylate (CA) to fill gaps and give some structure
to the tenuous join of the two assemblies. After this, lots of Tamiya putty,
Squadron Putty and even thick Mr. Surfacer 1000 were used in an effort to get a seamless join.
Above: This shows the end
cap after some sanding, filling, primering and resanding. You can see just how
much filler was required to get a smooth transition between the pieces. This
is NOT a shake and bake kit, as you can see!
Just as poor in the fit department was the ‘horse collar’ at the back of the mailbox. This collar fits around the back of the mailbox and is responsible for creating the
many openings that can be found here on the finished kit. Matsumoto loves holes,
vents and intakes of all kinds, and the Arcadia is no exception. Unfortunately,
the collar fits so poorly that most of the splitters that separate the holes don’t actually connect to the hull!
Getting the collar to fit on and stay attached was difficult and copious amounts of pressure, glue and
swearing later and the thing was in place. Once the glue had dried, it was apparent
that a lot of sanding and filling would be required. A heavy application of Zap-a-Gap
cyanoacrylate (CA) was applied to fill in the many gaps, and after it was sanded down, several applications of Tamiya putty
were needed to fair it in smoothly.
Above: Another example of
horrific fit was the “horse collar” at the rear of the “mailbox.”
This little ring is needed to make the vents that ring the upper part of the ship.
However, the fit was, as with the end cap, atrocious. This picture shows
the collar faired in after several iterations of puttying and sanding. It was
hard to tell that the collar was even SUPPOSED to fit on the ship!
The rest of the kit didn’t build too badly. The turrets
were straightforward, and the ventral scoops and fins all fit amazingly well. However,
there were a few disasters. The most shocking involved the wing roots. Upon fastening the wing roots to the main hull, I found that one of them didn’t seat well, and that
there was a huge gap between it and the body. This was right where the engine
should be attached, and it would show because of how the engines go on. Thus,
I had the brilliant idea of simply pouring on the glue and forcing it into place. For
a while, it actually seemed to be working. The Proweld loosened up the original
glue at the root/hull junction, and I was able to pull the wing root to the hull and hold it there. However, the pressure needed to do this was exceptionally high, and eventually the lower surface of the
wing root gave way!!
I was treated to one of the most sickening sounds a modeller can hear: the loud and sudden report of
snapping styrene! I felt the shock as the plastic gave, and stared down in horror
at what I had done… The wing root had broken and collapsed in a way not
intended by the folks at Bandai. In short, I’d blowed it up real good!!
Above: Uh oh… The Arcadia’s wing roots are NOT supposed
to look this way! I did what the Illumidas fleet could not, and crushed the Arcadia
utterly! It’s amazing what a ham fist can do. Just look at the torn glue seams and tortured styrene. That
piece that’s bent in the middle is supposed to be one piece, not two! This
took some time to repair, needless to say.
Using some dental tools, I pried the broken wing root back into place and poured on some glue to hold
it. In so doing, I ended up with a ‘dent’ in the wing root, which
took some Tamiya putty to fill. The end result was actually quite good, and,
in a great twist of irony, the hull/root junction was perfect after all was said and done.
Now that’s good karma!!
Unfortunately, during construction, a few little kibbly bits broke off.
There were some projections near the small pieces of ‘wood’ decking near the wing roots, some gilding at
the extreme top of the rear deck and a blade aerial on the fairing atop the mailbox.
The last one I actually removed on purpose to ease sanding. However, I
liked the ship so much without it that I just left it off. I also left off the
two old lanterns that are normally attached at corners of the aft deck. While
these are a trademark of the Arcadia, they were so badly moulded that they could not be recovered.
Painting and Finishing:
There is almost no one who will sing the praises of the first generation of Model Master Acrylic Paints. However, I’ve always been a fan of these grey-lidded orphans for several reasons. Granted, the paints are very difficult to get smooth, but they always cover well and
are extremely tough. These last two qualities endeared them to me for painting
the Arcadia because I knew I’d be handling it quite a lot during the painting and final assembly processes.
Thus, the green parts of Arcadia are painted in three different shades of first generation MM Acrylics. The mailbox is done in FS34102 Medium Green, with some white added. The bulk of the hull is done in FS 34079 Dark Green, and the ventral fins and small details (including
the guns’ thermal sleeves) are done in FS36081 Euro 1 Grey (which is a very green grey).
The decking and ‘galleon’ part at the rear are the same brown mix I used on my GE 999 coach. It seemed only fair that the two Matsumoto kits should share at
least one colour.
Above: This view from the underside shows the three greens used
on the Arcadia to good effect. They are all first generation Model Master acrylics,
so you know there was a lot of sanding going on!
While airbrushing these old MM Acrylics is impossible, they can be hand painted once significantly thinned
with distilled water. Approximately 8-10 coats of each colour was applied over
a layer of Wal-Mart Colourplace grey primer, and a good sanding with 2000 grit was undertaken every 4-5 coats. These paints wrinkle a lot, and the effect is that of an Arcadia wrapped in a layer of shag carpet! Once they’re sanded though, the paints look just as good as anything else. With the paint done, the black Gundammarker was brought into action. This ship has a lot of outlining, and most of it required touching up.
(Call me Mr. Butterfingers…)
Above: This view of the area behind the bridge emphasizes the amount of detail on the kit; very nice for a kit that’s
about 25 years old!
Above: Whoa! You wanna talk about “Junk on the Trunk”?? The back panel of the Arcadia’s galleon section
is perhaps the busiest piece of sprue I’ve seen in a while. What with all
the gilding, the yellow windows, the wood and the outlining, it was a challenge to make sure everything ended up right. Of course, you need a skull and crossbones on there too!
The windows are all done in a mix of various yellows and whites.
The core of the colour is some Badger yellow, and is the same colour I used on my Zaku HB. Painting the windows was quite a challenge, especially on the bay windows,
all of which had to be re-etched before they could be finished. However, the
bridge windows gave me the most trouble. Because of the thickness of the paint
already applied, the thin bridge windows had been all but obliterated. I tried,
in vain, to resurrect them, but eventually had to give up.
Of course, I couldn’t give up on having windows, so I had to think of another way. This presented itself in the form of 2mm Modeler’s brand masking tape, which I got from Vincent Tang
(thanks!). I cut a strip of this tape in half, and then cut windows to size from
that. I then stuck the tape onto the now-filled face of the bridge, painted the
tape to match the other windows, and outlined the tape when done. I was very
impressed with how well this trick worked. In fact, the only way to tell that
something’s wrong is to really know your Arcadia: because of the width of the tape, there’s one less window than
there should be in each row. I doubt most people would recognize this at first
glance – of course, now YOU know, so I’ll have to kill you…
Above: This view clearly shows the bridge with the new windows
in place. It’s very difficult to tell they’re not the originals,
and I was very happy with the results. You can also see the eight-round box launcher
at the base of the bridge; this unit required extensive work to separate the doors and put the proper bevels on the edges.
Once the painting and outlining were finished, I tried to gloss the entire ship with thinned Future floor
polish. However, because the Arcadia is so big, this didn’t really work
out. I originally wanted a high-gloss finish, because so often the Arcadia is
drawn with a heavy ‘shine’ type of lighting. After several attempts,
though, it was clear that this wasn’t going to work. Since glossing using
an airbrush is too rough, I decided to go with a more warlike flat finish.
I used Microscale Microflat on the Arcadia, just as I have for nearly every flat model I’ve done. This time, though, things went wrong. For
whatever reason, the first coat went on far too spotty. I think it was too thin,
and being water-thinned, I was essentially ‘raining’ on the ship. The
subsequent coats then proceeded to try TOO flat, and there were areas of chalky whiteness that appeared all over the kit. To try and recover my work, I applied Tamiya gloss, and went at it again with the
flat coat thereafter.
After 3 iterations of this, I hit on a new idea: I’d use REALLY thin Future as a final coat. Being really thin (70% water), the Future was able to be hand painted without showing
brush strokes, even over areas as large as the open areas of the Arcadia’s hull.
Also, because it’s so thin, the Future also absorbed into the flat coat, which is quite rough. The end result was a hand-applied semi-gloss finish that had no chalking and that looked like it was put on by an airbrush! I was exceptionally pleased!
Above: This amidships view gives a good indication of the shininess
of the Arcadia’s paint. You can see some colour reflection in the paint,
but it’s not as mirror-like as what I normally have on my sci-fi kits, like the Freedom.
Final assembly included attaching the various fiddly bits (bridge, masts, etc.) and painting the stand
Tamiya XF-1 Flat Black. The stand is a nice sturdy affair, and the pitch angle
of the ship can be adjusted by loosening a screw at the top of the stand’s neck.
This is the only stand I’ve ever seen with this feature, and it is a very nice addition.
Conclusions:
The Arcadia is typical of a lot of older Bandai models: it seems easy when you first look at it, but
it harbours some nasty pitfalls along the way. This is particularly true when
the kit has long seams, as Bandai never seems to have mastered the fine art of making big pieces fit well. However, another feature of older Bandai kits is that they are really fun and interesting to build, so
long as you have the patience and the ability to persevere!
This kit is, in and of itself, nothing special in terms of extra features, gimmicks or detail. However, it is the biggest mainstream kit of the mailbox “movie” Arcadia that has so far been
produced, and that alone makes it worth getting for any serious anime fan. Just
knowing you are building a replica of such a great ship really does ease whatever pains this monster throws your way.
In the end, I’m really exceptionally pleased with the results I got. Could it be better? Of course, there are some little details
that I’d like to correct, and I wish the lanterns had been good enough to use.
These little niggles aside, I am overjoyed to finally have a good model of such an iconic ship gracing my shelves.
With its unmistakable ‘mailbox’ prow complete with massive skull and crossbones to the Jolly
Roger flying form its ancient galleon aft deck, the Arcadia is one of the most easily recognizable ships in all of anime history. Getting a chance to build one is both an honour and a privilege. If you have the opportunity to build this piece of history, I would wholeheartedly encourage you to do
so.
Above: Just to give you an idea of size, this view shows the 1/1000
Arcadia beside the 1/1000 space battleship Yamato. The Yamato is based of the
IJN Yamato of WWII fame, so you can do the math and see just how large the Arcadia really is.
No wonder she wins every engagement she’s in!
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