Tomorrow is April...

I have decided to join the April A to Z Challenge...

So I will be blogging about stuff starting with the letter A on 1st April until the last day of April which will be the letter Z.

Each day will be a post related to different letter in the alphabet.

We will not post blogs on Sundays thus 26 letters for 26 days in the month of April.

April is tomorrow…

Here I go!

Musha Gekitou Gundam

My first SD Gundam was quite plain when compared to the pictures on its box. Thus I did a few things to the limitation of my resources and experience to make my Musha Gekitou look a bit colorful.

Only few years after that (which is like 10 years or more), my Musha Gekitou get the proper coloring that he deserved. I used the Metallic Red, Metallic Blue, Metallic Green, Gold and Silver Gundam markers with my white and black enamel paint. Gundam panel lining pen was used for the lines.

I will not say much, so see for yourself the difference before and after I painted my Musha Gekitou.

The left side photos were how Musha Gekitou looked. The right side photos are after he is given colors.

All of his armors and weapons look even awesome now, compare to before.

I especially love his dual katanas and the bazooka. After painting, they look so beautiful.

After I painted Musha Gekitou, I fell in love with him again…

Jyokou Serpent on RAMPAGE!

One of the latest complete SD Gundam that I have in my room is Jyokou Serpent of the SD Gundam Sangokuden Brave Battle Warriors series. Jyokou Serpent is design base on MMS-01 Serpent, a mobile suit that appeared in Gundam Wing Endless Waltz OVA.

When I said complete, it meant that I had finished putting it together and painted.

I was doing my SD soldiers military unit when I finished my Jyokou Serpent. I painted them before I put them together. When I look at it, I was like, “Hey they will make good props for battle field diorama!” Sure enough, when you arranged them on the floor, they look like fallen soldiers on the battlefield.

So I took photos of Jyokou Serpent stepping over the fallen soldiers…

Owh, and Jyokou Serpent although he is blue, is not in the same team with the blue soldiers…

Raining… Acid?

It was raining heavily when this picture was taken.

Today I received an interesting text message from a concern and loving cousin of mine telling me that:

Fukushima power plant exploded at 4.30AM today. If it rains tomorrow or later, don’t go outside. If you are outside, be sure that you have rain protectors. It’s acid rain. Don’t let it touch you. You may burn your skin, lose your hair or have cancer. Please pass. Stay safe & remind everyone you know.

Thank you for showing that you care… But then again you should also check your resources before you spread information. I had read that, this text message had stir panic within Philippine community.

Rumors easily spread like wild fire with the help of FaceBook and Twitter to name a few. So nowadays, you should always and always check any information received before you take it and spread to other people. Wrong information can be disastrous to other people who act on it.

Here are some good tips on verifying information you get from internet.

Just a point to ponder, if such thing does really happen, should not we had the same news when Hiroshima was nuked in the World War II?

Pray that the country affected by Earthquake, especially Japan recently will stay strong and will have a fast recovery.

The First Gundam of Mine…

My first Gundam was an SD Gundam.

I bought that Gundam when I was about 11 years old. Back then I had never heard of Gundam. The robots that I knew at that time were Transformers, Patlabor, Macross and Gobots.

Gundam? Never heard of it…

Even when I first bought it, I did wonder how that robot can fit into such small box. I had never built a model too at this time of my age. The pictures around the box do look attractive and beautiful though. Out of my strong curiosity, I bought one.

It was mesmerizing at first when I saw the runners. I have to build it! YEAH!

I was very new to plastic model and all the instructions in the manual were in Japanese but the pictures did help with putting the model together. So I actually did not have any problem at all. I did not have any plastic model tools at that time. So I twist the parts out of the runner and trim any protruding bits with nail clipper. I used the nail clipper file to file the protruding bits too. That was quite a rough work then comparing to how I build my Gundams today.

Bandai provided stickers to make your model slightly colorful. After sticking them on my Gundam, I was still not satisfied because my Gundam still did not look close to the pictures shown on the box. So I cut whatever left of the sticker into smaller pieces and stick them on parts that need some more color. Problem with stickers is that after you play with the model a few times, they tend to get loose and start unstuck, creating curls on the edge of the stickers.

Being green in plastic model, I even tried to use my color pens to add more color to my Gundam. I was actually quite pleased with it. I named my first Gundam Akira because I could not read Japanese at that time and I did not know the name for the Gundam. SD Gundams usually have different forms you can change to. For Akira, he has without armor form, armored form and power up form. I kept changing him into different forms like once every hour. Below are the photos of Akira with his armor parts.

Thus by a month, most of the parts were quite loose.

Today, I get to know the real name for Akira is actually Musha Gekitou Gundam.

Anyway, whatever it is, I had enjoyed the experience of building the model. It was exciting to see how Akira slowly built into a Gundam.

And that is how I started out in Gundam plastic model…

Special Month Ahead, APRIL!

I came across this special announcement from one of the blog that I follow for a while now, Open The Toy.

According to the information I gathered from the original source which is from Tossing It Out, we just need to blog from A to Z in April only on weekdays. That is a letter for each day, from the letter A until the last letter Z. Minus the Sundays in April that is 26 days for the 26 letters in the Alphabet.

Intriguing…

I am considering joining this feat. I will let you know if I sign up for this event…

We had been given early notice to get ready for that month anyway so should not be much of problem.

Add Me, Add Me!

As the technology moves forward, it seems that social etiquettes are getting rare and less.

Take FaceBook for example:

One of the reason why have a FaceBook account is so that I can play all the games, stalking cute chicks, sign up for all those stupid groups and campaigns, read whiny status every second, keep up to date with my friends.

It is also an amazing experience to be able to connect to your long lost friends.

Then we have these people who suddenly pop up, wanting to be your friend.

Right…

I should not have problem accepting these people as my friend if:

1. They show their real picture of themselves. Some people love to put a group photo as their display picture. Then you have to guess which face belongs to the name that wanted to be added as a friend. Or we have people who like to put other people photos (usually artist, well known person, favorite porn star, their beloved partner, their children, their pets etc). The worst display photo would be picture of cartoon or logo… Come on, what is the resemblance to your real look? Why can’t you just put your photo? After all you want people to easily recognize you. If you want to be so secretive, then why the hell do you want to set up a FaceBook account?
2. They, at least, introduce themselves. Ok, alright, you do not have a recognizable photo to jog my memory of who you are. Your name also does not ring a bell… Then, WHY THE HELL YOU CAN’T EVEN INTRODUCE YOURSELF? At least, tell me your name and just in case I probably have forgotten you, just a brief introduction of yourself, where we had met, how, when etc just so that I know who the hell you are if you want me to click the add me button…

If they do not fulfill the requirements I had put down as shown above, then, forget it, I am not interested to know or add you even if you have a cute chick in bikini as your display photo…

Power Ranger’s MEGAZORD!

Actually my favorite part in the Power Ranger series is when they call for their huge robot to battle. Now, for those who are still in the dark, let me give you guys a brief, simplest, concise plot in a Power Ranger series…

Usually the show starts with the villain latest plot to take over the world. Then the villain will built, make, summon etc a monster appropriate for the job.

The monster then will start to terrorize the place. Few screams later, the Power Rangers will be notified and they will rush to the terrorize scene to fight the evil monster.

When they arrived at the place where the monster is having fun, few henchmen or grunts or soldiers will also appear. Just to be fair mind you (5 rangers against one scary evil super strong monster). The rangers changed to their costume and knock the monsters and its henchmen around. Usually there will be around 6 henchmen. They will appear to be more when the scene shows each ranger fighting.

Once the henchmen are down, the rangers will do a finishing move on the weaken monster.

Somehow, there will be a device that will greatly enhance the monster size and you will have a huge giant evil monster prepared for another round of fun with the rangers.

This is the cue for the rangers to call their huge gigantic vehicles that could be in the form of errr… vehicles such as cars, planes, copters, boats, truck or animals such mammals, reptiles, dinosaurs or even mythical creatures.

You will have awesome display of these vehicles exiting their respective garages or resting places.

Then they will all combine into a robot. Another awesome display of these vehicles or creatures transforming into respective body parts of the robot.

While all this happen, the monster will be resting quietly and waiting patiently for them to finish. After all, the monster had just been revived and blown into a humongous size. So shut up and watch the robot formed.

Once the robot is ready, the monster will approach the robot in the most menacing manner. The monster also might destroy one or two building in the process. The battle begins!

The robot and monster will knock each other around until it gets close to the ending of the show, the robot will whip out its finishing move, killing the monster for good. YAY!

The day is saved once again thanks to the rangers!

If the villains have real working thinking brain with them, my best bet of destroying the rangers will be when the robot is combining. DO NOT LET THE ROBOT FINISH COMBINING WITH EACH OTHER! After all they do not really have any defensive measure taken to counter an attack while combining. Then again, that is stupidity for you…

Mind boggling stuff…

It is amazing how some of the Power Ranger team can have a huge cockpit that can fit everybody in and how they get in there is also another great question.

Usually I do not really mind the part of the show before the monster is blown into a jumbo size bulldozer. I just want to see the robot part of the show only. That is the most interesting part to me…

Once again, the pictures are taken from Googling Power Ranger Megazord… And mostly from HenshinGrid Blogspot. The awesome Power Rangers MegaZord robots photos taken from this awesome guy in the RangerBoard forum.

POWER RANGERS!

When I was just a little boy, watching the Power Rangers series was the highlight of the day. For those who don’t know, ‘Power Rangers’ is a general term. There are lots and lots of Power Rangers team.

I grow up with Japanese Super Sentai such as FlashMan, MaskMan and then the American Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. Super Sentai is the Japanese term for Power Ranger if you don’t know already…

This year will be the 35th Anniversary of the Super Sentai series…

So that is quite a lot of Power Rangers over 35 years now.Anyway, these Power Rangers are here to protect and save the world.

But, and I had been thinking about this since the first day I know the Power Rangers, why do they:
1. Stay in one place only? Somehow the evil villains are stupid enough to focus only in one part of the world. And taking over that one place in the world is equivalent to the whole world… No wonder you guys are losers…

2. Fight one monster per week? Or in other word, each encounter, they will face one monster plus the regular evil villains (that may consist of 2 to 3 guys max). And those regular evil villains usually just hang around throwing insults and encouraging that monster to do all the dirty job. What do you expect from evil losers… Anyway, it is very very rare to see the Power Rangers fighting against 2 or more monsters at one time… Lucky guys…

3. Use huge noticeable gestures every time they talk. You can say one hand swing per word. And they will always gather to do group pose before they attack the evil villains… And to make it worse, the evil villains will wait patiently for they to complete their group pose or join them by doing their own pose.

4. Have the same power as a normal human being when they changed into their costume or Power Ranger form. If you watch closely, actually whether they changed or not, they still at the same power level. Except that they have all the weapons and stuff…

5. Have to wear their respective color even when they are not wearing their custom or Power Ranger form. Do they really like the color given to them or they are forced o wear that one color day in and day out? Pity them if that is the case…

So that was what running through my mind every time I watched the Power Ranger series…

Pictures acquired from googling Power Rangers images…