HMM Zoids 1/72 Red Horn Part 1

Huge, red, very fierce-looking
Starting on another plamo kit after the review on Figma Inori Yuzuriha. ^^

And it's a huge one. ^^


HMM Zoids 1/72 Red Horn
Production company: Kotobukiya
Release date: February 2010
Price: 6,800 Yen (exclusive of tax).
Official link

While it's a near six-year-old kit by today's standards, this 1/72 scale Red Horn from Kotobukiya's Highend Master Model (HMM) Zoids series still looks as awesome as it was when first announced. ^^ For model kits, I normally wait for more images and information to be released before deciding to place my pre-order. Since they normally don't go out of stock as fast as certain series of figurines and action figures, I sometime wait until I get to read up reviews about the model kits I'm interested in after their release before deciding to buy them. ^^ Besides wanting to get more information about the kit design and overall quality to be completely confident in my purchase decision, I usually don't feel the rush in getting the models kits since I know they would come to my place really late as well. ^^; For Red Horn however, I pre-ordered it the moment it was made available on a local hobby web store. ^^ Its huge size, eye-catching all red color scheme, and very fearsome look made the kit an instant love to me.


It still arrived late - many, many months after its actual release in February 2010, but it was one of my most anticipated purchases at that time, and even after so many years, it's still one of my most favorite model kits. ^^




The carnage caused by Red Horn, with a defeated Shield Liger among the ruins is shown in great details on the box art. ^^


The box is very big, and heavy too. ^^



Introduction of the mecha, with an illustration of Red Horn on bottom side of the box cover.




Introduction of this HMM plamo kit on the top side of the box cover.


Left and right hand sides of the box cover.


Content



Like all of Kotobukiya's kits with this box dimension, the runners are arranged into two separate boxes.


Factory production code (?) printed inside one of the two boxex.


The instruction manual.



A large section of the manual is devoted to the introduction of Red Horn, and detailed explaination on its mecha design and weaponry.





The linearts of the different components are very detailed, but unfortunately I can't read Japanese, so I'm unable to understand the explaination provided for them. ^^;


Back cover of the manual.


All runners.
A look at the runners' design:


Runner A - Contains maroon parts mainly for the head and neck.


Large parts that protrude on the runner.


Intricate molded details on the large parts.


The horn is designed as two vertically split parts, so having a seamline between them is going to be unavoidable, unfortunately. ^^;


Runner B - Contains maroon parts mainly for the waist and tail.




Large parts with plenty of molded details. ^^


Runner C - Contains maroon parts for the Anti-Zoids Tri-barreled Linear Cannon.


Molded details on the cannon barrel and rear vent parts.


A rough estimate of the cannon barrel's length using my hand. ^^


Runner D (two pieces) - Contains maroon parts mainly for the legs.


The detail design on the parts is consistent with that on parts from runners A, B and C.


Runner E - Contains black parts mainly for the body.


A humongous part for the body.


While some of the parts are really large in size, their vent details are delicately molded.


Some of the other large parts on this runners.


One-piece parts molded with connection ports for other cylindrical pieces.


Runner F - Contains dark gray parts mainly for the weapons.




A contrast to the other previously shown runners, most of the parts on this runner are much smaller in size.


Runner G - Contains dark gray parts mainly for the frill-mounted Twin Assault Beam Gun/All-weather 3D Radar Antenna.



One-piece parts for the numerous laser guns, and fixed pipes.


Runner H (two pieces) - Contains dark gray parts mainly for the body and legs.



Intricate molded details on the joint parts for the limbs.


Rather crude separation hints that indicated a section of the runner to be changed for future variations of Red Horn.
I didn't go and check out the content of Dark Horn to see if its Runner H is missing this runner segment. ^^


Runner I - Contains light gray parts mainly for the body.




A contrast to those on Runner H, most of the parts on Runner I are pretty large. The level of molded details on them is equally elaborate though. ^^


Runner J - Contains light gray parts mainly for the tail.


Interestingly, some of the parts' details as compared to their size is a little imbalanced as compared to those from the runners shown earlier on. The tail's skate shown on the left is full of molded details; while the right image shows two super-tiny pieces for the neck frill, and there are block parts with no mecha detail meant to form the tail.


Runner K (two pieces) - Contains gray parts mainly for the legs.





High level of molded mechanical details strike again. ^^


Runner L - ABS runner that contains joint parts for the tail and abdomen.
Runner M (two pieces) - Another ABS runner that contains joint parts for the legs and frill-mounted Twin Assault Beam Gun/All-weather 3D Radar Antenna.


The hip joints connecting the two front legs (right image) have interlocking gears that would allow both legs to be spread out/bent inward together. The same feature is absent on the same joint for the rear legs though.


Runner N - Contains beige parts for the hooves and jaws.


Very impressive one-piece part design for the two jaws.


The rounded hooves are pretty interesting to see as well.


(From left to right) Runner O - Contains parts for the mandible-mounted High Pressure Concentrated Sulfuric Acid Powder Cannon and back-mounted composite sensor unit.
Runner P (three pieces) - Contains parts for the pilot figure.
Runner Q - Contains clear green parts for the cockpit hatches.


One-piece part design for the Acid Powder Cannon with tons of molded details.


Generic pilot figure design that could be reused for other kits in the series.


Very beautiful rounded clear green parts on Runner Q.


Runner R (three pieces) - Generic joint caps for HMM Zoids kits.
The runner label is actually Shield Liger - the first release in Kotobukiya's HMM Zoids series. ^^


Runner S (two pieces) - Contains parts for the back-mounted TEZ20mm Linear Laser Gun and tail-mounted AEZ20mm Beam Guns.


One-piece part design for the guns, which is identical for all similar components in this kit.


Runner W (two pieces) - Contains hose for the body made of soft plastic.


Polycap sets PC1, and PC2 (two pieces).


Zoids Core made of PVC.


Clear sticker sheet.


Plenty of white stripes designed for the legs and tail. ^^
Given the high number of runners and parts (33 runners, 469 parts in total), a bit of organization work is needed for me to be able to search for the runners without too much hassles. Even for a large kit like Red Horn, I have no intention of extending just the work on removing the parts to more than one night. ^^;


Gathering all the empty paper boxes I can find in anticipation of storing all the removed parts according to their components.


Large-sized runners have paper stickers marked with their labels attached to their plastic bags to let them stand out more clearly.


The smaller-sized runners are organized into one of the kit's inner paper containers.


Runners with parts needed for the legs. ^^


All the emptied runners after the whole work.


None of the joint caps on Runner R is removed, ...


... as it's a lot easier to apply panel lining to all of the parts using Tamiya's Panel Line Accent Color (Black) with the tree as support. ^^


All removed parts are organized and stored in individual paper containers.
A large, complicated kit with tons of details this is, just the work of removing all the parts took me close to six hours to complete. ^^;

While working on snapping the parts off their runners, I was trying to figure out the paint work and panel lining needed to complete the kit as well, and I could feel the pressure rising as more and more parts were sorted in their respective boxes. ^^; The amount of work needed is really going to challenge how applicable my usual detailing method is going to be for such a large a kit like this. ^^