Model Art Magazine is a monthly magazine that covers aircraft, armor, ships and car modeling. Model Art started releasing magazines in 1966 and has evolved over the past forty-six years. They also release many special releases during the year, as is the case of this issue.

This issue covers IJN Light Cruisers that were produced from 1919 - 1945. During this time period there were twenty-four (This is the number that I came up with from Wikipedia. If it is incorrect, please forgive me as I am still new into IJN subjects, but learning. Light cruisers built and these fell into seven different classes. The classes being the Nagaro, Agano, Tenryu, Kuma, Sendai, Oyodo and Katori.

The magazine is broken down into ten sections. Section one thru five covers the guns, torpedo tubes and catapults found on these cruisers. Each gun is represented by a line drawing, model kit parts, and a period b&w photo. The catapults are represented by line drawings.

Section six thru eight covers how to build 1/700 scale IJN Light cruiser plastic models. In this section you will find a multitude of color photos showing tips and hints on how to improve your models. This section is where you will find the available 1/700 model kits and accessory kits from several different manufacturers. One very interesting item found in this section is three different color wake patterns set to 1/700 scale. These would make a nice representation, especially copied and used in conjunction with a waterline kit on a base. The section concludes with shipyard buildings and accessories.

Section nine covers IJN Seaplanes. Here you find what is available kit-wise for modelers, period photos, and line drawings of each represented seaplane.

Section ten is the conclusion of the issue. This section covers the Light cruisers with period photos and line drawings that cover the ships configuration when it was put into service thru it's last retro-fit. This is a great resource for modelers trying to represent one of these cruisers at a specific time period.

Even though Model Art is mainly printed in Japanese, I still find it to be a very valuable resource. For those that are more technologically advanced there are apps that will translate Japanese to English. I use one of these and it really helps to understand the articles. I recommend Model Art to modelers as another publication that you can pull information from.

I would like to thank Model Art and IPMS/USA for the opportunity to review this magazine.