I really like how Hasagawa keeps releasing quality models of Japanese Anime vehicles. This one is one of the Arcadia ships (think there were 2, possibly 3 different versions) used by Space Pirate Captain Harlock. I found an English dubbed version on YouTube which, of course, featured the green ship instead of this one but still interesting to watch. I also found a fun site about the lack of continuity in the Harlock Universe that is worth a read if you like this kind of stuff.

So, what’s inside the box? There are 149 parts molded in two different shades of blue, brown, black, white and clear yellow plus 4 polly caps (of which only 2 are used). The parts are cleanly molded with no visible ejector marks or sink marks. There is some beautiful scrollwork on the hull and the pirate ship parts on the rear. Decals are supplied for all this, more about them in a moment. The instructions are pretty clear and there is a full size full color 6-view profile on the back showing decal placement. It also has two pirate flags which you can cut out and attach on the stern and the main mask. The stern also has a plastic version with decal skulls.

Since I used rattle cans for the main colors I had to really plan out what could be put together before painting and do multiple sub assemblies before finalizing the hull. This is made more interesting as several color parts fit under or around other colors. The beautiful fit of the parts really helped though I could have used filler in a couple places probably more from how I built the sub assemblies. Colors I used were Model Master Blue Angels Blue FS15050, Testors Gloss Bright Blue 1210, Gloss Light Blue 1208, and Gloss Brown 1240 for the main parts. I also used Gloss Red 1203 and Model Master Camouflage Grey FS36622 for some of the details parts. You could almost get away with not painting the kit except for the light blue and a couple bits which need a blue added like the wings.

Everything was moving fine until I got to the decals. Besides all the gold scrollwork, all the windows are yellow decals. Since I was concerned about how the decals would fit over the scrollwork I decided to try one of the window decals and the windows on the back of the stern. Yep, pretty much what I feared, Micro Set and Sol had little impact. If you know of a stronger decal solution that works good on Hasagawa decals you might be able to make it work but I decided to try and paint them on. I did use the decals for the eyes of the skulls and the flag and they performed just fine. I think if the bodywork didn’t have the raised details, the kit decals would have been fine also.

The windows were easy, Testors Gloss Yellow in the little jar and then touch up with a bottle of Blue Angels Blue but how to do the gold? I hit several craft stores in the area and ended up with a gold watercolor pencil, a gold marker and a Pitt artist pen. After testing I decided to use the Pitt pen. I started on the stern and while it worked ok, was definitely not perfect. The ink ran a bit too much so I ended up using a nice wide flat brush and kind of dry brushed the scrollwork on the hull sides. Basically I made a puddle with the pen and used that as my color supply to match what I had already done on the stern. It needed some touch up with the main colors afterwards but didn’t look too bad. Not contest worthy but looks good on the shelf.

Once that was completed it was just a matter of putting the last few bits on and try and get all the antenna lined up right. While most of these had tabs to give a positive fit the two big ones on the nose are just flat fitted, the same as the wing pylons. While I think I got them pretty straight, tabs would have made this a lot easier.

Overall it came out pretty nice and looks just like it does in the anime. I got permission to do this build as one of my entries in a Sci-fi Group Build over on Britmodeller so if you are interested in reading through that you can see all the fun. The kit took me just over 2 weeks and that is pretty good for my usual speed.

• Link to Britmodeller Forum

Thanks to Hobbico and IPMS/USA for the review kit.