What do you recommend?
As in every other facet of plastic modeling, it’s tough to make simple generalities. Generally speaking, all the manufacturers have gotten better during the thirty years or so that they’ve been making warship kits.
There are two brands with which it’s hard to go wrong: Tamiya and Skywave. The best of their kits are about the best that exist. Recently Tamiya has been retooling some of its older warship kits. The new 1/700 Yamato is pretty spectacular.
The recent Takao-class heavy cruisers from Skywave are also excellent, as are any of that company’s Japanese destroyers. If you’re interested in an aircraft carrier, possibly the best ones on the market are the Tamiya Shokaku and Zuikaku. The Hasegawa Akagi and Kaga are older kits, but basically sound - and capable of being turned into real masterpieces with the help of aftermarket photo-etched parts (e.g., those from Gold Medal Models).
If you’re interested in an earlier period, a small firm called Sealsmodel makes an exquisite model of the Mikasa, Togo’s flagship in the Russo-Japanese War. I’m working on it at the moment. It’s one of the best 1/700 kits I’ve ever seen.
This is by no means a complete list of good Japanese warship kits, but it’s a start. Maybe some other forum members will want to add to it.
Good luck. It’s a great hobby.
I’ve recently got myself a Tamiya 1:350 Yamato. I agree with jtilley that Tamiya is one of those brands a beginner can try starting out with. Even the pros use Tamiya… (can’t compare the price though).
However, I’ll be waiting for the right day before I start work on that Yamato. It’s just too precious. [:P]
I’ll pretty much echo what jtilley said. I recently build the Tamiya Musashi (with the PitRoad conversion set) and it was a great model (see picture below).
The older Hasegawa kits are a little rough, but with some Skywave update parts, can be made into nice models. The retooled Aoshima kits (Nagato/Mutsu/Takao class) are good, but I’d stay away from the older Fujimi releases. The quality of those kits is downright poor. Even their new stuff isn’t that great - IMO. I saw Fujimi’s new release of the Musashi and Yamato at a hobby show a few weeks ago, and it doesn’t come close to the level of quality of Tamiya’s releases.
To recap: Tamiya/Skywave very good. Hasegawa/new Aoshima good. Fujimi - RUN!
HTH
I have only built a few ship kits… But have stuck with ARII kits… I get them here in Japan on the cheap. I am currently half way through the 1/600 Yamato kit… As kits go, it seem’s to be well detailed, a little fiddly, but a nice kit!..
Chris in Japan
Nichimo makes pretty good kits…i have the Zuikaku kit in 1/350…the plastic is a bit darker and has alot of detail…i havent built it yet, only opened the box and drooled…you can always find 1/700 scale ships, but its alot harder to find a good 1/400 or 1/450 or 1/350 scale ship with alot of detail.
Ship kits are definately you get what you pay for. I love Tamiya ships. Skywave, and even some of the older Hasagawa stuff is nice. Matchbox on the other hand falls into the you get what you pay for catagory. Im converting 1/700 DoY into KGV. In the amount of time Ive spent trying to get parts to fit right and just normal assembly headaches from a lesser quality kit…I should have spent the extra $10 for the Tamyia KGV/PoW. As for scale, I like to build the same scale just so I get an idea of what these ships looked like compared to eachother. 1/350 is AWESOME! but I don’t make a whole lot to afford a lot of 1/350. I was able to talk the “ONE WHO MUST BE OBEYED” and she let me get a 1/350 Mighty Mo and Musashi…ok done rambleing[^]
i usually just buy some models and stick them with my stack to build.when my fiance asks where they all came from, i just say they were always there.you can always sneak 3 or 4 ships in before she gets suspicious[;)]