To follow up the Tojo pictures, here are some of the Otaki Tony. I think I may have erred on the the color scheme this time. I used Tamiya JA Gray as the basecoat, but I think with those markings, it was supposed to be bare metal. With the references I had and the original decals (which were barely salvagable), I felt the need to improvise a bit. Oh, well . . .
The landing gear were pretty basic, so I opted to build this with the gear up. The airframe looks better in flight anyway, I think. I especially like the way it looks with the wing-mounted drop-tanks. A very graceful aircraft.
Sorry again for the image quality. I need to stop spending money on modeling and buy a new digital camera!
I see you like Japanese A/C also. [tup] I think your right, most were in BM or with the green mottel. Nothing wrong with a little artistic license though. I got to check out these Otaki kits. Do they have English on their instructions?
To be honest, I think Otaki is out of business, though you might be able to find them on E-bay. The kits I have were old 1/48 scale that my dad gave me (he never built them because he was a fan of large scale Revell and Monogram models, usually 1/32). I think he bought them in the 70’s, hence the old decals. There were also several Fujimi kits in the bunch, and those are very nice as well (I built their Bf110, which was a very good kit). I still have unbuilt Oscar, Zero, Frank, Ki-100 Goshiki, and even a Bf109 and FW190 from Otaki, and they have so far been very consistent in their tooling, especially for the time. As someone mentioned, the clear parts are thick, and the interior detail is sometimes lacking. But I just bought a Minicraft 1/72 B-24D that was thiry bucks and not nearly as complete or well-molded as the Otakis. (A bad kit, btw–I wouldn’t recommend it as a box-stock project). I’m fairly new to the JA aircraft, but I really like some of the fighters that have been obscured by the fame of the zero, and such kits in 1/48 are sort of hard to find. If you know of any, I’d love to hear about them.
I find Japanese A/C aesthetically pleasing. I concur about Otaki being out of business.
Well, I have 5 japanese planes in the stash, currently toying around with the Hasegawa Zero. I have the Hasegawa Ki-84 Frank (my personal favorite Japanese fighter), Hasegawa’s Ki-100 Otsu (nice and only about 57 parts), a Nichimo Ki-45 Nick twin-engined fighter-bomber(very nice and HTF, but with raised panels [yuck], old, much like the Otaki’s) Ignore my comment, I’m an A/C newbie by nature. LOL
Hasegawa is usually noted as the best in detail, with Tamiya getting a lot of thumbs up as well. It’s always advisable to check reviews and ask the forum for guidance if there is something you have your eye on.
I want a Tony to add to my fighters too. Ironically, the cockpit’s detail isn’t that important to me, I’m more interested in exterior detail and simplicity of build.
I love the Hasagawa and Tamiya kits, especially the newer ones. There’s really nothing that compares on the market, in my opinion. However, Hasagawa seems to favor 1/72, and the subjects for Tamiya (oddly) don’t seem to include JA aircraft (I may be wrong about this, but I haven’t seen many Tamiya offerings beyond the Frank and Oscar for Army aircraft). Like you, I see a certain aesthetic cleanliness to the Japanese fighters and would like to get more experience building them. I’m not into 1/72 single-engine fighters–they’re just too small. I tend to use that scale for multi-engine airplanes, mostly in the interest of space (the aforementioned B-24 is still a large kit in 1/72; I can’t imagine trying to find space for anything larger, and the cost of such kits is usually prohibitive). I do, however, have an unbuilt Revell-Monogram B-17 in 1/48 that is enormous. When I build it, I may have to buy a new house :).
