Nakajima: Mr. Kamikaze reanimation
Today my little Mr. Kamikaze story.
Not really an exciting story, but a good example how to turn crap into gold.
As usual, the story starts with a Yahoo Japan auction.
Object of desire was a Nakajima sandard size Mr. Kamikaze sofubi from
the Tiger Mask series. The figure looked bad on the auction fotos.
Dirty, lots of paint rubs and the color of his head and body also looked suspicious.
Here are the original auction fotos.
But even Mr. Kamikaze was looking pretty fucked-up, I thought he has
some “potential”. His face, specially his nose looked pretty good on
the fotos. Often the noses of these sofubis are in bad condition.
Perfect for a restoration project!
Didn’t have a “bid battle” on this guy and won him for a good price.
One week ago he arrived with lots of other stuff rom Japan and I was
a bit shocked when I hold him in my hands for the first time.
I only have this foto of my “first contact” with Mr. Kamikaze.
Something was wrong with him…his entire upper part of the body and both arms
had been repainted with a “flesh-colored” paint. Also his mask been repainted
with white color. Holy crap, this is not the original paint!
At first sight it looked impossible to restore him. Thats the reason why I didn’t took
some detail “before fotos”.
Let’s get rid of the shitty paint, no matter what happens! No risk, no fun.
This was my job for the next few days.
With tons of Q-Tips soaked with brush cleaner, sandpaper, car paint polish/cleaner,
a super sharp scalpel and lots of patience I really got rid of the paint, without destroying
the figure.
Under the lacquer layer the figure was in perfect condition. It seems that the repaint
protected this figure the last few decades.
Tricky was cleaning the head from the white paint (see fotos). I needed a few hours to do that.
Almost like a surgeon I had to rub down the paint without ruining the orginal paintwork.
Disassemble and reassemble the head, body and arms I did with the “hot water method”.
I think this is the best way to get the vinyl flexible. Using a hair dryer is too dangerous.
“Operation” Mr. Kamikaze was a full success. At the end he really looks great.
Now Mr. Kamikaze is ready to rumble again!
Is Mr. Kamikaze ready to kick some asses?
