Blue Obsession
I’ve always loved the mechanical designs of Leiji Matsumoto. The ships he came up with were just fantastic, futuristic but still holding onto design elements of a bygone era.
My Favorite ship he designed was the Arcadia, specifically the Blue Arcadia seen in the Harlock TV series and Manga. Now you need to think back to a time before Aoshima and Taito were on the scene releasing high quality fantastic representations of this great ship.
I spent months going through different contacts trying to track down one of the pla models that were made back in the 70’s by Takara and/or Bandai. One day after I’d all but given up I got an e-mail from a well known vintage model kit dealer located in NJ saying that he’d just acquired a “rare” Takara kit of the Arcadia for the “low low” price of $120…. Like I said it was an obsession… I sent the money order out and waited a week.
What Came was a tiny, poorly made model, devoid of any realistic details or proportions in a box with kick ass graphics and an original price tag that listed the original selling price at a WHOPPING 78 yen.
I never assembled the kit cause I considered it more of a collectible than something to mess with, though I did take resin casts and built up a couple ones for my own amusement and sold some crude repros to some buddies of mine. And of course right after this whole ordeal I managed to find one of the Blue Arcadias that Jesnet made which was bigger better detailed and pre-painted for about $60…..*sigh* the lengths we go through for our obsessions. To this day I still hunt down new and interesting representations of the arcadia, the latest being this gem of a sofubi made by Takatoku.
And the journey continues.
