The question about Kaworu's Test Suit is would he get the modesty patch? Males generally have been
Free! to flaunt their nipples...
I should probably finish the figure I've been working on modifying for 2.5 years now....So I've received my Kotobukiya Eva-01 TV Ver. kit. Overall I'm quite pleased with it. For those that haven't seen the official product photos can be found here:
http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10411187/10/0First thing of interest: the molds for the kit have clearly been laid out with other Evas in mind. They incorporate "switches" to redirect the plastic that you can set to whatever is needed. Or just snap off what is not.
The kit is quite a bit more solid than the New Movie Eva-01, they seem to have learned a bit from that one. One of the biggest issues I had with the NME Koto kits was the shoulder. The polycap in the upper arm has its "wings" along the split line of the parts. While it sits nicely into one of them, the other part does not have enough support and thus the polycap ends up a bit wobbly.
On the TV Eva kit they have thankfully fixed the issue. The polycap is turned 90° and each "wing" now has complete, rock solid support.
Engineering-wise, really great kit. My one complaint about the build of it is that they took away that giant, glorious tree of polystyrene hands and replaced them with PVC castings instead. I really prefer polystyrene.
Look-wise though, I don't think they've quite nailed it. I still like the old 90s Bandai TV Eva kit more as far as proportions go. I think my main issue is that I see this as Kotobukiya making the same mistake as Bandai did.
When Bandai made the New Movie Eva kits they didn't really follow the design to put it lightly. They took the new design elements and then tried to fit them into the same proportions as the old kit. Really wide shoulder, really narrow waist. This was not a good result. After all that effort that khara took in redrawing everything consistently for the new design and proportions Bandai just fudged it.
Because of the above Bandai mistake the Kotobukiya New Movie Eva kits were a god send. They pretty much perfectly captured Takeshi Honda's new design in both detail and especially proportions.
But now when Kotobukiya made the old TV Eva they seemed to do the same thing as Bandai did, try to fit the detail of the old on the proportions for the new. It's not as egregious as what Bandai did, and it has an overall more consistent look but it's still not my cup of tea.
For comparison here is all four Evas old and new. From left to right:
Bandai NME Eva-01 (absolute poop)
Kotobukiya NME Eva-01 (best available representation of the NME design as far as I'm concerned)
Kotobukiya TV Eva-01 (valiant attempt but doesn't work for me)
Bandai 90s TV Eva-01 (continues to be the best available representation of ye olde TV Eva as far as I'm concerned)
All unpainted because I'm a lazy fuck.
Now the silver lining out of this for me would be if they make the 02 kit. Given the much smaller difference between the width of the waist and shoulders, a Kotobukya TV Eva-02 would end up being really, really close to the proportions of the legendary EoE Eva-02
It seems that I will continue recommending Kotobukiya for those that want a NME Eva kit and 90s Bandai for those that want TV Evas.
I look forward to what Kotobukiya does next when they stop being lazy. So far they've only released:
NME Eva-01 + recolors
NME Eva-02
NME Eva-13 + recolor
TV Eva-01
But they've already done 95% of the work to be able to release:
NME Eva-08a
NME Eva-00
NME Eva-03
NME Eva-04 because pachinko
TV Eva-02
TV Eva-00 Yellow
TV Eva-00 Blue
TV Eva-03
TV Eva-04 shiny and chrome
That's a minimum of nine kits they could release immediately with minimal effort and yet have not
PS: While Bandai Evas are officially non-scale, if 80m height is assumed they are approximately 1/350, which is what Max Factory's Jaegers are:
http://i.imgur.com/sAHWz8b.jpg