Tokyo resident and Twitter user Tokyoboy0701 gave his dad a Master Grade 3.0 RX-78-2 Gundam model kit. This past June, he tweeted out a photo of the said packaged and unfinished model, writing, “I’m giving this for Father’s Day.” Months later, dad is done.
The dad, who’s in his early 50s, sent his son photos of the finished kit, and goodness, it’s great. No wonder this tweet has gone viral in Japan, racking up over thirty thousand likes.
“At the time I gave it to him, he didn’t even have diagonal pliers [for cutting the plastic], so what in the world is this degree of perfection…,” Tokyoboy0701 tweeted out, including the photos his dad sent.
“I went all out,” dad wrote his son in a DM, adding that, honestly, it was quite easy. Ha! This looks to be anything but easy.
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Tokyoboy0701 was obviously surprised as these secret Gundam-model-making skills seemed to come out of nowhere. Well, almost.
“He talked about how he had often made them [Gundam models] in grade school, but at home, I never saw any, not even once,” he added on Twitter, “and I thought that he probably hadn’t made any since then.”
For this kit, his dad had apparently watched YouTube videos for tips and tricks.
The resulting model is truly impressive. But it’s not just the glowing eyes, though. They are very cool, but the fact that dad did an animesque paint job with battle damage. Anime-style paint jobs have become popular in the last few years, with Kotaku reporting on them as early as 2014. The paint job here has hints of that but with gritty realism. I think Dad did a fantastic job.
And no matter what he says, this was not easy! Especially if the last time you were really into building Gundam models was forty years ago.
For more on Gundam models (aka “Gunpla”), check out Bandai’s official site.
Tweet and images used with permission.