Kawasaki Ninja H2R. Funny, when I started working on this site, I figured the second showcased kit will be Barbatos. Turns out, I’ve seriously underestimated the amount of mods I’d like to attempt. Also, the amount of time they’d take. Eventually I started feeling burnt out and decided I needed a change of pace. I had my eye on this baby for a while, figured I’d give it a shot.

I gotta admit, I last time I built a non-gunpla model kit was some 15 years ago. Didn’t even paint them back then.

Kit Talk

This is definitely a really good kit and I had a blast working on it. Seems Tamiya’s rep is well deserved. It comes with a nice sheet of waterslides (something Bandai could learn from) and gorgeous chrome dry transfers. I have to say, switching from snap-fit assembly of Bandai kits was interesting. Thankfully, engineering is very good (although not on par with Bandai’s MG kits) and everything fits together nicely.

That said, I do have some minor complains about it. Kit uses a ton of screws and quite often they just sit in the open, with no attempt to conceal them. In some cases carrier film around waterslides needs trimming, as it can go over the edge of the part. Thankfully it’s rather thin and nigh invisible once decals are applied, so they look great. I only found one major seam line – front fender comes in two halves. It’s an easy fix, though they could’ve probably molded it as a single piece. I also don’t like the exhaust assembly. It’s a bit of a pain to put together, they could have designed it way better.

Still, Kawasaki Ninja H2R is one sexy bike and this kit definitely does it justice.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the result. I also feel like I’ve learned quite a lot from this side project. Still, it’s far from perfect and I did screw up on few occasions. Obviously the overdone heat staining is the most noticeable mistake. I had so much fun laying down the gradients that I lost the sense of scale. Still, I feel using clear paints offers much better end result than pigments Tamiya suggests on their website. My attempts at applying burnt blue pigment on smooth chrome parts have failed miserably. I also did some masking errors and, on some occasions, further fucked up things I tried to fix. Live and learn.

Paintjob

For my first fully painted kit, I decided to avoid doing anything crazy and mostly followed the painting guide. That said, I’ll probably avoid using Tamiya metallic paints in the future projects. I feel like Alclad II Black Chrome would have given me much better finish than decanted Tamiya TS-40.

Paints used:

Kawasaki Ninja H2R – Gallery