The Black Tortoise is one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations. It is sometimes called the Black Warrior of the North (北方玄武, Běi Fāng Xuán Wǔ), and is known as Xuanwu in Chinese, Genbu in Japanese, Hyeonmu in Korean and Huyền Vũ in Vietnamese.
More info after this link.
Tonkawa’s next collaboration with (No Suggestions) after White Tiger, Black Tortoise is a large and heavily armored mech.
Black Tortoise’s distinctive form was sculpted by Katsuhiko Hori, who has a long history of bringing Tonkawa’s designs to life.
This multi‐colored kit is easy to assemble with no painting necessary.
- 7.08 inches (18cm)
- Made of styrene plastic
- Specially designed joints
- Compatible with parts from existing Frame Arms models
- Blade of the sword is made of smoke clear plastic
- The rocket launcher can be configured to be equipped on right or left side
- MSRP: $89.99 USD
- Street Price: $79.99 USD
Finally, I had the chance to build one of the model kits from the well known Kotobukiya brand. This came as a commission build request from our local hobby shop
Hub Hobby in Richfield, MN. Since I never had built a Kotobukiya model kit before, I was more than happy to oblige.
This is the 1/100 FRAME ARMS Full Action Black Tortoise XUANWU kit #040. The box is quite big because there are big sprues holding large parts. The art on the box is beautiful to the point that if it was my own, I would cut the cover and had it framed. The kit is molded in two different shades of green and a small sprue with a clear dark smoke ”dagger” edge and a few sprues molded in dark grey. The molding is exquisite as I would expect from Kotobukiya. The instructions are in the form of a booklet with 50 well-illustrated steps. Everything is in Japanese but the model can be built with no problems whatsoever.
Most of this model kit was built from small to medium and large sub-assemblies. This made easy the painting process.
The parts do fit very good but I have a bit of a pet peeve with the articulated joints. There is very little tolerance between them. This makes the articulation very stiff for the figure and extra care should be exercised while posing your finished model. What I did to remedy this in further joints was to scrape off some plastic to have these joints loosened up a little bit. Not this is a completely bad thing, but I can stretch enough to be careful when posing the figure. In my personal opinion and observation, while similar products from Bandai suffer from weak joints and articulation, seems to be aggressively addressed in Kotobukiya models.
One of the ball joints snapped on the left shoulder trying to attach it to the receiving point. That’s because although the joint is very strong, the axle-to-ball area is rather thin. I did hit the same issue with the ”biceps” and had to fix it. While the shoulder kept mobility after the reinforced fix (see pictures after this paragraph), I lost articulation on the biceps. No big deal in all honesty, but worth mentioning if you’re planning to get the XUANWU model kit.
The finished model of the Kotobukiya XUANWU is around 7” inches (17.78 cm) tall and around 8.5” inches (21.60 cm) with the large gun in a storage position. There are 3 different weapons provided with extra parts for display on the suit. There are plenty of hands provided should you wish to display the model with any of the weapons at hand.
BANDAI vs KOTOBUKIYA
The comparison comes almost organically. I will give great kudos to Kotobukiya for the quality of the styrene used for this kit. I was finally able to use an enamel wash on one build of these subjects. As we all know, Bandai’s plastic is not compatible with enamel products especially washes and other weathering products. The final figure is *very* solid and it can hold most poses without a stand. Yo would still need a stand obviously for more dynamic poses. There’s no flimsy feel to it when held in your hands. The modeler for sure will feel the quality of his/her build. I’m not trashing Bandai for the record, just stating the obvious and palpable once you finish the model. Sure, there are a few weak points. But those can be addressed by the shaving off some plastic. Should we need to do it? I don’t think the customer should do it as the manufacturer should have had a little more tolerance in those areas. But for me, better safe than sorry when it comes to the model as a whole.
I used an assortment of paints from Mission Models. But the 3 main base colors used for this build were:
–MMP-110 Grey Japanese Zero (Amber)
–MMP-022 US Army Olive Drab (Faded 3)
–MMP-050 Grauviolet Ral 75
Weathering with the great wash and filters system from Ammo by Mig.
I would absolutely recommend the Kotobukiya FRAME ARMS #040 XUANWU model kit to my best friend.
