#ginkei

I decided to hop on the Ikaruga bandwagon after that one build someone posted to r/Gunpla about a month ago; figured I'd go for the other Ikaruga model so I wouldn't be blatantly copying that fellow.

Some warnings:

First, as per usual with Kotobukiya kits, the pictures you see of this kit online are all professionally painted kits. If you were to just snap this guy together out of the box, it would look like crap. Horribly oily paint, poor quality, nowhere near the right colors, etc. 

Second, you CAN'T just snap this guy together. Maybe 80% of the kit is designed to snap together, but the other 20% is all the important stuff that keeps the kit together. So you're not really going to understand what the finished product looks like until it's finished. 

Finally, a lot of the pieces fit together very poorly, even if they're supposed to snap together. Some pieces are so rigid that you can crack them just by cutting them out of the sprue, and others are so weak that they might as well be rubber. It's a bit frustrating.

You have the option to build these “feathers” extended or retracted, but you only get enough decals for one set.

Everything in this kit bends at weird angles, and I have no idea how much of it is an intentional pose.