30MS SIS-J00 Merunja
I'm back with yet another 30 Minutes Sisters build! This time, it's Merunja, fighting Ilshana for title of most chuuni 30MS design. Merunja is the newest 30MS design, and seemingly the most complete out of the box. Unlike a lot of the 30MS line, which are designed with the aim of compatibility and combination with 30MF and 30MM parts (see the other recent 30MS kit, Marical), Merunja lacks pretty much all standard 3mm hardpoints, and a lot of the suggested customisation seems to be from completely exchanging her body parts.
Merunja is almost completely a by-the-book build. I've given everything a thorough panel lining, using my grey liner more like a wash over the fabric parts to heavily accent the wrinkly textures (especially on her sleeves and bloomers). For her extensive skin segments, I applied my Tamiya Weather Master H set to establish plenty of blush and skin pigment variation, giving her skin a much warmer and more realistic look. Other than that, she's almost entirely out-of-box. There's some really clever techniques in her build, especially with her two-toned hair, which involes threading her twintails together to achieve a properly layered look.
Despite being very limited in terms of customisation options, Merunja has plenty of in-box optional parts. Her floppy, almost straightjacket-like sleeves can be removed to insert her hand options (the standard open hand and open and closed fist set found in most 30MS kits). Because the sleeve-extension parts use a 3mm peg, there's a new wrist joint part (although for some reason there are only four included, so you need to swap the non-open fist hand options between the two useable wrist parts).
The major acessory is her large pink chainsaw. You can remove the handles to slide them into her open-fist hand options, and it can be held at a variety of angles. There's a set of special elastic sticker decals depicting paint splatters which, with some encouragement, mould closely to the underlying complex detail (such as on the chainsaw's chain).
There's also a small plush bear. This is a reliatively simple side build but it has impressive colour separation for a build that, in older kits, would probably require painting. There's even a degree of poseability in the bear's arms and legs, and it can be gently nestled in Merunja's arms without falling out. Unfortunately it cannot stand independently. According to the manual, Merunja often talks to it, but it never replies.
The kit includes a special hairpiece that lets you swap out and remove Merunja's hood. There's also special ankle pieces you can swap in to remove her legwarmers and expose her striped thigh-highs. This reveals that her footwear is simply a set of slippers, that can also be removed to show a new "sock-covered foot" mould with a greater level of detail.
Merunja comes with a set of adhesive eyepatches. The eyepatches can be applied over the tampo-printed face options, giving them the realisitic impression that they're sitting loosely over her eye. Swapping her face parts with the face options lacking the eyepatch allows for some cute storytelling.
Despite the clear trend away from customisation and upgradability with a lot of the recent 30MS releases, the build itself was super enjoyable and makes use of a lot of really well thought out building techniques to preserve colour separation. I'm also a big fan of a lot of the recent 30MS moulds, which have promoted a greater focus on accurately rendering textures. I'm really looking forward to what Bandai is planning for the series in the future! Next up, I'm going to try and tackle some kits that have been in my backlog for a really long time.
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