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Bandai Namco branched out with its 30 Minute Sisters, aka 30MS, and 30MS Preference model kits, so now original characters and ones from series like The Idolmaster, Fate/Grand Order, and Bocchi the Rock. The one of Kogane Tsukioka from The Idolmaster: Shiny Colors is among them. While it is a fairly easy and affordable (~$40) build with tons of personality that doesn’t require things like glue or paint, there are some very delicate parts on the torso and skirt that might flummox beginner builders.
Editor’s Note: If you get the 30MS The Idolmaster: Shiny Colors Kogane Tsukioka model kit, make sure you own a pair of sprue cutters and tweezers to get pieces off the runners and the handful of small stickers applied.
One of the first and best things I noticed when I started building this hit is how fantastic the head in the Kogane Tsukioka The Idolmaster: Shiny Colors 30MS model kit is. There’s a high degree of detail to the hair, which almost seemed to rival some of the styles in the more expensive Kotobukiya Megami Device and Sousai Shojo Teien. Yes, her hair is “just” long, but there are a lot of layers to give it volume and the appearance of natural waves, as well as an incredibly teeny hairclip that matches her idol outfit. Even better are her face plates. While there are two “standard” ones you’d expect from this kind of character that show her smiling and singing or powerfully belting out a song, there’s also one where she’s completely in shock and surprised. It’s so unexpected and hilarious, and I absolutely love it. It makes me glad these 30MS face plates are universal, so I could use them with other builds.
While her hair and face are detailed, those are about as easy to piece together as her arms and legs. It’s the torso and skirt that’s challenging due to how elaborate her outfit is. First, the upper part of the torso is challenging due to the gold accents and the translucent, black glitter plastic designed to act as frills along the left shoulder. It isn’t too difficult to arrange the initial parts. However, the gold chain attaches to a broach with a heart in the center, and you need to arrange stickers onto that. My recommendation is to keep the gold, back part of the ribbon and white upper part attached to the runners, placing the stickers on them with teasers first, before popping them out to assemble them and stick them onto her chest. The good news is, once you do have the ribbon assembled, it is pretty easy to get it attached to the chain and pressed into place.
The skirt and lower half of the torso are the next extremely detailed part of the Kogane Tsukioka The Idolmaster: Shiny Colors 30MS model kit. There are gold accents that need to be pressed into the lower part of the torso above the skirt of her dress, and there’s another extended black, translucent, glitter train that gets attached to the back. While that piece does feel a little more brittle than the other plastic parts, it’s still sturdier than I expected! But the real challenge and issue here comes with a bit of plain “fabric” that is supposed to go between two parts of the skirt to enhance the layered effect. It needs to be curled in such a way that it hits four pegs on the underside of the one layer, then connect to the part below it. It is so difficult to get this to line up, due to the awkward design and ruffled edges on the bottom-most skirt part. Then, when pressing it together, it’s a little fiddly! There are so many thin, delicate parts that I was worried something might snap here.
Once you do get those parts managed, the rest comes together fairly easily. Both the arms and legs have a lot of extra parts to ensure there’s a layered effect on the gloves and boots. The texture is pretty great on them, so it really feels and looks like fur when you look at it from a distance. She also bends pretty easily and, unlike some other model kits of characters like this, the appendages fit in securely enough that I didn’t feel worried when repositioning them or swapping out hand parts.
If you can overcome the challenges that stem from getting the outfit together in the Kogane Tsukioka The Idolmaster: Shiny Colors 30MS model kit, it ends up being an absolutely gorgeous figure. The level of detail here is amazing. Especially when you consider the one I built and showed in these pictures featured no paint or additional decorations beyond the included stickers on the broach. I’d say the final build even looks better than some of my Kotobukiya kits that cost me about $20-30 more. It’s just lovely.
The 30 Minute Sisters The Idolmaster: Shiny Colors Kogane Tsukioka model kit from Bandai Namco is available worldwide.
