Metroid Dimension Diver Samus Aran Knock-off

For those of you not familiar with it, Dimension Diver is a company that sells Revoltech- styled action figures at Wonderfest in japan. Wonderfest is a twice-yearly convention where many people get special one-day licenses to sell garage kits ( such as the samus i am referring to.) She was about 90$ at wonderfest, and now goes for close to 300-400$ usd on the secondary market, IF you can find it.

Recently I came across a website selling a recasted version of the kit for a much more reasonable price ( 61$ after shipping) so i snagged one. it arrived yesterday, and I have begun the ardous process of cleaning, sanding, filing, drilling the kit in preparation for painting it. Overall, this is eaisly the BEST garage kit ive ever had the pleasure of putting together. Once finished, ill post pictures of the completed kit. for now, here are some publicity pictures from DD so you get an idea what it looks like.

But as awesome as that looks, like i said, it's a Model kit, so here's some pictures of how the kit looks when it arrives at your house.





more pictures forthcoming as i get it completed.

It looks pretty cool. Does everything just snap in like a Gundam kit since it looks like it's fully articulated?

i want this so bad

Kinda? a LITTLE gluing is required, but not much. the neck socket needs to be glued into the red upper torso, and the red upper torso needs to be glued to the yellow part of the upper torso. That's all i've found so far anyways. I've mostly been cleaning, drilling, and other prep-work. I'll list EVERYTHING i had to do when i'm done. Even then, it's REALLY easy to assemble. all parts that need gluing are simpply gluing two flat parts together.

Hey Pitu, https://tatsuhobby.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_42&products_id=314

I may have to pick up one of these as well. Are you going to add a little paint to it to give it some pop or do you think it will be fine as is once it's built?

I must confess I've never played a Metroid game but that is a real sweet lookin' model.

This is the same kit from the Kotobukiya Rockman thread? Glad somebody here was able to snag one! I may have to order a Samus and that sweet Eva kit too.

Boba Ben said:

I may have to pick up one of these as well. Are you going to add a little paint to it to give it some pop or do you think it will be fine as is once it's built?

Click to expand...

it's resin, not plastic, so it needs a coat of primer to get it to hold paint.
as such, I'm going to paint the whole thing. I plan to use tamiya Spray gloss paints to keep the paint nice an even. You COULD just leave it alone and not paint it if you wanted, but then it likely wouldn't look as good.

I'm also considering getting some Taimya Cyan/green iridescent metalized paint for the visor.

Kabukiman said:

This is the same kit from the Kotobukiya Rockman thread? Glad somebody here was able to snag one! I may have to order a Samus and that sweet Eva kit too.

Click to expand...

yep, sure is.

So, unpainted it still has game accurate colours, right? any pics of an unpainted, assembled recast one? how is the quality of the recast? i'm considering getting one of these and leaving it either unpainted, or trying one of the other suits (gravity perhaps).

Looking at the pics of the original and the recast, looks like the only thing the recast needs is a color wash over the armor peices.

90% of the colors are good, the only problem there is the red parts. The red parts are kinda pinkish.

lerath666 said:

Recently I came across a website selling a recasted version of the kit for a much more reasonable price ( 61$ after shipping) so i snagged one.

Click to expand...

Wow, do members on this forum treat recasted collectibles differently than the members on statueforum?

Either I'm not understanding what you bought or you just openly admitted to supporting recasters.

speedy485 said:

Wow, do members on this forum treat recasted collectibles differently than the members on statueforum?

Either I'm not understanding what you bought or you just openly admitted to supporting recasters.

Click to expand...

I am reading it the same way...

Yes and no. It's a garage kit. Which in and of itself is a borderline knockoff. To be honest, I don't know who is supplying Tatsu hobby, Could be the original sculptor. Could be someone who bought it at wonderfest and is recasting. Could be someone who paid through the nose and picked one up at secondary market prices. I've got no idea.

In a nut shell, Yes, it's a knock-off, and the title states that.

Feel free to think whatever you like about the morals of it, I made my choice, as the original is no longer available anywhere, except occasionally at Yahoo JP auctions. And even those are suspect of being recasts sold at the price of an original.

How did you get on with model in the end?...I've just got one. And I'm scratching my head at putting it together as i've never done any of this type of model before. I have the joint pack also. The "Instructions" provided are less than useless, so any help you can provide would be very useful! I've signed up here just to speak to you, so i hope you can help.
Did you decide to paint it in the end? I assume it just needs a layer of paint and then an ink wash? Post-sanding etc of course.

Cheers,
TRC

Hey, any pics if your finished samus? I just got the recast myself and have started trimming the pieces. I've never tried a resin model before, and am I not a big modeler to begin with... It's fun though. I'd like to see how yours turned out. Cheers.