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EDIT: The colours here are wrong. Red, golden yellow, red and white stripes are all completely wrong. Save yourself the heartache. See evidence and pix on page 2. Haven't been able to get back to models for months as I've been caught up in life issues. Today the wife encouraged me to get back at it and to not worry about finishing something else first. So, I decided to do something "simple" and not get hung up on details. I picked this kit up in Ottawa back in April/May because of the orange Japanese plane. Apparently this orange is way too red. A quick Google research while at a gaming shop in Ottawa back then suggested it should be more golden than red. I chose Game Air 76.007. Is it right? I dunno. I like it. https://acrylicosvallejo.com/en/product/hobby/game-air-en/gold-yellow-72707/ So I opened the kit today and was pleasantly surprised to learn there were two planes inside. The decals are simple so I may just paint the markings instead. I have some round vinyls that are the same diameter as the hinomaru. Only 8 steps but this is AZModel... so lots of fettling and no guides or pins anywhere. And lots of sprue connections that leave ugly blobs to clean off. Here I realized I was supposed to make the control stick myself. Time for sprue. Here I've got the seat and stick glued and I'm using my big flat sanding pad to prep the fuselage halves to fit together better.You can see the exhausts are just closed blobs. Yuck! Out of the box build? Maybe not entirely. Starter holes... Wing is all one piece. I filed the centre part a lot to improve the fit with the fuselage halves. Fuzzy but you can see the exhausts drilled out on each half. I used three bits... .4, .6, .7 Glued cockpit stuff in, and ready to airbrush for first time in months Here you can see the air intake on the top half. It comprises front and rear cowl pieces glued to the bump in the middle. Messy job for me. I tried sanding to fit the cowling pieces better against the fuselage but they were not cooperative and I somehow got worse gaps- probably because of the shape of the cowls and thickness of plastic. In the lower half you can see the cockpit with IP as well. I did an oil wash with white. I read some stuff saying aotake was not common and blue grey was a decent bet. Here, I've glued the fuselage halves. A bit messy. I was using slower tamiya extra thin. On the top, that's paint not a big crack. You can see the drilled exhausts and the side air intakes. Intakes will need some putty work. The wings are dry fitted. They took a lot of work to settle down and get the gap and step minimized. Same experience as my hurricane but I minimized damage this time 😛 You can see the horiz stabilizers will be butt joints. Whee, IP done in dark grey with white oil wash. You can see rear cowl on right has a big gap. How did that happen? Really not sure. I think the shape and thickness of the cowl was off and my sanding and filing didn't help. Sprue time for that. Dry fitted wings still.... Cute little fella. Tomorrow maybe I'll work on all the seams and putty. 😛 . There are bad gaps on the bottom where the wings meet the fuselage. This is AZModel, not me! Similar to my hurricane experience but I avoided making things worse this time. Sprue should fix it. Some kind of intake on port wing edge Here you can see how tiny the plane is in comparison to paint intended for it.

AZmodel has re-released (link) in September 2022 its 1/72nd Kawasaki Ki-78 Kensan kit - ref. AZ7831 Sources: https://www.azmodel.cz/produkt/kawasaki-ki-78-kensan/ https://www.aviationmegastore.com/en/modelling/kawasaki-ki78-kenzan-hen-japanese-fighter-az-models-az7831-190974.html V.P.