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Well, guess it's about high time I actually write something here! 't's only been- [checks notes] 9 months since I made my account, don't worry about it.
Click here if you want to skip right to the review.
So one of my countless on-and-off hobbies is building plastic model kits, and that is almost entirely focused on Bandai's Gundam/Gunpla kits. There's something about the ease with which you can build them, yet still feel the same accomplishment as with a traditional model kit, without any of the frustration, that makes it just such an enjoyable (and shockingly cheap!) hobby, that on all levels will give you back exactly what you put in. You can snap pieces out of the runners with your hands and slap 'em together, and still come out the other end with a super cool robot action figure, more intricate that you'll find pre-constructed in the toy isle at twice the price, or you can get great tools, and meticulously choose where to cut pieces off your runner, how to clean up the gates and sand off nubmarks, panel line the pieces as you put them together, add decals with precision and care, and the result will be that same model, shining in a stunning show of plastic craftsmanship and engineering.
Anyhow, that's enough rambling about the hobby as a whole. Like I said, I recently got into it again, and I started with building two kits I still had in my backlog from years ago during my last kick. The first was the 1/100 Full Mechanics 02 Gundam Barbatos Lupus Rex. A super fun build overall, and the first time I actually tried panel lining! I could probably write a full review on it, but neither did I record my building process, nor do I have too much to say about it. A very fun build, and my first at 1/100 scale, that I will gladly recommend, especially given the price, and the Barbatos' amazing "main character" design.
The second of those kits was a little different though, Kotobukiya's Megami Device x Alice Gear Aegis A1 Kaede Agatsuma.
Little thing about me: I LOVE mecha musume. Kaede wasn't actually the first Megami Device I built. That honor goes to a different Megami Device subseries, the original Frame Arms Girl Stylet. It's a kit I hold dear to my heart, as the first non-Bandai kit I built, and the first where I've made major mistakes in seperating parts from the runner. Live and Learn!
So, after all these years after getting, and actually starting, Kaede, I also finished her, though this required some additional work sanding off all the skin-tone parts, as under some kind of environmental influence many of them had aggressively yellowed over the years. Nothing a few hours of filing couldn't fix though, and later that evening she was done.
However, after having finished her, The Itch stuck with me.
The only kit in my backlog that I had left was one I had already started and really didn't like. I also wanted to build more mecha musume! Already have a lot of Gundams, I want more variety (and more importantly cute robot girls)!
So I went hunting for more Megami Device kits, only to find that in my years of absence from the hobby, almost no European seller for Kotobukiya was still selling any.
I did however also find that Bandai had started stepping into the mecha musume ring that Megami Device dominates, with the 30 Minutes Sisters series under their 30 Minutes label.
The point of 30 Minutes is to have various series of different styles, currently 30 Minutes Fantasy for Fantasy, 30 Minutes Missions for Sci-Fi/robots, and 30 Minutes Sisters for Mecha Musume, that all use the same connector system and scale across all kits, allowing you to freely mix and match any parts from kits as you like. It's a kitbasher's dream, and something I'll get to in more detail later.
So, wary but intrigued by what Bandai had to offer in this space, I decided to pick one up. While I did actually find one single Megami Device on sale here in Germany, and it was on a steep discount, a 30MS kit was still cheaper, and curiosity may have killed the cat, but never me, so in exchange for the Hi-Res Wing Gundam I didn't want to build, my roommate got me a High Grade Ryuseigo Kit, the HARO BASIC GREEN, and the 30 Minutes Sister this review is about, Tiasha.
I picked her because the design was not only really appealing but also seemed very simple, and a great way to start into the series. It also has an option kit available as an extension that I really wanted to get, but it was sadly out of stock at my store of choice.
So, together with the other kits I mentioned above, as well as a different 30 Minutes Sister and a Weapon Action Base for Witch From Mercury High Grade Gundam kits, both for my roommate, we ordered, and they arrived a short two days later.
Skipping over the Haro and the Ryuseigo that I built first, let's actually get into the review proper.
While I sadly won't have any pictures to show off anything but the finished project, I'll roughly walk you through the process of building, the final result, and some final thoughts.
Opening up the box, you're greeted by the most normal sight you can probably imagine as a plamo builder. A whole stack of more or less colorful, injection molded plastic runners, grouped together in plastic bags, and a manual buried beneath them. In that way this kit is standard fare. You get four main runners, and five small generic runners containing the parts for the model's head base, hair, and three interchangeable face plates. That's where the simple stuff ends though. If you're experienced with Bandai's model kits, things will immediately start looking weird upon closer inspection. The runners are pretty big, they have unusually complex co-shots (when multiple different colors of plastic are injected into the same mold after one another), especially for a kit of such low price, they have these odd notches in the main sprues, multiple differently numbered sections, and their layouts are... weird.
One first look at the manual explains this however, and it's the first strike of absolute genius Bandai put into the engineering of these kits. Instead of giving you all these separately shot runners with small amounts of pieces, each of the four main runners is split up into up to four sections, and you are supposed to separate them yourself. Not only does this cut down considerably on bulk, it actually allows for what ends up being super clever and intuitive part layouts on each runner. These sections are also laid out so that, instead of switching between aaaaall the different runners in your kit, each main step - the body (1), the arms (2), the legs (3), and the armor (4) - requires only the parts from the same numbered section of the runner, spare the body which also includes the unnumbered, generic runners used for the head.
Now I don't want to oversell this. This isn't some wild engineering revolution, but it's an incredible step towards making these kits so much more accessible and intuitive to build. I will still be able to go back to Gunpla kits, which don't do this, without a problem but I will be aching for the sheer ease of organization that this change in runner layout brings to picking out the parts you need.
The second thing I noticed, before even building or separating my runners was: The Texture.
Oh my GOD, Bandai COOKED with the molded texture finish for these kits. It is genuinely some of the best injection molding texture finish work I have ever seen. Remember that kit in my backlog I said I didn't want to continue building? That is a Hi-Res Gundam model. The entire point of Hi-Res kits is that they come with runners with all kinds of different texture finishes, in order to make for a more realistic and accurate final build, that captures all the different material facets that the Gundam possesses in-universe.
This cheap, ¥2,300 kit, the second ever in an unproven original series, BLOWS THE ¥12,000 HI-RES GUNDAM KIT COMPLETELY OUT OF THE WATER. It is RIDICULOUS.
Sure, it doesn't have nearly the same variety of textures, but it does have some and plenty enough, and the quality is absurd. It is the pure, distilled, concentrated essence of Bandai's Engineering Dark Magic.
Actually assembling the model went off without a hitch. I don't have tooooooo much to say on the process itself, actually, though I'm going to chalk this up to this being, as I said, the second ever kit in this series, and as such it is probably a lot more simple than newer ones. Nonetheless, it was super satisfying to put together, and do shockingly many panel lines during the process, as that is something I have a ton of fun with, having only recently discovered the joys of it. Nub mark cleanup was probably the hardest and most annoying part of the whole build, and certainly what I succeeded at the least, but this was mostly a function of me not bothering to put in the effort of properly sanding them down, instead opting for a straight glass file on organic, curved surfaces.
"I am currently taking a 14 cm tall girl's ass to a glass file" sure is one of the sentences of all time that has ever left my mouth.
In the end, the construction is simple but feels very sturdy, and after being built joints articulate super smoothly, while being plenty rigid to hold any pose.
In closing thoughts, I am absolutely thrilled by this kit, and cannot help but look forward to my next 30 Minutes Sisters kit. It will be the same, Sourei, as my roommate got, and I will likely get my hands on it by this time next week.
I do want to take a moment to compare to Megami Device again though, because I do feel there's a fair bit to be said.
The quality of this kit blows every Megami Device I've laid eyes on out of the water. This isn't a dig against Kotobukiya. While they are a decently large merchandising company, plamo isn't exactly their forte, and they're competing against the biggest innovator in the space literally ever.
It's not remotely fair, but still a point I have to take from them, mostly due to the price.
30 Minutes Sisters is delightfully cheap. In direct conversion, it would be only 13.66€ at current ¥->€ exchange rate, but even after more than doubling that price to 30€ so that the reseller/-tailer can make the money they need, it was still cheaper than the one single Megami Device I found available on the German market, that was already at a 56% discount. This does come with some drawbacks though.
Megami Device kits are more. While you do pay a lot more for worse quality plastic with Megami Device, not only is the finished build considerably taller, you also get a ton of optional pieces to equip her with. From weapons, over various forms of armor, to sometimes even a shockingly huge amount of effect pieces, Megami Device kits feel like much more internally complete packages.
Meanwhile I feel like 30 Minutes series kits, though maybe only 30 Minutes Sisters, or even only this kit in particular, ask for you to buy more kits or option parts sets, in order for you to have something to really show off for it.
It's great on its own, and I love it, don't get me wrong, but it very much feels like it hasn't unlocked it's full potential. I think it'll only be at that point when you get two-or-so more kits. By then, you're looking at the same price as a Megami Device, while also running into what I like to call the Lego Alternate Build Problem, where you now have this one really cool kitbash, but also a bunch of other loose parts from the kits you used, that now don't really fit together well. This is however something that I think will massively improve as your collection grows. I can imagine that by the time you have 6 or 7 kits, you can put together a solid team of 5 custom girls.
All in all, I don't think I have much more to say to wrap up here. I'm pretty sure I've brought across just how - frankly - unreasonably much I've enjoyed building this kit, and I cannot wait until I can get my hands on the next one, to do it all again.
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