Yo ho ho ho ...

Other than having One Piece's little sailing ditty stuck in my head for the last few months, all my free time this past week has been occupied by watching episodes in One Piece's Impel Down and Marineford story arcs with my son. Needless to say, that means zero progress in my Ork miniatures. It did, however, get me started on some anime-related hobby stuff I had shelved for over a year.

Going Merry ... unboxed and unwrapped

One anime miniature project in the works is Bandai's One Piece pirate ship model kit, Going Merry. As the ship's parts generally come in the correct colour scheme, one quick way to assemble this model is by just snapping the pieces together and applying appropriately coloured stickers provided with the kit onto the relevant pieces.

But in my opinion, the quick way would look horrible so I plan to either:
a) Undercoat all the parts white and repaint the entire ship.
b) Undercoat parts that are not in the correct colour scheme and repaint only those pieces.

Having heard horror stories of paint easily peeling off Bandai's glossy plastic pieces, I am not sure if GameWorkshop's water-based paints can properly adhere to the parts. Well, no pain no gain I suppose.  Once it's finished, I hope it will look something akin to the picture below.

Going Merry's bright colour scheme

While looking for the pirate ship model kit, I also came across an old One Piece jigsaw puzzle I had gotten in a sale sometime early last year. That became a quick two-day family (missus included) project and is now ready for framing.

  
After more than 500 episodes and with its 15th anniversary under its belt, One Piece seems to be going from strength to strength. Long may author Eiichiro Oda's superb writing continue.