Onry-Oh Yeah!

We recently received the very first test sprues for next year’s upcoming plastic Konflikt ’47 Onryō, and given how good her kitbashed one was, we thought it was only fair to let Steff Sorensen loose on the full kit! She may have taken the advice that it’s “really, really poseable” a little literally! Steff, what have you done!

The Onryō is a phenomenal kit, so when we got test frames in the office last week I was very excited to see what I could do with the model. I knew that I wanted to really push the posing into a slightly ‘out there’ direction, and have some fun with it.

I assembled the kit as per the instructions, with the exception of leaving the toes, ankles, knees, and hip joints separate until I had finished the entire build guide of sub-assemblies. I also kept the shoulder joints, armour plates, and elbows free to move as instructed until I could pose it all. The left hand was also kept separate, so I could pose the fingers. The right hand was left unbuilt initially. (So… you’ve sort of followed the instructions… -ed.)

The only off-piste modification I made was to cut off the tab for the head, so I could have it looking in any direction I wanted.

This left me with a lot of sub-assemblies, which looked intimidating, but it also meant I could take my time posing the joints and figuring out what this model was doing, and what story it was telling. I looked up a bunch of poses, ranging from martial arts to classic anime, and settled on this meditative, floaty pose, with one arm extended to admire some nature-y thing like a bird, flower or butterfly.

The left foot got posed around a spare Grizzly gun barrel and pinned right the way up the ankle joint to create a solid base which holds the rest of the model up. Then the calf, thigh, and hip got pinned into an elongated pose, to give the impression of it stepping lightly (or as lightly as a massive lump of metal can!) on the gun barrel. I also rested the Shiboru cannon on the base, to give the impression that this warrior had put down his weapon for a brief moment of reflection, before getting right back to the business of annihilating the Emperor’s enemies.

The right leg got brought into a bend, to give it some movement, and both legs got a pin through the hip joint to hold them together.

I’ve talked a lot about pinning, and I want to reassure everyone that it’s not something you need to be thinking about when you build the Onryō. The joints fit really well and will stay together with just glue. The entire thing weighs very little as well, so it’s not pulling itself apart, even with rough handling. However, this specific pose puts the entire model weight on the ankle joint so I wanted to be sure that if I got it caught on my sleeve and knocked it off my hobby desk, it’d stay in one piece. (This is a surprisingly common issue for Steff. We’ve suggested tighter sleeves, to no avail. -ed.)

I didn’t need to do any pinning on the arms and hands as they aren’t load-bearing, and this meant I could be a little more creative. The left hand got posed with one finger reaching out for something (which turned out to be a butterfly I made out of a paperclip and some craft paper), and the right hand closed around the sword at a slight angle to make it feel more organic.

I got the arms glued into the shoulder at the angles I wanted, popped the hands on, and then glued the head assembly in place, looking at the butterfly. Then it was just a case of a quick blast with the airbrush (Selling yourself short there… -ed.) and it was done!

I think it turned out really well, and it’s just one of the many, many ways you can pose the new kit. The options are basically infinite because of the ball joints and pivot points, so the sky is the limit for building this thing.