F.S.S. Allen Braford 1/8 scale

A garage kit from 1994.

About Allen Bradford himself

Allen Bradforad is a headliner in F.S.S. His fatima is Kyo, a Ballanche 17th “master” creation. Although started as a low ranking mercenary, he eventually climbs the ladder and becomes an AKD knight.

He is one of my favorite characters in the series simply because he is one of very few who survives long enough. Anyone hot-headed in the series faces an early death, and Allen is cool-headed.

Although he values honor and dignity, his low status as a headliner forces him to do things which he’d never do voluntarily, such as shooting down a random civilian transport as per his order. He is rational enough to know that money has to come first and lack of money pains him greatly because his fatima, Kyo, is the first one to suffer from his lack of proper income.

It pains him to see his fatima suffer from lack of extra clothes and underwear. His low income is meeting the basic needs such as food and supplies, but anything more than that is a luxury.

His financial situation makes him relatable and makes him grounded which becomes a key element for him to survive.

The kit

This kit is from year 1994. Yes, this is basically a blast from the past. This is a 30 year-old garage kit. I was quite surprised that I was able to buy this right away on Yahoo Japan auction site.

This kit was released by Toys Press and Kaiyodo. Toys Press is the official manufacturer for FSS merchandise simply because the author of FSS had a 50% stake in the company. The company is still alive even today in 2022 and still sells merchandise although they no longer release any garage kits and the author has left the company in mid 2000. It looks as if the company still holds the license to sell F.S.S. merchandise.

Anyway, it is my understanding that this kit was originally sold for 3,000yen. I paid 200 CAD (20,000yen) for this. Perhaps I overpaid, but given this is a 30-year old relic and that a male figure is exceptionally harder to find, I didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

Yes, there are plenty of fatima figures available on the market. In contrast, this is one of very few male figures I could get a hold of. The figure being Allen Braford himself, one of my favorite characters even, made the decision a lot easier.

For a 30-year old resin kit, its condition was surprisingly good. I could tell that the inner bag was opened, but no part was missing.

There was a minor oil leakage on its surface, but I’ve seen a lot worse for resin kits that were decades younger than this kit. The oil leakage shouldn’t be an issue in this case.

I loosely put the overall parts together to see what I am making. The sword was no longer straight but that was expected. I was just glad that no part was broken.

Because the parts weren’t separated enough to paint individually, I tried a different approach. I would glue most of parts together and spray-paint it in black. I am specifically mentioning spray paint because its durability is far superior than acrylic paint. And then I would brush-paint parts, including his skin.

The spray-paint base coat should ensure that it sticks. In my experience, acrylic primer + oily resin surface = a disaster.

Once primed in black, I could tell that the black primer is going to stick. It really is durable and wouldn’t peel off even when I scratched it hard with my nail. In such a case like this, I can see the importance of a base coat.

The rest of the journey was fairly easy and uneventful. I painted parts individually with a brush. A black base coat wouldn’t probably work well on a female figure but it works on a male figure like Allen who looks basically like an American Indian.

It’s also perhaps important to point out that I did not sand off imperfections on this figure. There were mold lines on his arms but those were left alone. That is because sanding would simply erase the details on surface. This is normally fine for non-muscular figures. However, as you can see, Allen spots plenty of muscles. Instead of losing the muscle detail, I’ve decided to leave imperfections as is.

Thankfully, the mold lines are on the back of his arms. You won’t see them on display.

I basically painted over and over to reach consistency in color. His jacket was originally painted in leather brown, three times. Once that’s done, I loosely painted orange over it. Orange wasn’t a part of the plan but I found the overall color scheme too brown. Therefore, I decided to spice it up with a bit of orange.

Allen here is a bit skinny. In the manga, he is a bit more wider than this. This figure is really slender.

In the end, it turned out okay-ish. If parts were separated well enough, I would have done a better job. The paint job is a bit rough on some parts, especially where his jacket and shirt meets, but overall I will say it’s passable.

There is apparently another Allen kit which I like a lot more but I don’t think I will be able to get my hands on it. It’s a miracle already that I was able to purchase this kit even. This is a 30 year-old kit, mind you.

With Allen done, my next target is Kyo, his fatima.

Until next time.