Vic Viper Sky Girls Model

The Vic Viper is in an anime called Sky Girls. I suppose this means there's now room for a Hello Kitty Vic Viper.

The Vic Viper from the hyper-intense Gradius series is one of the most well known ships of shoot-'em-ups. However, merchandise of the Vic Viper is surprisingly rare. With Japan's love of giant robots and future fighting machines you'd think they would have the Vic Viper immortalized in all kinds of various forms from hyper-detailed miniatures to Vic Viper soap. Aside from the upcoming Shooting History ships in February, shooter merchandise is very difficult to come by. There does exist a metallic model of the Vic Viper from Gradius II and a super cool laser-etched glass cube, but actually finding them is a rarity.

Those of you that want more than two dimensions from your favorite shooter ships should know that December saw the release of the official Vic Viper Sky Girls model.

I never heard of Sky Girls either, but apparently it's a recent anime series. From what I've seen elsewhere online, Sky Girls is about underage girls saving the world by piloting mech suits. In three episodes they get assistance from the bad-ass Vic Viper. I'm not in any hurry to see the show as I'm sure its almost exactly like every other teenager-in-a-robot-suit anime, but if I get the chance I wouldn't mind seeing the episodes that guest star the Vic Viper. Sky Girls is from Konami, so the inclusion of the ship makes some sense, at least more than it did when the Vic Viper was dropped into Yu Gi Oh.

I recently received the model in the mail since I had an urge to see the ship in a tri-dimensional space. However, it has been a very long time since I've assembled a model and Zeus knows when I'll actually have time to put the thing together, which is why I don't have pics of the finished ship. The model is in white with blue trim, comes with four Options, and a little green mech suit thing from Sky Girls. Wouldn't you know it, but I finally get around to posting about this and Play Asia put up pre-orders for a limited edition red version and a limited edition green version. If you like your Vic Viper in other galaxy-saving colors, there you go.

The box and instructions are illustrated by Akitaka Mika. I'm not entirely familiar with the kind of work he does, but I certainly like his illustrations of the Vic Viper. Nice work. What I found most interesting about the model was that in the assembly instructions, the weapons systems and features of the Vic Viper are detailed. I've scanned them should you want to check them out. They're even better if you can read Japanese.


The front page of the booklet has a nice illustration of the Vic Viper.	Oh, so that's how the force field and Option systems work. Interesting.	Indeed, the laser blast from the Viper's prongs is quite a revolutionary weapon.