A Rocky Rescue (Area 88)
The finished model:
The video
The scene:
Rocky is back from the dead!
After seemingly perishing while playing A Game of Chicken by ramming a T-62 tank with a jeep in Chapter 009 “The Horizon of Anger”, Rocky is found alive if only mostly well back in Japan working at the Honichi Times newspaper. He might be missing an arm and his right eye, but he’s not missing out on a story! So when the news breaks that Yamato Flight 31 has crashed into Tokyo Bay, he grabs his camera and flies off in the company’s Bell 206 Jet Ranger to get some action photos. Old habits die hard though when he spots a speeding car – carrying a drugged and unconscious Miss Yasuda – go careening off the road and into the water. Once again, with no thought for his own personal safety, Rocky jumps from the helicopter into the water to save a damsel in distress.
Check out the original manga scene from Chapter 036 “Prelude to Collapse” here:
The story:
I always found Rocky’s story a bit surprising. As a news photographer with a ton of experience in combat zones, he’s surprisingly quick to “get involved” and apparently sacrifice his life for a woman he only just met. For what it’s worth, I knew he wasn’t dead after the traumatic scenes in Chapter 009 “The Horizon of Anger”. So, when he recklessly leaps into action to save yet another woman, it’s not much of a surprise anymore. If anything the surprise is that he fades out of the story completely after his second appearance. When Viz abruptly cancelled the monthly Area 88 comic book in the late 1980s I knew we were missing out on a lot of story to come. It wasn’t until years (and years) later that I finally got to read the whole saga to completion. When I got to the end, there were two characters that seemed destined for greater things but who just faded away never to be heard again.
One of them was Rocky – but I guess there’s only so many times you can defy death and save the day before that gets old. Besides, Rocky is a bit of a cross-over character and appears in several of Shintani’s managa works… and he did give me this opportunity to build one of my favourite helicopters, the Bell 206 Jet Ranger in action… so who’s complaining?
Oh, and just for the record… the other character I thought would stick around longer was Matsunosuke Sawa – there’s more to that bald-headed ninja and lover of older women than meets the eye.
The kit:
- Bell 206 Jetranger “Civilian Uses” (by MiniWing)
- Space Shuttle & NASA Transport (by Academy)
The build:
For such a well-known and popular aircraft, you’d think that the Bell 206 Jet Ranger would have a lot more kit options available. There are a couple in larger (1/72 and 1/100) scales, but not as many as you’d think. I got the idea for this build right off the bat, but in 2018 when I started this project there were no good options in 1/144 scale. It took until 2025 for MiniWing to step up to the bat and deliver us a very nice kit – and in clear plastic to boot!
Of course the first (and biggest challenge) was trying to fit the smallest DC motor I could find inside the TINY helicopter fuselage. There was NOT a lot of wiggle room and I needed to have the hands of a surgeon to very… oh, so very carefully strip away a bit of the interior plastic with my Dremel tool. It was slow going, because I know how easily an electric power tool can rip through the thin walls of a fuselage piece. The fact that it was also clear made it harder, both to actually see the progress being made, and being careful not to scuff up the inside of a window that would remain transparent. Luckily there was just enough room to get the DC motor in a snug fit, and I managed to keep the windows clear.
However, that gave me a bit of a problem. Unlike most of the other aircraft, where the DC motor can be hidden in an engine cowling, or under a seat, crowding the helicopter cabin left very little room for any of the other nice interior pieces. So, even though I usually like to have my 1/144 builds with complete interiors and pilot figures, I decided to take a pass this time and just shade the interior with Tamiya X-19 Smoke. It was a bit disappointing but in the end I was very glad I’d made that choice.
The rest of the build was very smooth. The kit comes with pre-cut masks – although strangely not for the under-nose windows? So painting a white coat of paint and applying some homemade decals was a breeze. However, when I added the main rotor, I discovered a problem. Even though it LOOKED straight, the DC motor was sitting at a slight angle. Wouldn’t have been a big deal except, given how long the main rotor blades are, that slight angle meant they’d strike the tail section instead of spinning cleanly.
After a moment considering if I was going to have to rip it apart to get it straight, I decided to drill a small hole on the underside of the fuselage. I then used an old airbrush needle to shove the bottom of the DC motor back as far as it would go. It wasn’t perfect, but it was able to correct the angle just enough to get the rotor to spin freely. There’s no way I would’ve been able to do that if I’d put the whole interior in there, so this time the trade off paid off.
Oh, and I also used a chopped up tail section of a 1/288 scale B747 that I found in my spares box. It wasn’t quite scale appropriate, for the fictional 1/144 scale MB-14, but close enough. I’d already printed off the tail decals for Yamato Airlines, so it did look a bit odd, but with some cotton smoke, well, good enough is good enough. I did have to re-do my first attempt at water (using silicone caulking and a few drops of Tamiya paint) because it came out a bit too “lovely tropical beach ocean blue” and I was going more for the “tragedy in Tokyo Bay blue”. The second attempt was quite a bit cooler in tone, so, good to go.
Feel free to take a look and tell me what you think:
