F-5E Tiger II (Shin Kazama)

The finished model:

In the manga:

Shin’s F-5E Tiger II really shouldn’t need much of an introduction.  It appears in the manga a few chapters in, after Shin’s F-8E Crusader gets shot down, and becomes the first of several planes to bear the iconic flaming unicorn mark.  The Crusader was fun and all, but the F-5E is much more like what you’d expect the hero in a late ’70s early ’80s air combat manga to be flying.  It’s sleek, fast and looks like a killer.  Unfortunately, the F-5E Tiger II, like the Crusader before it, doesn’t last more than a handful of chapters before it becomes the victim of a crash landing.  However, it starts off with a bang, as it’s first appearance [Chapter 005 (v01c05) “The Crossing Point of Solitude”] is also its most memorable – the near mid-air collision between Shin’s F-5E and Kanzaki at the helm of a Yamato Airlines B-747-100 that has drifted off course.

The kit(s):

• F-5E Tiger II Fighter by HobbyBoss

The build:

For most of my Area 88 1/72 scale project, I’ve been avoiding tackling a lot of the more recognizable planes.  There’s two primary reasons for this.  The first is that, given how iconic and meaningful most of them are, I wanted to make sure I was “good enough” to tackle the projects without making a mess of them.  How tragic would it be to see the iconic flaming unicorn on a shoddily-built F-5E?  No, if I was going to do them, I wanted to do them right (enough).  The second reason is that, well… everyone starts at the beginning with Area 88 projects, so there’s no trouble to find almost endless examples of people having build Shin’s F-5E (although there’s probably even more who’ve started with Shin’s F-20 Tigershark).  So I wanted to get a few of the outliers under my belt first – both for the sake of build practice as well as establishing some “street cred” that I wasn’t just here to copy what everyone else has done.

The problem is, after having so much fun during the duo F-8E Crusader build (SHIN + BORIS), I was really aching to have another go… and the HobbyBoss F-5E Tiger II kit was just staring at me… calling my name.  So, in the end, I caved to the pressure and pulled it out of the stash and got to work.  However, I decided to assuage my feelings of guilt by doubling up the build with another outlier – the F-5A Freedom Fighter that Shin is forced to make an emergency landing in during the Area 88 restructuring period in Greece.  Besides the fact that it helped meet my need to do something “a little different”, it also provided me the answer to a question that’s long been bugging me – just how different are the F-5A and F-5E variants.

The build itself was relatively uneventful actually.  The worst misstep was when I was attempting to correct a bit of light blue overspray and I hadn’t cleaned out the airbrush properly and I ended up giving the right wing top a slightly olive drab hue.  That was a bit upsetting, because, even though I was able to add a few more coats of white to correct the issue (more or less), the extra paint also (more or less) destroyed the careful bit of undershading that I’d so painstakingly tried to balance for this mostly white plane.

The other nice thing about conducting a duo build of similar subjects, was that I was able to swap a few pieces here and there.  The HobbyBoss kit is nice enough, relatively good fit, and some recessed panel details, but the much older ESCI re-pop of the F-5A had some better parts for the cockpit – including the chair, the joystick and the canopy hinges.  So, since the F-5E was destined for the front row in my build collection, I decided to consolidate all the “best bits” on the F-5E and leave the F-5A to struggle on with what was left.

All in all, I think it was the right decision.  I was able to use some of the decals (notably the aforementioned flaming unicorn mark) from the Hasegawa Area 88 F-8E Crusader kit, and the end result is one that I’m certainly happy with. Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments down below: