\n<\/p>\n
One of the formative figures of Japan\u2019s model kit fandom is Makoto \u201cMax\u201d Watanabe, who founded Max Factory<\/a>. I caught up with him to find out what makes model kits great.<\/p>\n These days, Watanabe works in parallel with Good Smile Company<\/a>, making model kits and action figures, but his route into this world is certainly a unique one.<\/p>\n Although his childhood was certainly quite typical, as he explains.<\/p>\n \u201cI suppose I was quite a typical child; I loved to play outside with my friends and run around, and at home, whenever I was given a plastic model to build, I would focus on that for a long time. Even from around the age of 5, even though that was too early, my father would help build these model kits with me. Doing that with my father was a very memorable and enjoyable time as a child, a precious time even.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember building kits of the Zero fighter and the F-4 Phantom. With the latter, my mother would regularly use a feather duster around the house, and its missiles and other small parts got completely brushed away.<\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of what I wanted to be when I grew up, it was a fairly common answer back then, but I wanted to be a pilot.<\/p>\n “As a child, I was also a huge fan of Leiji Matsumoto and Space Battleship Yamato<\/em>. Since I also used to play sports, I had time away from watching anime and building model kits. However, when I became a junior high school student, the first Mobile Suit Gundam<\/em><\/a> was released. Initially, I didn\u2019t watch it, but my friends scolded me for that. From then on, I watched it and was completely captivated, and that made my passion for anime and model kits fire up again. However, back then, the Gundam<\/em> plastic model craze hadn\u2019t started, as the kits weren\u2019t yet made, and I tried to kitbash my own by using whatever I could find, including Microman<\/em> toys. Then, when the official Gundam<\/em> plastic models, or Gunpla<\/a>, were released, I became a huge fan of those.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was also a magazine called Hobby Japan, which is still with us today, and they used to have a reader\u2019s section, where readers could exchange information. There, I found out about a plastic model circle, a club basically, and I had no idea that such a thing even existed. With that, I posted a letter to the circle, and they let me join. Within that circle, I came to know that one of the writers at Hobby Japan was also a member, and that allowed me to communicate with people at Hobby Japan directly. During that period, Hobby Japan published a famous book called How To Build Gundam<\/em><\/a>, and they asked me if I was interested in making something for this book. Of course, I said \u201cyes\u201d and submitted a scratch build of a 1\/60 scale Gouf<\/a> (shown below), which wasn\u2019t available officially, and this got a huge amount of attention from readers. That started my path to becoming a professional modeler.<\/p>\n \u201cTo explain a little bit about \u201cscratch\u201d building, around that time, a new material was introduced to the world of model kit building, which was polyester paste, or putty. The origin of this material started in the car industry, so they could mend dents and scratches. However, I saw this material and realized that with it, we could make whatever we wanted. So I would use this material on the Gouf every night.<\/p>\n