"Bye Bye" from the manga comic, 'Phantom Core'

Close up of this unusual kit's titular character, The Butcher. Click for a larger image.

There is an old joke where someone says if you look up the word “XYZ” in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of “ABC. Well, in this case, if you look up the word “abomination” in the dictionary, you see a picture of this creature. I have made many unusual model figures in my day but this one surely takes the cake. At first glance it appears to be a matter transmission into a butcher shop that has gone horribly wrong but closer examination suggests something else is going on here. In some ways, it reminds me of a cross between the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Midnight Meat Train” slasher horror films.

The creature or The Butcher (as I will be calling him) is the creation of Yasushi Nirasawa which is depicted in his Japanese art book “Phantom Core”. The highly detailed sculpt by Yusuke Takayanagi is modeled by Zi Chen Gong “Stark”, standing 13” tall and weighs in at over six pounds!

I purchased this limited edition kit on eBay which is my usual source of kits of the genre. It had over twenty parts, some of which belonged to the Butcher and the others were peripheral objects such as a dismembered man, various body parts, animal carcasses, rigging and the like. No instructions were provided which might have become a problem since the scene is so alien. I was fortunate (after some digging) to come across a number of pictures of the completed kit which answered just about any questions I might have had about the construction and part placement.

Although there was a cast in 'pin' in which with to stand the Butcher on it's ornate base, I had little faith in it since I believed it was too weak for the application considering the mass of the Butcher. I ended up drilling a 1/4” hole in the base and up into the leg into which I inserted a short piece of copper tubing of the same diameter to provide a more rigid and secure mounting pin.

Painting the Butcher was an interesting enterprise since it had a number of different features like leather straps, bare flesh, a skull plate, pants and metal apparatus like hooks, buckles and shock absorbers (yes, shock absorbers). Several washes in red and flesh tones helped to bring out the detail of the skin areas which is quite extensive.

The stand alone body part list has a plucked duck, a pig head, a side of beef and a butchered human & cow carcass, an arm (I think) and a leg. As you can imagine, painting took up a major part of the time needed to complete this kit. Like my work based on the equally disturbing “The Jar”, I expect to get a number of comments, both negative and positive about this kit. 8/4/21