I love this plane and Hasegawa did a fine job with it. Good detail and well molded and the fit was very good. I would definitely recommend this kit. The only issue may be that the tail wheel was a bit weak, but, that is an issue with many model kits.

This is an excellent model with good fit, varied, colorful and historically accurate plane versions (with some extra decals to build up versions not shown) and good instructions. As with other Japanese aircraft where there is a need to get a perfect match between painted areas and decals (in this case the red Minomarus), I chose to mask and paint the fuselage and wing Hinomarus rather than use the provided decals - not a big problem - yielding a perfect result.

The Hasegawa Ki61 is a great addition to Hasegawa's growing line of large scale Japanese fighter kits. Until this kit came out the dwindling supply of Revell Tony kits was pretty much all we had and the exquisite but expensive MDC offering in resin. The construction of this kit is pretty straightforward and is fairly robust for a plastic model. I used Gunze Sanyo RLM Sand Gelb for the cockpit color as this is a close match for the shade of brown that is present on most preserved examples of this aircraft. The cannon access panels were different on earlier and later aircraft so check your references so select the right ones for your subject. I used no filler anywhere on this model and the decals went on with no problems. I will be building a second one of these with a Wolfpack conversion nose to correctly depict the later Ki61-IIa which had an eight inch increase in length at the firewall. This was the version in the Revell and MDC kits and in the Microscale decals in 1/32nd scale. Now can we get a Ki100 radial-engined version please?