by Jose Soca
1/350 IJN Maya (Aoshima)
As being an IJN fan I knew from the time all these new cruisers from Aoshima were announced I had to buy one of the four sisters. I chose Maya perhaps because she was unique from all 4 cruisers when she was refitted as an AA cruiser, her war record wasn’t outstanding like her sister Chokai with maybe a bigger reputation in the navy when she was Admiral Mikawa’s flagship in the night battle of Guadalcanal but to me it didn’t matter I felt attracted to this ship from the first time I saw her. After knowing her release date I didn’t hesitate in preordering her. Right after I got the kit I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to build her the way I wanted and those new Aoshima P.E sets that were released as complements to these new cruisers to me weren’t the solution. Having bought the AOTS a while back I kind of knew what I needed so I decided to buy Takao’s WEM and GMM P.E sets. WEM’s set impressed me when I got it, it looked pretty complete to me although I didn’t like the rails and ladders and this is why I bought Loren Perry’s set. I think Loren has the BEST P.E inclined ladders out there in the market I’m not joking on this one. After seeing those new Type 89 AA guns from Veterans I threw in the towel and bought them too I think these are fantastic, price is also reasonable. The brass barrels are from Voyager and the replaced 25mm MG are from LionRoar. I also bought those new helpful accessories from Hasegawa and Fujimi’s new figure set, not all the sailors are from Fujimi, I also included some from L’arsenal. By the time I got all I needed to start this project there was a thing I was short on, sources!!. As she being unique as I said before, Maya in her 1944 configuration only has a handful of pictures. I bought the Maya and Chokai Maru Special but I couldn’t do much with it so I turned to some of the models here on MW.
