I knew absolutely nothing about the Muv Luv franchise or stories up until a month ago, then recently got exposed to the designs when I watched a review for a different model. From there, I went down the rabbit hole, and I knew I had to get my hands on these things, as many as I could. I'm a sucker for "The Red One" in any franchise, so I knew the 1/144 Takemikaduchi TYPE-00F Tsukuyomi Mana Ki was going to be my first purchase, and I am beyond pleased. Speaking of reviews, I haven't found very many actual reviews done on these kits, at least not in English, so here's my two cents on this particular one in hopes of educating other potential purchasers.
So, I'll get the bad out of the way first: The price. Retailing for $34.99, this kit is roughly equivalent of an HG 1/144 Gundam kit, and stands similarly tall as one. However, compared to recent HG Gundam kits that retail for similar price (such as the Seed Freedom kits), you do not get as much bang for your buck. This kit itself is great. The plastic is good quality, the nubs clean up well, and the instructions are standard letter-and-number step by step. But for the physical amount of plastic you're getting, the small parts count, simple engineering, and the lack of color separation (there's going to be quite a bit of black paint in this guy's future), I feel the MSRP is steep, but that seems to be the case with Kotobukiya kits in general. This was my first one, so it was a hard pill to swallow. Some of the gates are pretty beefy as well, beefier than they should have been, I feel. But they were easy enough to clean up. These are the only reasons I give it 4/5 instead of 5/5.
Now, the good. There's a lot. The plastic quality is good, which was very welcome to a guy who's never built a Koto kit before now. The joints are polycaps, but some have included equivalent plastic pieces that you can use instead, which I did. There are two swords and two guns, so you're not short on accessories either. The clear purple parts look REALLY good in the right light. I just wish I had a chrome marker to paint the backs of them when I built this guy to make them pop even more. Live and learn. I've read/heard a few different things about having to "sand the parts extra hard to get them to go together", but I had no issues. Clean up the nubs as best as you can and it will snap together. I always use Tamiya cement in my builds to keep them holding together, and had issues with that on this build either. The panel lines are the parts are clear and well defined, so I'm actually looking forward to hit it with a gray marker and not dreading it like I normally do.
Overall, very pleased. I've already ordered quite a few more Muv Luv kits for my collections (thanks again, Mecha Warehouse), and look forward to building them all.