The colors for the kits as specified in the instructions are not found in a bottle and would require mixing. Even though the color call out lists the color mixes to use and at what ratio, they refer specifically to Mr. Color Aqueous, a line I have limited access to in the U.S. I made a go of it using a color conversion chart and Tamiya paints, but I soon found that not only were the hues a little off, the Tamiya acrylics dried darker than they appeared in the pot and in the wet. This was made a little worse once a gloss coat was added, leaving my cruisers a shade darker than I was aiming for. Therefore, I decided, I would see if I could get my hands on these sets and with the help of a friend I managed to track most of them down at a reasonable price.
I've only done a tiny bit of work with them so far in my fleet build so I can't say much about their painting properties other than it's so far very good. I'll come back and update this post once I've spent more time with them.
The paints themselves are all a semi-gloss. Here they are:
There's 10 sets in total numbered CS881 through CS890, the two not pictured are another Yamato set (the one I have is for the 1/500 kit--it has larger pots of paint but the colors are the same) and the set for the Cosmo Zero fighter.
Each box comes with three pots of paint in either 10ml or 18ml sizes. The Yamato set, for example, has YC-01 Yamato Grey, YC-02 Yamato Red, and YC-28 Yamato Brown (for the deck). The 1/1000 set substitutes YC-03 Yamato Blue for YC-28 if you want to go with a more blue color (the ship is depicted as being both colors depending upon the lighting or version you want to model).
A set for the UNCF fleet:
This set for the Garmillas ships contains the dark accent green and two shades of a lighter green which you can use to color your kit (which light green you prefer is up to you).
The other sets include colors for the four carriers, the dreadnought, and the command core ship. Now this is where things get tricky. The color sets are not packaged at a 1:1 color to kit ratio. Notice how these sets each have three colors:
If you look at the first two Garmillas sets, you see that you use the light colors from the cruiser set for the battleship and destroyers as well, but the battleship set includes one extra color for the battleship and two for the assault carrier set. The command core ship set includes the royal blue you need, but also colors for Garmillas set 3 (heavy cruiser, fighters, and subspace submarine). This means if you want to build set 3, you'll need to buy the color sets CS883, CS885, and CS887. And keep in mind that since half the ships for the Garmillas share the same green, you'll need more than one CS883 set if you plan on building them all.
CS883 (top) and CS885 (bottom):
CS887:
This also applies to the carrier and dreadnought sets.
There are three old carriers you can build, and one new one (that is, in the story at one point Yamato faces off against four carriers, three of which are old buckets). Each is a different color since they are pulled from service from different fleets, but instead of a set with carrier colors, there's two colors in one set with the grey for the flight deck, and the third carrier color is found packed in with the two whites for the dreadnought.
Finally, there is the issue of quantity. For the most part, I can't see running out of color too easily for Yamato herself, and the carrier colors come in 18ml pots (the kits build out to around 20 inches/50 cm), but I can see running dangerously low of the flight deck color since you get one pot for three ships. And in terms of CS883 with the main color for half the hulls in the fleet, I've bought three packs... There's also the issue of the UNCF fleet (the earth warships) as there's seven to build and I only got the one set--it has 10 ml pots. I might pick up a second if I can find it, just in case.
The sets were sold only in Japan and you can find them from re-sellers, but the availability is dwindling as they don't seem to pump out too many of them, or perhaps have stopped altogether. I won't go too much into where to get them here as I covered that in a post here. If you can find them, then by all means snap them up. It's possible that more will be released with the release of Yamato 2102 in the next year or so since the new series guarantees new kits from Bandai, but it's hard to say.
Also note that these do not contain model kits, that would be the Bandai Mecha Collection. I might do a separate review for these some day, though as they're pretty neat and take all of an afternoon to do start to finish (Mecha Collection kit is the small one
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