Welcome to the first weekly review on Girlpla Guide. We’re going to get a little experimental with the post formats for these weekly reviews; here, we might review garage kits (and we’re actually looking at getting one or two for reviewing at some point), as well as weird model kit tat from AliExpress or Temu, these will be a bit more personal than our normal reviews, and generally we’ll be messing around a little more with these than with our more formal articles (not that they’re particularly formal as is).
Anyway, this week, we’ll be starting off the review series with, fittingly, the first girlpla kit we ever bought, 30 Minutes Sisters Tiasha!
Overview
The first wave of Bandai’s 30 Minutes Sisters kits, released in 2021, were a trio of girls; Rishetta, Tiasha and Luluce. Tiasha represents the Color B skin color of the three skin colors on offer in the Sisters line. In addition to her original version, Tiasha also received an “upgraded” variant, SIS-Ac25g Far-Farina in 2022, a Premium Bandai version, SIS-Ac65n Powerari-Palyton in 2023, and an alternate variant Dahlia Wear in 2026.
For my part, this kit started off this entire journey for me in 2024. Back then, we weren’t particularly interested in building model kits, having largely gotten into it to build a few kits from Witch from Mercury and Macross, and hadn’t intended on staying in the hobby very long, being as we are not particularly interested in Gundam (G Gundam still slaps, though). Indeed, we were really thinking back then that we’d get our hands on a Heindree, a Nobell Gundam and a Shining Gundam and call it there, after getting my hands on every variant of the Dilanza and Demi-Trainer.
On a whim, we decided to buy Tiasha. Being as she was so simple to build, and having just come off finishing watching Symphogear, we decided to buy more of the Sisters kits for an ill-advised attempt to make Symphogear customs on top of writing some fanfiction about the Sisters that will never see the light of day on pain of death. While that project never got off the ground (owing to our terrible painting skills, which is why we’re looking to add community tips to this site about painting as opposed to doing it ourselves), the habit stayed. It really did help that we really found Tiasha incredibly cute to the point that a good portion of our Sisters customs are Tiasha-based.
So, if you really think about it, you have Tiasha to thank for this site’s existence.
Construction and Engineering
Early 30 Minutes Sisters prioritises ease of building over flashiness or functionality and Tiasha is no different. Tiasha is so easy that you could probably build her with no tools at all, if you had some elbow grease, though we recommend you have tools to clean the nubs with. While definitely not as articulate as even the Block 1 Megamis, Tiasha’s articulation is pretty good, especially for early Sisters kits, and dodges the issue the very early Rishettas had with breaking neck joints.
Overall, in this respect, Tiasha’s a pretty easy kit to get stuck into. While the “30 minutes” in 30 Minutes Sisters isn’t necessarily a promise, we’ve definitely been able to assemble Tiashas in as little as 15 minutes, and the ease of building doesn’t detract too much from articulation.
Aesthetics:
Frustratingly, early Sisters kits suffer from a phenomenon where they sold all the armor pieces that would normally be packed into the same model kit as separate armors; while this keeps prices down, it makes the kits look incredibly plain unless you spring for option parts. Later Sisters kits (starting with Yufia), as well as the upgraded variants, eschew this model, but Tiasha unfortunately suffers from the fact that her silhouette and model feel incomplete without her Flight Armor add-on. While we personally really found her cute (cute enough to buy her so many times), the criticism of early Sisters kits as bland isn’t unfounded.
However, with the Flight Armor, she’s a fairly serviceable, if not necessarily unique, model kit, and acts as a nice primer for the general aesthetic Sisters is going for alongside Rishetta and Luluce.
Ease of Acquisition:
At a retail price of ¥2300 (roughly £10/$14) with an additional ¥600 (£3/$4) for the Flight Armor, Tiasha is, in theory, dirt cheap. However, many export stores almost double the price to account for export. Availability can be a bit problematic; the early Sisters do get reprinted a fair bit, but they do compete for space with their newer variants.
Personal Verdict?
Some people deeper in the community will probably not think much of the Sisters, being as accustomed as they are to Megami Device or Nuke Matrix. We, however, never forgot where we came from, and Tiasha has some sentimental value to us; if we didn’t like her so much, we’d have never gotten into the rest of the hobby. Countless hours spent flying her around our bedroom like a child playing with action figures and writing fanfic that will never see the light of day has helped our esteem of her.
If, of course, you’re not us, Tiasha is a serviceable model kit that you’d be better served using as a base for customs, or just really find the cute potato face bird girl really cute.
Overall score: 8/10 because Tiasha holds pure sentimental value for us. These scores will absolutely not be based on anything objective and if you expected anything less after seeing the rest of this site I duly apologise but also wonder how you missed me being so gleefully biased.
Up next:
So we actually have two potential reviews coming up!
- GUST’s Anby Demara garage kit. We had originally intended to announce it as our next kit review to show off that yes,any kit is fair game for this review series as long as we own one. However, we’re waiting on some extra supplies that should, hopefully, be delivered this week for us to actually get started on working on it, and we’re not sure they’ll get here in time. If they don’t, instead of us reviewing that kit, the other kit on our slate is…
- Sousai Shoujo Teien Koyomi Takanashi’s Winter Uniform. This one has sentimental value to us too, as part of the reason we waded deeper into girlpla waters.
Tune in Sunday next week to find out which one we’ll be going for!
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