First look at the new IJA infantry by Warlord Games

I was kindly sent the new plastic Japanese Infantry by Warlord Games. While I will dedicate a proper article to a more indepth look at these, I couldn't resist building two miniatures already and thought I'd write down my thoughts.

First and foremost I am happy to see that the new sculpts are remarkably better than the old racist caricature-like sculpts. While the new sculpts are also somewhat squinty they don't feel nearly as bad, but until I've painted up a face I can't be too certain.  

Similar to the Soviet kit this box comes with extra parts to build jungle fighters and even SNLF which comes in handy if you're looking to build armies of those branches. However on the downside the weird leaf ponchos for the jungle fighters in this kit are not very good, they don't properly rest on the shoulders and look very much like a toy attachment and less like actual leafs.

I've tried using two of the loose leaf bits to emulate something like the poncho which given the more fitting nature looks much better in my opinion. Lastly we have only one pistol arm in this set which makes it hard to do dynamic sergeants, especially since the arm pose is a little less dynamic than I would've like it. But that rounds out my thoughts on building these guys, rest assured I'll dedicate more than a few hours to this kit whenever I'm done with my exams.