Earlier 1/700 versions of these aircraft, such as the omnipresent early and late war sets from the Waterline Consortium (for Aoshima, Hasegawa and Tamiya kits) are still sold today. They are very serviceable for molds dating to the early 1970s, particularly for shape and scale. They are also very inexpensive sets. However, horizontal seamlines along the fuselages, a lack of propellers, and primitive, stump-like landing gear are present and do give pause.

Newer versions, like those from Pit-Road, Fujimi, and Lion Roar, were issued in the last five to fifteen years and do show improvements, particularly with the landing gear, the inclusion of bombs and torpedoes, propellers, and separate canopies for the Fujimi versions.  Lion Roar includes its own photoetch details for landing gear and propellers to make up for the molded deficiencies. Still, it can be argued that there’s always room for a better styrene version.
 

The Kajika Set

Molded in medium grey plastic, each box contains six each of the Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 21 “Zero” fighter, Nakajima B5N2 Type 97 bomber, and Aichi D3A1 Type 99 dive bomber.  These were the frontline aircraft types carried by the IJN’s aircraft carriers during the war’s first year. 
 

Unlike, say, the same type aircraft offered by the Waterline Consortium, there are no seam lines, as the injection points are under the fuselage. The fuselage and wings have minutely engraved panel lines and control surfaces. Most offerings from other companies have propellers, landing gear and weapons that appear relatively crude, or are replaced by photoetch parts. Here, these same items are molded to a much finer degree. The landing gear, with its clearly defined wheel, hub and strut, has to be seen to be believed. The propellers are wonderfully delicate with slight cants to the blades and must be handled carefully.

My biggest concern, outside of the delicacy to the propellers, is the location of the attachment points at the leading edge of the wings, and base of the propeller.  It will take a fine blade and some careful cutting to separate the part from the sprue without marring the edge of the wing or propeller. Some of the upper fuselage panel lines may be a hair on the heavy side, but these are still more than acceptable when seen with the Mk. I eyeball. 

Ditto my comments above regarding high quality, finely scaled and very sharply molded pieces. As above, the fuselages have easily distinguishable cowlings, and hollowed cockpit openings that can also double as spaces for all three crew members. The canopy area is recessed to accept the separate canopy piece or a photoetch canopy frame. The aerial torpedo is perhaps the most in scale version in styrene that I have yet seen. The same concerns regarding the removal of the pieces from their sprues also apply.

A note about folded wings on the B5N2: When folded, the wing tips met one under the other, as seen in the instructions. They were not placed tip to tip, nor did they possess a locking mechanism that kept them slightly suspended. 

Ditto all my prior comments regarding the appearances, canopy section, quality, fidelity, scale, and removal concerns. 

While Fujimi also provides clear canopies for its aircraft sets in 1/700, I have to say, I’ve never seen 1/700 canopies like these. They’re beautiful. Incredibly tiny, yet very sharply molded.  It would be possible for some modelers to paint on the frames using a magnifier glass and a fine brush, but I don’t know that I’ll be doing that.  Kudos to those that do. 
 

The box art is illustrated, with color callouts for Mr. Hobby and Tamiya paints. Also illustrated is the type and placement of decals. 

The markings include red “Rising Sun” rondels without white backgrounds for the wings and fuselage, as befits early war aircraft. Also included are single and double striped recognition bands of red, blue, yellow, white, and black that were assigned by carrier and wrapped vertically around the rear of the fuselage. Single stripes were usually assigned to aircraft aboard the division flagship. (The exception appears to be Midway, where Hiryu was division flagship instead of Soryu, but there was no time to re-stripe the aircraft.) 

Colors were assigned by division:

Red = CarDiv 1 (Akagi, Kaga)
Blue = CarDiv2 (Soryu, Hiryu)
Unknown* = CarDiv 3 (Hosho, Zuiho)
Yellow = CarDiv4 (Ryujo, Shoho, then Junyo replacing Shoho after Shoho is sunk)
White = CarDiv5 (Shokaku, Zuikaku). 

*Anecdotal evidence indicates that there may have been red and yellow striping for CarDiv 3 aircraft in 1941. 

When Combined Fleet was reorganized on July 14, 1942 in the wake of the loss of four frontline carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, & Hiryu), the recognition banding became simplified.

White = CarDiv 1 (Shokaku, Zuikaku, Zuiho) with Zuiho’s aircraft marked with three stripes
Yellow = CarDiv 2 (Hiyo, Junyo, Ryujo) with Ryujo’s aircraft marked with three stripes.

I’m not sure why black striping is included. 
 

As they proved with their Bismarck kit, Flyhawk/Kajika establishes another new standard for the 1/700 modeling community. Highly recommended. 

This kit was courtesy of my wallet, via HobbyLink Japan. The cost less shipping was $14.10. I’ll note that this set is currently available from several E-Bay shops online (including Freetime) for less.