In addition to building the A6M5, I am also building Hasegawa's Oscar. this will be my second one, the first being a -I that I finished building in early 2020 (was started in about 2008) as one of the first models I built when I returned to the hobby (prior to covid, so I was ahead of the game, haha). I made a few mistakes with that build, namely gluing the wingtips together and then gluing them to the wings and clear coat/weathering fail. Now I know that Hasegawa's Oscars suffer from a poor shaped that gives the plane a humpback look and that the Fine Molds are superior, but I chose to ignore the shape and forge on. Maybe in the future I will build a FM kit.

Photos are a little sparse for this build, I was working on it for the past 4 or 5 months in between Zero builds.
Starting off with the cockpit, I used AK RC333 Ki Midori iro for the main paint and did some minor chipping and weathering, and added some Eduard belts.

I then thinned the cockpit walls and cowl flaps. Looking back, another item I should have thinned/remade was the gunsight framing, it's rather thick and could easily be made out of styrene.

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Up next were the trim actuating rods for the elevators. I cut off the molded in part and glued in 0.020" (iirc) rod. It looks much better and will be something I do for all the planes I build from now on.

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Once the flaps were complete, I sprayed a coat of Mr Surfacer 1500 black and fixed any imperfections that I found. I glued in the rollover bar/head rest, but after looking at photos of my subject plane, I realized that the headrest was removed (not only on my plane but on others as well). So I removed, filled and sanded the area.

7 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Finally, paint! I started with hairyokushoku (IJA grey green). MRP has two shades (415 and 416), one green and the other more blue. It turns out I used the blue tinted one, so I had to repaint it later. Then I sprayed a marble coat of light grey/white to help simulate a worn bare metal finish. On my Ki-44 I used a marble coat of very thinned flat clear sprayed through a stencil, which looked great, so I'll probably be using the pre and post BMF marble.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Next I painted the anti glare (using a combination of Cowling colour and flat black and rubber black to simulate a weathered look) and the IFF bands (note that they follow the leading edge in the inner wing).

8 attached images. Click to enlarge.

I'm speechless about what you are showing here, Woody @wkubacki
So much detail added, like the actuating rods and amazing paint work.

@johnb @fiveten Thanks guys. I haven't posted in a while but thought that accumulating progress and then posting might be a better method than posting in dribs and drabs. With the things I have learned about this particular kit I may go ahead and start on the other 3 oscars I have (2x -I, 1x _II late) I have. they are fairly simple to build and offer a vast array of camouflage schemes, especially New Guinea and China theatres.

Still an excellent result, my friend @wkubacki!