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The Gunpla Thread
Manimal:
Gunpla, it's cool, it's fun, it's a good time. This is a thread to talk about Gundam models, making 'em, reviewing 'em, whatever. I'm going to share my builds and blog style posts about making them in this thread so if anyone else out there enjoys this fun hobby let's talk about it.
I got into the hobby at the beginning of the year and now I'm addicted, I can't stop, I love it, I'm having a great time. At first I'd never even seen an episode of Gundam and now I've watched the original and Zeta and the franchise has begun a new phase of revitalized interest in anime for me. I started with the 2004 HG Force Impulse Gundam because it looked like a basic kit and I've made about 16 or so since. I love it. The local hobby shop here stocks them and they get in some older kits which is nice. Now with...world events...it was really the perfect time to get into this hobby so that's a bright side to things. I just love making these things, so of course I had to make a thread to share my experiences with this hobby. and anyone else who makes Gunpla here go ahead and post away.
Manimal:
Perfect Grade RX-178 MK. II (AEUG Version) - First Week Progress
After 4 months of making Gunpla it was time to go to the next grade, the Perfect Grade. With less kits to choose from the main factor for me was picking something from a series I've seen. With the classic RX-78 I had already made the RG kit and with the Zeta I'd made the 2.0 Master Grade, so the Mk. II was the natural pick. It's a cheaper kit as well, made in 2001. I ordered from Argama Hobby an awesome Canadian site that shipped across Ontario in under a week. The Mk. II was a cool suit in Zeta Gundam, with a simple look and classic big anime robot feel. The Mk. II was first piloted by Kamille and then by Emma, who I imagine as the pilot for mine. It's impossible to make this kit without having the Zeta OP playing over and over again in my head.
So let's have a pure time.
SpoilerWHAT'S IN THE BOX?
Inside the massive box you get over 30 runners, LED parts, two bags of screws, a die cast hip joint, springs, snakey gold tubes, a construction manual, a full colour instruction manual and an insert with a picture of the completed kit. I marveled at the size of the parts, especially the feet which are so much bigger than the Master Grades. You got two huge runners of joints, a chrome runner for the pistons and inner cockpit, very sturdy thick plastic for the inner frame parts and all kinds of coolness that makes it worth looking over the runners before you get started. The manuals are pretty neat, even if I can't read all the text in the instruction manual which is basically an info book about the actually suit. This is the third kit I've encountered screws with, and there are quite a few with this one.
THE BATTLE STATION
After going outside to unbox the kit and enjoy looking at the manuals and runners I set up once again on my basement coffee table. Not a recommended place to make Gunpla but a man's gotta do what he has to. I leave space for my laptop to have videos or a podcast on while I build. I like to make it so I can "remote build" as I enjoy building outside, and oh boy we'll get to the drawbacks of that soon. I build inside a cut up box to keep all of the cut off nubs in and to act as a cutting board, which normally I don't need since I don't cut off nubs like a caveman anymore. I organized the runners in the box and I take out the ones I need for each page. I highlight the armour pieces in the manual so I can go back after first building the inner frame of the kit. I got a pretty awesome pair of cutters on Amazon for only $10 and a few different sanding sticks along with a big ol' nail buffer/polisher which works like a charm. At this point I've figured out how to best cut the pieces out and clean them so I take my time getting each piece nice as I can to make the build take longer.
WEEK 1 PROGRESS
After 8 days of casually building I've completed the arms, legs and head. Wow this kit is impressive. The inner frame is so amazing, it's super detailed and mega solid. This is a massive step up from other grades of Gunpla. You use so many pieces and everything comes together in a smart and clever way. If you take your time and appreciate how every piece works you'll get a lot out of this build. The arms are smaller with some very nice hands. You cut out each finger and they are fully posable. The wrist moves everyway you would want it to as well. I added a bit of silver with a Gundam marker and some grey panel liner on the black parts. I tried a black detail wash but it didn't look amazing. I'm not fully into painting and stuff just yet, but if you're crazy about it you can paint this inner frame so good.
The legs are simply outstanding, they have such a crazy design with springs in the ankles, pistons and the cool gold tubes. The engineering on this kit blows away everything else I've made so far, it's so well put together. When a joint feels loose you come in with a screw and it tightens right up. I was amazed building the legs how awesome they are, and this is only the inner frame! So much detail was put into this kit.
Inside the head is where the first LED wire goes. I hope I can do it right, the manual looks understandable but the torso and backpack will be the true trouble when it comes to the LED. The head looks pretty spooky without any armour.
THE OUTDOOR MISHAP
I was having a great time building outside, enjoying a warm day listening to the Boner City podcast. Everything was going good until I had to put a little part in on the ankle. As I twisted it around to click in I watched frozen as it bounced up, hit the deck and slipped between the cracks. Given that the piece is purely cosmetic and not vital to the functionality of the kit I was ready to let it go and move on, but it kept bothering me.
Later on I looked and saw it sitting there between the cracks, perfectly. At first I tried a long pair of tweezers but it wouldn't reach. Then I tried chopsticks...ya I was really just going for anything thin enough that I could think of in that moment. and then I tried two rulers, but nothing was doing the trick. Then I thought hey, the piece has a circle end so I could hook something in it. I cut a string off one of my guitars already missing a string, bent the end and slid it down and through the hole in the piece. Then I moved it up the string with the ruler and maneuvered it up after many failed attempts. It was a great victory when it finally came through and a great lesson was learnt...build outside at your own risk.
I'd lost pieces in the carpet, including an eye piece I have never recovered from the RG Crossbone (luckily it came with two) but losing a piece between the boards in the deck is a lot more hopeless.
MOVING ALONG
So yes the build continues and I'm super happy with this kit so far. It's a lot of fun and giving me a lot of enjoyment in the build and the time it's taking. You really feel the brilliance in the design, it's such an awesome kit. I love longer builds as I want to get the most out of the kit. I like the build the most and the final product makes for an awesome piece. So I'll carry on building it and share the results when I'm done.
Manimal:
High Grade Jagd Doga (Quess Ver.) - Weekend Build
Is it a weekend when you're at home all week anyway? I don't know but one of my feel good things is to go to the local hobby shop. It's a great small shop with a super friendly owner and a nice selection of Gundams in the back. He gets a lot of High Grade kits and some older ones which I like to build. I wanted to pick out something nice and cheap to do this weekend to take a break from the big project of the Perfect Grade Mk. II. The Jagd Doga called to me with it's bulky appearance. A suit piloted by Quess in Char's Counterattack, a character that is quite unfortunate in a movie that would've been better as anime series, but it is what it is. Let's see what we got with this HGUC kit from 2007.
SpoilerWHAT'S IN THE BOX?
With a slighter taller box and a price point a bit more than your normal HG I was expecting to get quite a few runners. That was not really the case as you get about eight. However the unique part is two long clear rods that will be used for the effect pieces of the fancy Newtype missiles. A sticker for the logo on the shield and the mono eye are included. You get a gun, a fancy beam saber, six missiles, a shield and not a part wasted. The extra pieces will be a second trigger finger hand and some poly caps. So nothing crazy going on here aside from some unique effect pieces.
THE BUILD
I took a leisurely 6 hours or so to build this kit. I did it all outside enjoying the weather and a podcast. I took my time to try clean up each piece. The first thing I did was colour the tubes silver with a Gundam marker. I added some more silver here and there and a bit of gold on the bottom crotch piece. This kit certainly could use a bit of detail work so I'll likely go back with a silver panel liner to make the details pop some more. The box suggests painting the thrusters red and for anime accuracy you'll want to paint the two circular parts on the toes red as well.
Nubmarks were a bit of an issue with the red pieces on the kit as I predicted. You have to really be careful when cutting and sanding the armor bits. I took a lot of care when cutting the pieces and I basically destroyed my polishing block on this kit. This was fun to make anyway and it all came together very nicely. The gun has quite a few pieces and a part that swings out on the bottom. The legs cover up the seam lines are very smooth and there are only a few spots that could use panel lining. Detail work will have to be done to the back skirt to make it pop, otherwise it will look quite boring. Overall this was a great build and very satisfying.
LOOK AT IT!
This kit looks amazing! Look at the bulk! It captures the 80's anime look so well and it's just such an awesome and beefy kit. It will stand out among another High Grades for it's red colour and huge bell bottom jeans. This is basically an updated Rick Dias from Zeta Gundam. I love looking at this kit, I'm very happy with how it turned out. The legs are so simple and yet look so good. There is a good bit of detailing as well. The head is kind of weird and you don't see the mono eye at all unless you turn it to look out the sides. I can't say enough how great this kit looks, it really pops.
The beam saber looks good with the green and a knife attached to the end. This kit holds the weapons very well, they aren't going anywhere.
The effect parts however don't look as good to me. The tubes are hard to bend right and unless you have this thing in a battle pose on an action base it's going to look silly and the missiles will fall off easily. I like that these parts are included but the look is less exciting to me. The shield is kind of dumb also since it clumsily hits the shoulder armor and sits on the back of the arm. I took it off and left the kit holding the gun and beam saber.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
The Jagd Doga is an awesome kit. It has some issues but once you're done and you put it on the shelf it pops. The design is excellent and it comes with a good amount of accessories. It's solid, unless you put the effect parts in nothing aside from the head fin is going to come off. That head fin needs to be glued in I'd say. Overall I'm very happy with this kit, it brought me simple joy to make and I had an awesome time. Once I get the RG Sazabi (on the way along with the RG Eva-01) these two should looks great side to side.
Manimal:
Perfect Grade RX-178 MK. II (AEUG Version) - Complete
The Perfect Grade Mk. II is an absolute wonder of robot modeling. It’s well balanced design is captured perfectly in this kit, with all the details and features you’d want. The bulkiness of the anime is conveyed through the armour and a ton of detail pokes through the inner frame. It has a good amount of accessories and a lot of articulation. The size is commanding and it has a presence that will outshine any smaller Gundam model. The build is fulfilling and demands attention to detail so all pieces fit in correctly. It has stickers if you want and a lot of possibilities for painting. The armour has areas to panel line, which I will likely do with grey later. This kit is not perfect but it sure is amazing and well worth the money.
So let's look at what we got here.
SpoilerOVERALL BUILD
This kit is one hell of a build. It took me 14 days at a casual pace. There is a lot to the build and plently of undergating to ensure the smoothest cuts. You really want to take your time and be careful with every piece. You have to put everything in correctly, once I put the armour on I found I put a few of the S runner parts on backwards so I had to take things apart. The build involved a lost piece I had to rescue and a few pokes and cuts with the exacto knife which is purely my fault for holding it so dumb. With all the cool things you get, the diecast waist joint, LED unit pieces, tubes and screws the build is very satisfying overall.
I made the innerframe first to enjoy all the details. There is so much detail here that you just have to admire it and all that went into designing it. and then once you start putting the armour on you see this cool mech come to life. The 360 degree cockpit is awesome, it's a ball in the center of the torso. The LED unit is put in through the backpack, head and cockpit. I couldn't get LR43 batteries however so I ordered them on Amazon. I went looking at Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Dollarama but I could only find LR44s which don't fit. Go figure this kit can include everything but cheap batteries.
Everything in this build takes more pieces than it looks. The design is super clever and there are plenty of parts put in to make things look as smooth as possible. This shows in the backpack which has three pieces for each thruster and a small bit that slides in to hide the on and off switch on the top. The beam sabers are four pieces as well instead of the normal one or two from smaller kits.
ACCESSORIES
The beam sabers store nicely on the back and it comes with two long beam pieces. Everything goes into the hands via a peg that slides out. So there is nothing sticking out of the handles in a weird way. This is a tiny detail that goes a long way. However like every Gundam every putting things in the hands can be annoying and a little difficult.
The rifle is a neat, although a little plain and once you got it in the hand you want to leave it there. I had some annoyance taking these pictures. While this kit is sturdy and holds together very well it's the thing you want to pose and leave to look at instead of moving around. The rocket launcher was so annoying I gave up trying to put it in the hand. The handle falls off all the time so thankfully you can store it on the butt very well. Just like other Gundam rocket launchers it's not so easy to pose, this is normal business however. The shield is mega cool, it slides in and has this amazing locking gimmick. It also has a piece that lets the kit hold it in the back or side of the arm.
OVERALL
This is an amazing kit that truly lives up to it's name of a Perfect Grade. It has some issues holding things and some parts need adjustment if you move it around a lot. But this is all normal Gundam stuff, otherwise the design is fantastic. It looks stunning and has the perfect weight and size. It packs a lot of detail and has a great number of accessories and features. You will not get a G-Defender add for this kit though, which honestly...that would be a disaster and make the kit fall over all the time most likely.
I am super happy with this, it looks amazing and was very fun to build. It amazes me to just look at it. I couldn't of picked a better first Perfect Grade for myself. It's a design I love from the anime and it holds together so well. It's not too much of a brick, although I don't want to pose it a lot. It stands so nicely and without a ton of detailing it looks excellent.
Manimal:
Real Grade Zeta Gundam - An Experience
The Real Grade Zeta Gundam is a kit that gets a bad rep for being a disaster. This small 1/144th scale model packs in all the detail and complexity of Kamille’s classic Gundam, complete with it’s transformation to Wave Rider mode. They had this kit at the local hobby shop and I kept passing it by, knowing it was going to be a crazy build and since I was happy with the 2.0 Master Grade. But I just had to know how this kit was, and I love both Zeta and Real Grade kits so I went for it. How did it go? Let’s see.
SpoilerTHE BUILD
Unboxing this kit you will see 13 runners, a fair size sticker sheet and a nice manual. Real Grade kits always have the best and most clear manuals and whether you like them or not they do come with handy stickers that are nice if you go for that look. You get the Zeta Gundam, it’s extending rifle, the weird arm shield, a few different hands, the grenade launchers on the arms, a small Kamille and beam effect pieces. Large for the beam sabers and small for the barrel of the rifle. This kit of course has it’s transforming gimmick as well so it includes some landing gears. I will not be transforming this kit however since I don’t want to inflict that much pain and suffering upon myself.
First off I used the grey panel liner on the black runner for the backpack and also on the white armour pieces. It didn’t hold all that well I must say, but that is due more to my basic way of doing it.
It took me a few days to build the kit, spending a good chunk of my Monday building it. In the background I was watching garbage 2000’s era MTV “reality” shows like Next and Parental Control since BrutalMoose made a video on Next and it was amusing background noise. I took this kit slow, and you really have to. You gotta pay attention and make sure everything goes in just right. There were a lot of red flags along the way but somehow this kit pulled together. The legs connect in a gross way both at the knees and to the body. Everything that looked like a disaster in the manual turned out to be okay when done carefully and slowly.
I had a good time with the build! The Zeta provides something interesting for sure, since it basically has no body. It comes together in a unique way. The only slightly difficult part was flipping the chest piece over the head. There are a few steps that take holding everything in place just right. Getting the wings to peg into the body was also a pain and I almost broke one of the clips off. You really can’t rush this kit.
When it’s done the kit looks awesome! To my surprise it stands up just fine! Thanks to the heels in the feet it has no issue holding a neutral pose. The backpack also doesn’t give it weight issues. This thing stands much better than the 2.0 MG which is pictured above. The design of the RG is slimmed up in the legs and shoulders. The chest is weird, it looks like it puffs out too much and the yellow collar will not go up enough to click in place. So it’s left looking a bit off all the time. The way the torso is designed is an honest nightmare. It does not sit well and you always have to adjust the two white body pieces that shift around for the transformation.
The waist is a mess that somehow works. The front skirts are connected in a weird way and don’t lock into the crotch which makes them look uneven. The back skirt is also very lacking. This part of the kit makes you not want to move it around too much since you always have to adjust pieces. The arms and legs hold a lot nicer with some stiff joints and general good design.
When you just look at it this is one awesome kit. The blue pops out nice and it has the Real Grade detail that makes it look more alive and less toyish than the MG.
ACCESSORIES
Now we have one major issue with every Zeta kit, the weapons. The rifle is cool but it will not go up unless you tilt it to the side. It’s just too big! The shield is fine however and goes into the back of the arm nicely. The arms themselves work from either the side or with the tubes facing out. You can connect the grenade launchers for extra bulk but they look like nothing special. They are just two blue pieces after all. You can flip out a small panel to see two missiles in the arm.
The beam saber is a disaster. It just barely clips into the side skirt and it will not fit in the hand. I couldn’t get it to hold so I just gave up and did the best I could. The saber itself has a tiny handle. The rifle beam saber was silly in the anime and also silly on the kit, although it makes a good effect piece for posing. Overall the Zeta is good on accessories and gimmicks. The biggest gimmick is the transformation which, again, I will not do for my own sake. I transformed the Master Grade once and I regretted it right away.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Overall the RG Zeta Gundam is a nice kit to look at. It has a unique build that is fun if you take your time and pay attention. It is rewarding and somehow comes together despite it’s crazy design. This kit is very impressive in the sense that they were able to make something so small and full of detail transform. However because of this gimmick you are left with a flawed kit that can’t be posed very well and has a waist and torso full of parts that move around.
I do quite like the kit. It looks awesome and I’m glad I got it. The stickers could have been better since some go over panel lines and feel sloppy in size. I do love the Real Grade design though, they look really nice for the size and I always have fun with them. They aren’t really for moving around though. I did buy a base for this kit so I might put it in a nice pose and just leave it, which is really what you’re going to get out of a Zeta Gundam kit. This model is cool if you like the design and want a flawed but unique experience. You aren’t getting the best of the best but you are getting something interesting. I had fun with it.
BONUS
This nice little thing holds all my Real Grade extra parts in it. Very handy and fun looking.
These Blinking Nail polisher things I bought on Amazon are very good for sanding! They smooth things out very well and are cheap which is just what you need. I also finally got the batteries for my PG Mk. II so we'll see how that ends up looking.
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