Still waiting on mine. USA Gundam estimated they were going to get there's in sometime this month... patience wearing thin when I have no kits to build ATM
The stock Gustav Karl hand and rifle are at the bottom. You need to either cut off the tab on weapon or make a slot for it to hold Jesta's rifle. There is really no upside to the consumer for eliminating the tab system. It's not like Bandai designer made some mistake and forgot to put the tab in either. The Jegan rifle comes with tab by default. Even the fortified Jegan rifle used by Silver Bullet has the tab. Not to mention almost all the Unicorn HGUC kits has tab on the gun. My conspiracy theory is that Bandai is again trying to simplify hand design to reduce the part count by phasing out the current hand design used by Unicorn era/CCA era kits. They have been doing that since the Revive started but thankfully, it wasn't consistent. The new Narrative Gundam has those ugly toy like 2 piece hands while the the retooled and few of the new mold like Gustav Karl and Dijeh still retain the semi decent looking hands consisted of 3 pieces. Hope I am wrong here and future HGUC kits won't get screwed like Narrative and Moon as often. It's actually not an uncommon occurrence with Tamiya paint corroding the plastic kit. Just use keywords to search Tamiya paint crack and you will find several examples like below Tamiya Black Panel Liner is dissolving, cracking, and breaking the plastic from my Bandai Star Wars kits. Why? : modelmakers I was tempted to buy this pseudo RX-78-2 for its articulation but then I remembered I already has another fake RX-78-2 with less but still good articulation.
My personal experience with the stuff is it will crack PS and ABS when it's allowed to pool in a seam. I'm going to assume you lined the hip skirt after joining the white and neon pieces. My best guess is capillary action of the seam sucks a bunch of the solvent-heavy paint in, then rapid evaporation causes a stress fracture in the area. Anywho, easiest way to avoid it is panel-lining individual parts *before* assembly so there aren't any seams to collect the accent. ------- Also, been having fun with scale-collecting, and figured I'd finally try the Mega RX-78-2 since most Voyager Primes are ~1:48 in alt mode. Left off a bunch of the gold accents for now in preparation for paint.
^^^You know, I never really thought much about the scale comparison between a Gundam and a Transformer... Fantastic pic...thanks for the reference!
Yeah, I forget exact numbers, but - depending on the series (and thanks to mass-shifting), G1 Prime's height varies between 20-40ft. Scaling this figure up 48x results in a height of ~30ft, so within the ballpark. Though it doesn't work line-wide: A non-shifting Starscream with a 1:48 jet would tower over Prime and reach somewhere between 10-12", about at the Gundam's chest. I think there's an oversized KO of MP Screamer that fits the bill. I think Combiner Wars Megatron's also roughly the right size tank. I need to hunt one down. To be fair, keep in mind that's not MP-10 Prime, but a ~7.5" Voyager-downscaled knock-off MP-10v. That *is* the original MP-10 Spike though. But yeah, the thing's massive. Any 1/48 kit is going to be roughly twice the height and 8x the volume of its MG counterpart. Or 3x the height and 27x the volume of a HG/RG model.
It's also specifically warned on the bottle. "May cause plastic to become brittle". I've had it happen when it finds its way into any area with stress, like a pin, or joint, or where parts join together. This is what I do as well, or just disassemble and panel line, and reassemble when its dry.
So after building only the head to test fit onto the Seraphim, I built the rest of the G-Arcane. It's a surprisingly solid kit with really good parts separation, some really fluid range of motion, and a "cute but not KAWAII" design. (unsurprisingly the pilot is a girl, which is cool. Not many girl Gundam pilots out there as I recall. Well, besides the Wing cast ) For the moment it has a Gundam MK.II head on it but I plan to repaint it into something for my Arch Nemesis Gundam team. (which is, ironically, not really composed of many Gundams) The transformation is about as useless as Gundam transformations come, but the resulting rear skirt is very IBO-reminiscent. The weapons are really cool despite being two big planks of plastic. Almost kind of... dumb that they didn't just engineer the, what, one moving part it'd take to switch modes? But hey, options! Alas, Heavyarms and Laevatein did not arrive. Not the end of the world, but the more I look t those FMP kits the more I want to try one.
No, not so many female pilots, and even fewer for actual Gundam-types. Frequently, the main female pilot is the one stuck in the experimental Mobile Armour, to play up the audience sympathy as we find out she was essentially tortured into the role, and maybe even artificially created for that sole purpose. See: all the Qubeley pilots (and Marida Cruz) among others in the UC continuity, Stella Loussier in Gundam SEED Destiny (alongside her other EXTENDED brothers-in-arms, but she was the most prominent and the one to receive the traditional sob treatment). 00 had two characters that fulfilled branching parts of that role. In the odd cases that a girl gets to pilot an actual Gundam, it's usually a hand-me-down; they're not the original pilot. See, G Gundam, and the Rising Gundam (Shining Gundam revamp) piloted briefly by Rain Mikamura, and the Blast Impulse Gundam getting picked up by Lunamaria Hawke as the upgrade to her ZAKU Cannon, after Shinn was given the keys to the Destiny. IIRC, Lady Une in Gundam Wing piloted the Wing once, but only as a means of transportation in a non-combat scenario. Even the Build series don't bother to let girls into the cockpit proper. The main Gundam users get cutesy SD types as their primaries. The other ladies wind up filling the artificial Newtype roles. Team Song Dynasty Vase in Build Fighters TRY is probably the closest you get to girls getting to start out behind a Gundam... except that the primary member, and the only one to get any real focus is Kaoruko "Gyanko" Sasaki, who picks up after her older brother from the previous series as the resident Gyan fanatic. Her teammates get Gundam-types to start, but in homage to the Rising Gundam and the Nobel Gundam... which were again G Gundam's hand-me-down, and artificial Newtype analogue, respectively. And they're barely in the series after their initial appearance. Story goes that Yoshiyuki Tomino wanted Loran Cehack in Turn A Gundam to be a girl, but that idea was nixed by corporate. So we get a somewhat effeminate looking boy as the pilot, who gets an extended cross-dressing moment instead.
huh, there's a P-Bandai Unicorn ver MG 1/100 Zeta Plus on Amazon for $67 shipped. Is that kit just the late 90's/early 2000's Zeta Plus from Gundam Sentinel redecoed or is it based on the newer MG Zeta Gundam 2.0? edit: yup, it's a redeco of the 2002 kit
It's a great kit nonetheless. I have the original A1 in the orange and tan colors. I like it, reminds me of the VF-1D. Structurally, it was the first step towards the Zeta 2.0 so you might enjoy it. I put mine away for right now but I'm looking forward to working on it. The colors are different than I expected, I was thinking of the stronger primary red and blue, but the lighter tint to it sets it apart from the rest in a good way. It does the nice blend of Roche and Milne, I'm more excited for Autobot Megatron now! - Catching up on the Talk of assembly and panel lining, I like to go back and forth. Sometimes its easier to assemble something first and then panel line it, otherwise I'll panel line individual parts still on their runners when I know that those panel lines don't meet an obvious part edge. Mazinger Z is an example of both ways, but most of the major panel lining I've done is after parts are assembled, that way the lines are continuous. I disassembled the torso so I could paint the parts individually, but then reassembled it to add my lines. Paint in the wide gaps, accent down the lines, adding more gray paint to area such as the armpits. Can't see it very well witn this picture though.. I spent most of the night just touching up the chest and spine, especially with cleaning off the excess paint on the shoulder blades.
It's just a recolour of the older MG Zeta Plus build. Probably not worth the extra cash. It's pretty much the A1 done up in the low-vis C2 colours. Still a pretty good kit, despite its age. Fairly sturdy inner workings. Just a bit more limited in articulation. No torso articulation, no butterfly shoulders, single-jointed neck, and limited ball-jointed hips with no thigh swivels. But I'd just get the standard A1 or C2 for ~$30, not that overpriced thing.
Go for the original.. Testors International Orange works perfectly for painting the edges of the wings. Double Post Punch... Anyone who's interested in the Crossbones RG. They've done a sample demonstration of it online. Real Grade Crossbone Gundam Close-up Preview by Gundam Base Tokyo - Gundam Kits Collection News and Reviews Looks really sharp, especially with the molded cape.
aw fuck there's a 1/100 dark version of the Hyaku Shiki that isn't the Delta Plus from Build Divers called the Crash. Now I want that in addition to the Zeta Plus lol MG 百式壊 レビュー which Shiki is the gold one with the horizontal shoulder thrusters, btw? I can't tell between the two gold Shikis if it's the 2.0 of not
The 2.0 is the one on the left, with the dull gold coating. The one on the right is the P-Bandai Hyaku-Shiki Kai, based on the 2.0. It appears there was both an un-coated and a chromed release of that variant.
I thought it was more an apocryphal story with no definite source, rather than being outright "busted". Whatever the case is, it's still the closest we've ever gotten to a main female pilot in a Gundam series.
I stopped using panel line accent because of this. Beam sabers on my Strike RM and Jesta cracked and in the case of the Strike it ended up crumbling. On my MG Proto wing Zero it cracked a small piece in the shoulder but it was barely noticeable. Ive moved on to the MIG AMMO panel line wash in the hopes that it doesnt produce the same results. I also have the Flory Models wash but I dont like the way that one works.
Pretty much. I mean, nothing to say Tomino couldn't have wanted a female lead, or changed his mind during production but got shot down, but the early designs for Loran were definitely male. So the character did start out as a dude, not lending much evidence to that theory.
