Very rarely does Bandai put a kit out that makes me want it immediately, especially when it’s not from Unicorn in any way, shape, or form. There are some designs to which I’m weirdly attached, yet never actually bothered to buy a kit of. Sometimes it’s just laziness, or I meant to actually get one when something came up and I lost interest. Of course, with the stupid decisions I make regarding how I build kits, you never know. One minute I’m building SEED 1/144s left and right, the next I’m going on about how much I hate doing non-UC 1/144s.
The Blitz Gundam is a suit I’ve always loved for some strange reason. It’s one of those rare suits from SEED that just oozes originality. Yeah, the whole “black stealth Gundam” thing was kind of done with Deathscythe, but Blitz actually did things DIFFERENTLY, in a way that just made it awesome. The basic Gundam may be kind of generic, but you have to love that color scheme and weapon selection. Heck, the thing pretty much has its own cloaking device! The Romulans would have been proud.
Also, this thing was my main for awhile in SD Gundam Online, which just made me like it more…
So yeah, I was pretty excited to get this kit. I figured I’d build it last out of my Otakon MG bunch as sort of a “save the best for last” mentality. And you know what? I’m glad I did, because this kit bas proven to be a lot of fun so far.
Much like the AGE-1 Titus, this has felt a bit simplified, but less in a “they wanted to make it easier” way, and more of a streamlining manner. The kit still has features everywhere, with all sorts of moving parts that really don’t need to move, like the shoulders.
While working on this kit, I decided I’d work on the decals WHILE I was assembling/painting, instead of waiting until the end. SO AS YOU CAN SEE, this thing has a lot more decals than my kits usually do, even at this stage of development. I’ve been using stickers for the parts I’m not too certain on, or are kind of small. It’s looking pretty good so far!
Of course, I’ve run into a few problems. During initial construction, I accidentally put the two wing binders on backwards, which led me to break one of them. I’ve managed to fix it, thankfully. You probably can’t even see the damage.
The purple I ended up mixing came out a little too bright for my liking at first, but you know, I can run with this. This will be great for when I finally get around to painting my Black Tri-Stars Zaku.
So far, this has been a pretty fun project. It’s nice to see one of the best Gundams from SEED getting the Master Grade treatment (especially before some of the more popular ones!), so I actually think this will sell me on the other Gundams from the series since they all share the same basic frame. If you see this at FPNYC, I’d certainly pick it up, if I were you!
