By Loran
Okay, well, I said I was going to buy all of them in order (ie, Gundam Wing, then Deathscythe, then Heavyarms, etc) but I lied. I couldn’t hide my anticipation for Epyon. It’s just so cool! I couldn’t hide my excitement for this thing last year and I certainly won’t hide it now. Naturally, I wish the Epyon Master Grade was something anticipated, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to put so much effort into the original 1/100. However, I guess that was a good thing in the long run, since it managed to prepare me for this project, learning how the design works and getting me more used to the colors.
Despite its almost unwieldy box size, this kit doesn’t have as many runners as I expected. In fact, including doubles, it manages to have less than the Wing Gundam! Yet it still costs more for some reason. I suppose it has something to do with the engineering. Not that it matters to me. So long as this kit ends up being just as fun if not more fun to build as the Wing Gundam, my money will be well-spent.
Surprisingly this kit uses just a few polycaps. Yeah, I’m sure this doesn’t surprise those who build MGs regularly, but the last new Master Grade I built was in 2008 and was during the “nah, we don’t need polycaps!” era. I’m glad that passed, personally.
ABS joints are used for the whip. This looks like it’s going to be tedious, but I can guarantee it won’t be as bad as the whip on the old kit was. These can at least be separated and dealt with one at a time, unlike that snake-like monstrosity.
I really don’t like the use of yellow on this kit. To my knowledge this is the only Gundam Epyon kit with molded yellow pieces—the other kits either had gold chrome or no yellow whatsoever. As a result, you can really see how much it would potentially stand out against the red. I’m going to use gold. I figured if any one kit needed from the Wing series needed gold it was this one (and maybe Wing Zero). Painting the others with gold would have seemed like a cool idea at first, but it just would have looked off on Deathscythe and Heavyarms.
The Wings on this kit are much less of a disaster than the old kit, but I can still see them being frustrating. I’d much rather have complex wings that are easy to paint than one-piece wings that require a lot of masking and precise brush strokes.
Included is a little 1/100 scale Zechs, just like all the other Gundams! No, I’m not even going to try to paint these.
The power cable on this kit uses a very thick covered wire, unlike the cheap rubber tube of old. A VAST improvement.
Look at the blade on that beam saber! Wow.
Okay, also included is a book for that wacky Frozen Teardrop novel or manga or whatever. From what I’ve heard, it’s awful (seriously, is that Quatre…? Or his daughter?) but this has some really cool art in it, along with a complete timeline of the After Colony era!
I’m looking forward to getting this project started after the completion of Wing Gundam. I would have saved it for last, but I’m just a sucker for this guy. I even have the paint all ready. You want one of your own, come down to FPNYC, and if we don’t have it, you can always ask!
