I gotta say, when Gundam 00 was first announced, I was pretty ecstatic and really looking forward to it-the setting sounded interesting and plausible, the mecha were a breath of fresh air, and the characters actually looked DIFFERENT from each other unlike the last series. Well, I’m not really here right now to talk about the show itself-I’m here to review kits, of course. I really took a liking to 00’s grunts-the ones in the first season, that is. They were unlike designs we’d previously seen in Gundam, running the gamut of chunky battlemech-types, to sleek aerial mecha, to wacky suits with tons of curves. They were that nice design change I’d been waiting for.
And here we have the first of my Gundam 00 model kit purchases-Soma Peries’s Tieren Taozi-yeah, it’s PINK. Something about a manly-looking battlemech-styled suit in pink is incredibly awesome to me. Regardless of its color, it has a pretty nice design, and out of all the Tieren variants, this is probably one of my favorites.
The head has no actual movement of its own, but instead, a positionable monoeye-and this one actually works pretty well. While you still need to remove part of the head, the design allows it to come off easily. The monoeye piece is similar to ones seen on the Zaku kits, but it actually has a raised part for the eye itself, making it a LOT easier to paint.
The body is also pretty cool, as it has a LOT of movement. The pieces for the shoulders are able to move almost all the way to the front, giving some serious poseability to the arms, giving it the ability to hold a huge gun if you’d like it to.
The torso also moves in almost any direction thanks to the double joints, being able to move 360 degrees at the bottom part and up and down at the top. It can move pretty far back/down, and thankfully, the propellant tank is on its own joint so it doesn’t get in the way.
Its arms are pretty simple, with no double joint or anything. You do get a halfway decent hand selection, with a fist for each arm, and an open hand for the right. What I don’t get is the shields… why are these hinges there? They don’t seem to serve much of a purpose from a design standpoint and they’re sort of hard to use because they’re all hard plastic, so they don’t have a fluid movement. Mine tend to pop out a lot when I do anything with them, so I just leave them coiled up.
But in my opinion, the coolest part of this kit is the legs. They have one thing I’ve never seen before-double jointed HIPS! While yes, most Master Grade kits have that Marvel Legends-style joint allowing a hinge and a swivel; this is basically like, a second knee at the hip. It’s really cool, and makes posing the kit a lot of fun. However, the small connection port at the thigh is a bit of an annoyance, as it causes the piece to pop out sometimes. Other than that, you get a nice double-joint at the knees and a standard ball joint for the ankle.
The weapons are sort of straightforward, with a melee weapon and a gun. The gun is a freaky-looking beam rifle that can be mounted to either arm, and the melee weapon is an even stranger blade thing. I have no idea what it’s called. Apparently the gun doubles as a blade, too… I don’t know how that really works. It’s been a few years since I saw 00’s first season. Just be a bit warned-you might end up breaking part of the first when putting the weapon in because of how thin the plastic connecting the fingers to the thumb is. However, it doesn’t affect how the weapon is held, because it plugs into the palm.
Yeah, the Tieren Taozi is a pretty cool kit. We even carry this one in the store, along with a few other Tieren variants. In fact, for those who don’t like pink, we carry Sergei’s custom Taozi too, which is, well, purple. But hey, it’s an awesome suit with a pretty solid kit. Grab one in whichever color you like.
Did I mention the pink being awesome?
