Titans Week part 2: HGUC GM Quel

By Loran

Welcome to part two of two of Titans week! I’d like to make this “event” go on longer but I don’t have enough stuff to continue this much longer. For the second part I’m covering a suit that got very little exposure until just a few years ago-The GM Quel. Originally only appearing for about five seconds in the end of Gundam 0083, this suit got a lot of “screentime” in the Advance of Zeta concept and photonovel series, with a few cameo appearances in the Zeta Gundam movies. Until the HGUC was released, the only notable Bandai kit released of it was the Master Grade, which looks severely dated by today’s standards.

The GM Quel was released under the Advance of Zeta banner as opposed to the 0083 banner mainly due to the popularity of Advance of Zeta at the time. This kit was built of the body of the Gundam Hazel kits, sort of the opposite of how it worked in the story! As a result, this kit’s very nice and poseable and sturdy.

As much as I love the GM Quel, and enjoy the poseability of this kit, there’s one thing I have to address first-I cannot STAND the look of this kit. You see, because this kit was based on the Hazel mold, it’s in the Advance of Zeta artstyle, as opposed to the 0083 style, which I annoys the crap out of me. This s characterized by the really fat lower legs and the comparably tiny head. Thankfully, Bandai’s B-Club released a resin upgrade kit that puts it in the 0083 style, but I can’t see myself blowing $50 on legs and a head…

Pet peeves about the design aside, let’s go into the breakdown…

Despite the grievance about the size of the head, it’s pretty nicely-detailed, including a clear plastic visor. What I like to do with visors is paint the back of them silver, so it makes the color “pop” more when you’re looking at the kit head-on.

The torso and waist are your basic construction, and yes, you have to split the skirt armor, but there’s one really nice detail about the AoZ kits-they’re modular! So, you can swap backpacks and gear and all sorts of stuff between them, and even the backpack from the Gundam Mk. II can be thrown on. Kitbashing is fun!

The arms on these kits are very nice too, because they come with that one thing I’m always clamoring for-double joints! This hinge system allows for a really nice range of movement, and it looks pretty neat and robotic.

The hands, however, are really odd. Instead of your standard right trigger hand, right fist, and left fist, you get left AND right trigger fingers, a semi-open left palm, and a right “saber hand”-no fists. The left trigger finger combined with the shield mount are neat because they allow you to make a “lefty” GM Quel like that classic GM from the original series episode, but it seems silly with the beam saber still being mounted on the other side.

The legs and feet are sort of a disappointment after the arms, and I’ve already mentioned how ugly I think the legs are. No special joints here, just a typical 90 degree knee movement with ball-jointed feet, and no neat double-joint like the Mk. II had.

Weapons include the “GM Rifle” that a lot of suits from that era had, the 0080-style shield, and a beam saber. This kit included two beam saber blades, even though it had just one saber. I guess you can give the other one to some other kit that needed it…

In the end, if you can get past the ugly legs and accept it for the civilian-oppressing Titans GM that it is, it’s a nice kit. I would like for them to use the parts to make a GM Custom kit, however. Also included with the kit are a very nice array of stickers, including numbers, “Titans” and “Titans Test Team” logos to help personalize yours. The modular parts shared between this, the Hazels, the Mk. II, and the Gaplant Hrairoo allow for some very cool custom possibilities, and I say let your imagination run wild.