by madgophermm5
So I should probably start this review by saying that I am not normally a snapper, which means I don’t normally just build a kit as is right out of the box. I usually prefer to take my time and paint my kits up very nice, however Bandai has come along way from the old Gundam Wing high grades that came out back when I was in high school and first getting in to the hobby. So after seeing some pics online of this kit built right out of the box, I decided it might make a fun little build, to pass the time.
There are so many good things to say about this kit I really don’t know where to start. The first thing I noticed was how few stickers came with the kit, which means almost everything is molded in the color it needs to be. The only stickers it comes with are the usual eyes, metallic green for the gun sight and the crest of the head, and it came with two white stickers for a piece atop the shoulders. The pink energy frame was very impressive and “gives it a really striking look” as my wife would say. This thing looks like a mini mg kit almost. All in all with no painting it looks almost exactly as it does in the box art.
Another great thing about this model is how solid the construction feels. When moving it around and posing it not once did I have an arm fall off or have the figure just come apart in two at the waist. This is a common problem I had with the old Wing kits back in the day and I even had that problem with some of my 00 kits of recent, particularly my 100 scale Dynames. There was one small exception to this though and that was the crest piece on the head would often fall out but this is easily remedied with a bit of model glue. Seriously I have dropped this thing without losing anything except for that crest.
As far as pose ability goes I would say its about average. I wouldn’t say that it was lacking in movement but it didn’t really impress me with a wide range either. It can pull of several very nice poses and it is pretty stable so you don’t really have to worry about it falling down. I would recommend getting one of the Bandai display bases that are shown on the side of the box so you can set it up in some cool midair poses. Mostly I just pose him shooting his gun since as far as accessories go that is pretty much the only thing he came with.
Finally for those of you serious model builders who like to go the whole nine yards and paint and remove seam lines and such, you will note that they did such a great job incorporating the seems into the design of the kit that there are almost no seam lines to remove at all. With the exception of the top thigh piece and a small one on the side of the upper torso there are almost no visible seam lines on this entire kit.
Now for the negative, the first thing I noticed in the cons category was a distinct lack of beam sabers. The pics on the side of the box have the model posed with beam sabers and the kit comes with handles for the beam sabers but it doesn’t actually come with the energy blade. After some research I found out you have to buy the regular Unicorn kit to get the beam sabers, which is quite frankly bullshit, especially since the beam sabers are on a separate runner in that kit. Would it have been so hard to throw that into this kit as well.
Secondly while everything is molded in the correct color there is one small exception where you are given two white stickers to cover a piece of the pink psycho frame on top of the shoulder. I felt like this really could have been done as a separate piece. I never like how stickers look on a kit and I feel like they came so close to having no stickers at all they should have just gone the extra mile and had the whole thing molded in the right color.
If it feels like I am being very nitpicky and complaining about the littlest thing its because I am. here really is so little to complain about with this kit that I felt like I really had to make mountains out of mole hills just so I would have something contrary to say. All in all this is a great kit that is just short of perfection. It was a fun build and it is great for both amateur and hardcore gunpla hobbyist alike. I only hope the rest of the new HG Unicorn kits are this much fun.
Marketing genius that Bandai-Namco. On the plus side, since I have a kit that has the sabers, I get to openly mock those w/o them.
MOCK, MOCK, MOCK, I AM MATURE!
hehe, they left out the beam sabers so you would have to purchase the normal unicorn mode or another kit that has the beam sabers. It’s a good strategy from a business stand point.