I remember when the GQuuuuuuX designs were first revealed, I was baffled by how the RX-78 redesign looked like. Then, I saw the Gundam in action watching -Beginning- in theaters, which changed my mind 100%. The fact that the HG would come with the bits and the hammer, I knew I had to get the Red Gundam kit.
And I found it in Canada of all places, while I was visiting family over the week. The site said it was still for pre-order, but it was there in person, so I got it under US MSRP due to CAD being weak. I was still on vacation for another week by the time I got it. However, I was hit with a sudden urge to build and became impatient waiting to get home to build something, so while I was still on vacation, I found myself a pair of nippers at a store, and built the kit with nothing but a pair of $5 nippers and high grit sanding sticks that I also got with the Red Gundam (they were to go along with my low grit sticks). I finished snapping the kit when I got home, because I couldn’t take sanding nubs off with 1000 grit sticks anymore.
As for the building experience, it builds a lot more to a traditional HG Gundam compared to GQuuuuuuX, but it’s still more involved than something like a G-Witch kit. The bits, while color inaccurate for shit, is separated by parts, although the area that needs to be yellow is literally just molded in gray, which I got no clue why the pieces were not just molded yellow in the first place. I was surprised that the kit would come with the hammer, and I was doubly surprised that the hammer’s chain comes directly from the RG 2.0 expansion pack, which that’s right, this HG Gundam comes with Advanced MS Joint parts. There’s a lot of nubs on them, but they’re easy to handle since they’re very small.
Like the GQuuuuuuX, this HG is considerably color inaccurate out of the box, and while there’s a lot to fix, it’s not as egregious as it mostly needs red, gray and yellow orange, all of which I had paint colors that matched well enough. There’s so much to do on the head, but it’s also small as fuck, so I only bothered putting a bit of yellow and gray, and just panel lined where the purple eyes are supposed to go. I did my best with the yellow on the Gundam, and again, there’s just so much needed for the bits, but I was able to match it to the box art well enough, just don’t mind how sloppy I did it in some areas, ‘cuz after a while I do get lazy to clean it up. On top of color correcting, I made a few additional paint details here and there, just to spice it up a bit.
I then panel lined, which again, the head has an abundance of detail, that it’s borderline unfitting with the rest of the Gundam where there’s not as much lining. Don’t get me wrong, te Red Gundam is very detailed for an HG, but my god the head has more detail than some RG heads if I’m being honest. It probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea adding gray decals to detail the kit even more, but I just got exhausted from all the painting and lining I had to do, that I just skipped doing that and just gave it a flat coat, ready to pose it up.
Unlike the GQuuuuuuX, which posing was the most positive experience I had with the kit, posing was not nearly as fun with the Red Gundam. The bits have a hefty amount of weight to them, making it a bit finicky to stand up at times, and I particularly found the red skirt parts, the pieces that hold the bits on the shoulders, and the parts swapping pretty annoying. With the skirt pieces attached to the hip joints, it sometimes allows me to move the leg wherever I want, and sometimes it’s a hindrance and I can’t get the leg to move for shit. This is a skill issue on my end as I could’ve just sanded the pegs, but trying to rotate the bits while on the shoulders were an absolute bitch because the connection piece would just come out of the shoulder instead, and I was quite annoyed with parts swapping you have to do for the weapons. Every weapon but the beam rifle can slide into the hands, and any time you wanna attach something to the Gundam, you gotta swap it with another part. Nonetheless, I got quite a few photogenic shots from the kit, and I’m pretty happy how it turned out.
What’s not great though was that while I built this kit before it could reach my backlog, it has stopped me from getting my backlog done. According to a spreadsheet I’ve made, my dad and I have accumulated a backlog of 33 kits, so you’ll probably see me soon with another one. See you then!
