Built, panel-lined and decaled all by me, commissioned by my mom. Wait, what?
Long story short, me and my family went for another road trip to Gundam Planet, and my mom was just infatuated when she saw the GaoGaiGar on the shelves. We, including myself, don’t know anything about the series, but my mom still bought it anyway, because we all thought it did look unique. My mom would pay me to build it and make it look pretty, and so I did. Somehow, despite its sheer amount of plastic that’s in the kit, and the crazy amount of panel-lining and decals there are on the kit, it still only took me a week to do everything. I think I’m just built different.
Build for the most part is great, and because it’s my first ever non-Gundam mecha I’ve ever built, I had the joy of that feeling of uncertainty when assembling the kit. Like, I can’t believe you actually build a train that acts as GaoGaiGar’s shoulders and upper arms. The Drill Gao has actually functioning tracks, but they’re a hassle to build, and the Stealth Gao is basically a bomber. Although there are cool combinations you can do with the kit, we got the kit for the… GaoGaiGar, and the transformation is wacky as hell, but it surprisingly works. It takes a bit of work to get the parts to fit together, and you’re gonna need tweezers to take out a few things. Into GaoGaiGar form, the mech looks complete, it’s full of colors, and the accessories are great!
Just beware of the problems the kit has, because there are glaring problems, most of which can be fixed. The face mask is barely held onto the helmet and trying to fit the helmet onto the GaiGar’s head is a big hassle. The way I fixed it was to glue the mask onto GaiGar’s face, disconnect the helmet from the neck(?) of the Stealth Gao (nobody’s gonna notice it anyways), and the helmet should not be a problem anymore. The side manes of the lion also like to pop off a lot, so the best way to fix that is to just glue it. The only problem that’s too much to fix are the posable hands—think of those super posable MG 3.0 hands, but it’s even more articulate and tighter. Trying to make closed fists is a nightmare, so I just got my dad to do it for me instead, and basically, I haven’t touched the hands at all. Fuck that.
But overall, this was a fun kit. If you’re on the fence buying this kit even if you know nothing about the series, you should probably get it. It’s a fun build, and being a Real Grade kit from Bandai, it’ll be very familiar, if you’ve built RGs before.