Oooh, boy where do I even begin with this? I am very conflicted about this kit. On one hand, the kit looks flipping amazing and I love the work we put into it, but I hate how I like it, because even though this is a good kit, it’s terribly expensive for something that isn’t a Master Grade.
The build is not bad per say, but it is infuriating. As MG enjoyers, how we usually do our kits is paint the frame first, and then build the frame without using any armor parts possible. RE/100s usually had no inner frame, which was kinda the point, so that didn’t bug me, but like how YouTubers have said, this kit in particular blurs the line between no-grade and MGs, so it’s crazy how it comes with a bunch of inner frame parts but how much you can build the frame by itself ends up looking like this and all those leg inner frame parts, are all connected with the black armor pieces.
The engineering goes out of its way to make itself complex, even make the frame parts detailed, but they also avoid trying to complete the frame as much as possible, especially with the leg. At least getting it all snapped up with the armor parts and the backpack, it doesn’t feel hollow, but still… and there’s one more problem I have to get into.
With it all snapped up, what can I say? It looked great. Panel-lined, painted and decaled up, ooh boy does it look phenomenal, yeah the decals look like shit in the pictures, but they don’t look bad outside of the lightbox. I thought it wasn’t going to stand up on its own because of the heavy backpack, but lo and behold, it can stand on its own, you’re really just limited with the ground poses. On air, there are pretty much zero problems posing it. I will say that the gun shield is quite annoying as it always hits with the big-ass shoulder it has, and the clear stand for the hammer is bad. But yeah, once everything was completed, I can say it was a good experience all around.
I can’t forgive the price though. Besides the inflation on Gunpla in the US, the MSRP for this kit is downright unacceptable. Even though RE/100s were just MGs built like HGs, at least they were cheaper than most MGs. Using US prices, the Raider costs more than most SEED MGs, and while the Raider may have that huge backpack and claws, there’s still more plastic in SEED MGs like Justice, Freedom and Providence, and those are cheaper. Raider being expensive AF defeats the entire purpose of FM / RE/100 lines, it’s just as expensive as Master Grades, but is still built like a high grade, or maybe an old-school MG. It’s simplified down, like they could have definitely fit an inner frame in this kit, but they don’t, and I hate this direction of 1/100 kits. Instead of having new MGs, Bandai’s just gonna release these FMs instead, allowing them to cut corners in their engineering, but price them as much as Master Grades, and make MGs even more expensive than they already were. It’s like when $1000 flagship smartphones became common and allowed this terrible price category of “premium-midrange” phones to exist which cut a bunch of corners to cost $700-$800. I just hate it. I also hate how in spite of this, I am definitely getting that FM Forbidden when it comes out, cuz at least that’s a kit that looks like it does have a lot of plastic. Sorry for the long rant if you made it up this far, but that’s all I have to say.
