Built, panel lined, decaled and matte coated by me.
For a holy grail for many, this is my very first Gundam Base kit that I acquired at this year’s New York Comic Con from the official Gundam Base vendor, which I only paid $50 plus tax for. This is based on the 1/1 statue in Fukuoka, which the design itself comes from the original RG Nu, but comes with a few physical tweaks, a new color scheme and a giant fin funnel that also serves as the statue’s support. I remember loving the RG Nu back when I built it back in 2020, so it shouldn’t be surprising that this kit is also really damn good.
Coming from the RG 2.0, the Nu really does feel like a mini Master Grade to a T—it is the first RG to not have any Advanced MS Joints on the frame at all, and there’s just a lot of plastic to cut out. However, this version of the Nu is not a direct color change from the original, there are a few new parts with molded details and parts in which add or remove color separation, but what that means is dealing with duplicate runners in which you bet your ass that there’s a lot of parts that are unused. Although the runners come with those tabs that part of the runners can be pulled out for variations, all of the pieces for the funnels are still in the box anyway. What this all means is that navigating through the runners while building is a bitch, but the kit itself is solid regardless. As for the giant funnel, it indeed comes with a whole bunch of parts, and it is indeed very detailed, and it can also open up, though the way to open it can get finicky in the way that it’s difficult to pull out the mechanism.
When I bought the Nu at Comic Con, the store gave a free Gundam Marker at checkout, and since a bunch of my pens were dying, I decided, “hey, why not try a Gundam Marker for once?” Having used 0.03 pens for ages, the Gundam Marker is quite thick out of the box, and oh boy, after lining everything the pen has gotten really thick. Nonetheless, I tried my best thinning out the lines as much as possible using this very cool trick called using your thumb, and it’s worked for the most part, but it’s made lining a lengthy process. What I do like about this pen over Micron and Copic pens is that it doesn’t dry up so easily, if only it was thinner so that the lining doesn’t look too cartoony. Maybe I should finally try gray pens for once.
However, the real kicker about this kit is that it comes with a gigantic sticker decal sheet, with the number going as high as 195, with an additional 48 metallic stickers, and the fact that there are numerous repeated decals. If I had to estimate, the manual requires you to apply around 300 decals, and while working with sticker decals takes the shortest amount of time and effort, it is still A LOT to deal with. A lot of them are tiny, and a lot of them are poorly cut. Luckily, the main ones, like Amuro’s logo and the patriotic looking skirt decals, are cut pretty well, but others do not fare well in tight placements. I rather deal with sticker decals though as I would probably lose my patience with water slides. If it took me 5 days to do stickers, god knows how long it would take to do water slides. I wondered why the kit comes with this insane amount of decals, but this is based on the Nu statue after all, where they have all that free space to plaster as many details as the designers wish to.
All that was left was a quick flat topcoat, and that gave me no trouble as this is a predominantly white kit. With the big funnel this Nu packs, can it pull off any poses? Well, this is Nu, and while it may not be for show, it really knows how to show off. Nu is solid as a rock, so it can pull anything you like, and since the funnel doubles as a support, you can do a lot on the ground. The funnel is a weapon itself, so it can be used as a giant shoulder cannon, or even better, used as an armed weapon. It’s literally just Nu, but now with a very cool single funnel instead of 6 haphazardly attached on its backpack.
Overall, it’s a cool kit. It’s really hard to get as a Gundam Base Limited kit, but if you see the chance to get one at a decent price, you might wanna go for it as this comes with actual new plastic than it being… a clear color or something. That’s about it, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time!
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