HGUC 1/144 Mafty Mass-Produced Heavy Mobile Suit Me02R-F01 "Messer Type-F01"
I'm back with another of Bandai's supersized Hathaway kits, this time with Mafty's large grunt suit, the Messer Type-F01. These suits have a prominent role in both the first and second movie, destroying the hotels in which the Earth Federation officials are staying and clashing with the Federation's Gustav Karls (which I built earlier this year here). The Messer owes its lineage to the earlier Geara Dogas from the Second Neo-Zeon war and the Laplace conflict, as well as technical data from the ill-fated Sazabi, and were developed specially for Mafty's forces by Anaheim Electronics.
The Messer has some pretty interesting design details, with much slimmer and more proportional lower legs as compared to most Zeonic-style mono-eyes, and an interesting set of backpack thrusters on spherical gimbals. The rounded shoulder pauldron is switched to the right shoulder, as compared to the typical left shoulder of the earlier Zaku II, and features 5 3-meter long spikes. The suit also features chest vents, as well as thin rectangular vents on the shins, both features typically seen more on Federation designs.
This design is significantly cleaned up and simplified from the more outlandish design seen in the novel (a design better reflected by the Type-M01 seen in Sorcery of Nymph Circe), and rather resembles the SD Gundam Generations and manga adaptation designs. Unlike the novel and manga versions, this version of the Messer is stated to have its cockpit in the head (like its precursor the Sazabi) rather than in the torso (although you can still see design accomodations that would allow for a torso-based cockpit).
Just like the HGUC Xi and Gustav Karl this kit has very modern design considerations and decent colour separation. The Messer does feel a little less refined, with limited elbow and knee flexion and some rather shallow peg connections on the upper arms that can fall out rather easily. The very large and flat head limits its ability to rotate, but there's some great torso design to let it rotate and give it very impressive ab crunch for some great poseability. The kit is absolutely massive, being 23m tall in-universe and standing just as large as some of my 1/100 MG kits. However because of this it's really poorly served by its included Action Base adaptor, which is too shallow to properly interface with Action Base pegs making it super unstable on a stand.
The colour correction is also not as great as the Gustav Karl, with several areas that require some rather difficult yellow foil colour-correction stickers (the shoulder and facial power conduits). You also need to paint the auxillary thruster vents on the front skirt, as well as various areas of grey for the 6 head vucans and the two included on the shield. The Long Beam Rifle is also entirely the wrong colour, moulded in grey rather than the pale olive seen in the movie (and correctly colour separated in the new Type-M01 kit). I didn't end up painting this in, but I added my greenish titanium weathering pigment powder to at least give the impression of the different colours of the rifle. I also added some fluorescent orange paint into the targeting camera as there's no colour correction sticker for this section either.
There's some really nice colouring on the various thrusters on the legs and rear skirt that need to be painted in as well, which was fairly difficult to add in due to the thin red and grey striping on some of them. This isn't strictly necessary as the only super visible thrusters are going to be the ones on the backpack.
The rest of the kit got my usual metallic weathering for the grey sections and a basic matte topcoat throughout.
Similarly to the old Zaku I kit, the main camera is a mono-eye behind a protective screen divided into two main sections. To rotate the eye, you need to remove the front of the face to access the moveable part, which can be a little annoying (compared to other mono-eye kits where there's a switch under the chin that can be pushed to move the eye).
The kit is fairly light on accessories. There's of course the Long Beam rifle, with a special right-handed pistol grip option for it. There's also two open fist options, but unfortunately no open hand options. There's a basic two-part shield which features raised platforms with large vulcans, although because of the kit's design the rear of these are hollow which somewhat breaks the illusion.
On the rear of the shield are two small beam sabers. The included beam saber effects are the standard MG ones (rather than the unique modified parts included in the Gustav Karl), moulded in a very vibrant trans-yellow.
Overall, I really love how this kit ended up looking, although it's by no means my favourite build. It has some great shelf presence, and while I think it'd be greatly improved by some decals, for now I'm calling it good. I might add a few more newer monoeye kits to my collection soon, so keep an eye out!
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