#allenby

HGFC 1/144 Neo-Sweden Mobile Fighter GF13-050NSW "Nobell Gundam" ✨🇸🇪

I finally found one! I've wanted to pick up a Nobell Gundam since even before I watched G-Gundam, and I was lucky enough to find a kit at the Gundam Base pop-up side-store a few weeks ago. Nobell is one of the few G-Gundam kits to be revived in the short-lived 2011 HGFC retail line, alongside the Shining Gundam, God Gundam, Master Gundam, and the Death Army grunt.

The Nobell is an especially small kit, with only 4 sprues, although it doesn't look too out of scale next to the other HGFC kits as the heels help make up its height.

Despite being an older kit, Nobell easily matches the quality of the newer P-Bandai HGFC kits (my Dragon, Maxter, and Rose are linked), complete with almost perfect colour correction and a complete lack of polycap parts. Nobel uses some really impressive design to make sure that the various red , white, and yellow parts are all separated, with an especially interesting head construction. There's still a decent amount of colour correction, including the grey on the inside of the "hair" cooling fins, the white lines on the "scarf", and the green sensor on the bow on the front, as well as the red markings on the neck and left thigh. There are some nice stickers for the white and red colour correction, but I found it a nice excersise in brush control to paint all of them myself, especially since the red stickers felt too metallic for their purpose. I also did my usual metallic weathering for the grey parts.

Unfortunately, as it's not part of the P-Bandai Anniversary line, the articulation and gimmick inclusion is palpably of-its-time. There's no articulation on the back-skirt and very limited hip articulation, preventing some of the more flexible gymnast-like poses achieved by Nobell in the anime. Thankfully, you can still achieve a lot of dynamic poses, thanks in-part to the hair-piece being articulated on a ball joint.

Included in this kit are two open hand options, two open fists, and a single left handed peace sign. There's also two Beam Ribbon hilts, with four different flexible plastic efffects parts. There's two different sizes of large spiral, one tighter spiral, and two straight parts. I found the spiral ones really difficult to effectively pose, as their flat spiral shape can be pretty stubborn to get into place.

The design of the Nobell was apparently inspired by the casual/civillian outfit for Sailor Venus, so I had to copy her signature pose.

The Berserker Mode for Nobell was clearly inspired by how Sailor Venus' hair fans out as well, although unfortunately despite the only difference being the hairpiece, Berserker Mode is only available as a separate kit (although it is a slightly glossier and red-tinted plastic, evoking the red glow of Berserker Mode, and was entirely retail, which is more than can be said of similar gimmicks such as Trans-Am).

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this kit. it was super quick to put together, and it helps to nicely round out my HGFC collection while I continue to wait for Bandai to make the anniversary Bolt Gundam (*cough cough*).

Next up, on to the star of the show... Shining Gundam!

Just for funsies, I've recently tried to wrap my mind around this tiny mistake in Act Two Scene One in the play "Ross. A character portrait" by Terence Rattigan.

For context, Lawrence has just arrived at Allenby's GHQ and stops an exiting Storrs to tell him about one of the newest archaeological discoveries by Freddie Strong (I failed at identifying him with a real life person), that is an alabastron (perfume jar) from the Twentieth Dinasty with strong Minoan influences. [As an aside, this is factually incorrect, since the Egyptian Twentieth Dinasty goes from 1189 BC to 1077 BC, while Minoans lasted from around 3100 BC to approximately 1400 BC, but it isn't the main topic here]

allenby dinosaur by jellycat