HGBD:R 1/144 Alus Planets System AGP-X1 "Alus Core Gundam" + Alus Planets System Armour Unit AGP-X1/E3 "Alus Earthree Gundam"

My third Core System set!!! I really have to get around to watching Re: Rise now. Compared to the previous Marsfour and Earthree kits I built, the Alus Earthree has a notably more menacing design language. It shares many of the same parts, including the entire Core Gundam sprue that was common between Marsfour and Earthree, however introduces several new and unique parts for the arms, legs, and body.

I really liked how the Alus Core Gundam differentiates itself. The longer arms, spindly fingers, and clawed feet make this suit look menacing, and the head design looks really cool. The foil stickers go on nicely and the main eye is super reflective behind the purple hood. You can choose between a red sticker for Alus or a purple one for Eldora. I went with red to add some contrast with the darker purple color scheme of the kit.

Just like the other two Core Gundams there's an impressive level of articulation baked into the little model. A neat bonus was the inclusion of actual hand options, with two open, two closed, and a beam effect handpiece in trans-purple. Unfortunately, there weren't extra hand back pieces. You need to juggle the two the kit comes with between all the hand options.

Like the other two kits, this one includes a small beam spray gun. There's no colored part to compete the shield, unfortunately, nor are there any beam sabers (instead of saber racks, this suit has two thin stabilizers on its backpack). Instead, there's a hand option piece depicting a beam effect coming directly out of the suit's fingers, which looks really cool. One minor nitpick is that the hand backing for this piece is a sticker rather than a separate part.

Just like the normal Earthree Gundam, this kit includes a full set of armour-up parts including extensions to the beam spray gun to turn it into a really cool looking beam cannon. The parts attach to the core unit in the same way as the base Earthree parts, but have interesting design variations, including more claw-like feet, a large set of four wings for the back, and some really nice purple details done using the foil sticker sheet. Due to the longer arms, there are no arm extension parts. There's also a new unique head for the Alus Earthree Gundam mode, with a crown-like v-fin design over the red foil eye sticker.

Unlike the other two kits, the Alus Earthree Armour isn't stored on a flight platform. Rather, there's a rather odd separate piece that you can attach all the extra option parts to, including the spare heads, extra hands, and Alus Earthree Armour bits. I don't think this is an in-universe delivery method, but it's a cool little extra to hold all the parts together when they're not on the kit.

The beam cannon is one of my favorite parts of the kit. It's a set of five parts that clip over the beam spray gun piece. The front two mandibles can open to deliver a less focused, larger area of effect shot, and a side part pops open to reveal a handle for two handed poses.

I ended up doing quite a lot of detail work on this kit. There's some Citadel Necron compound drybrushing on the light gray frame parts, as well as gunmetal and silver pigment powder (Tamiya weathering set C) over all the darker parts, and some soot and blueing effects on the gun (Tamiya weathering set D).

I ended up enjoying the Alus Earthree Gundam a lot more than I thought I would. It's a really fun build without too many small parts or complex techniques, and the metallic foil stickers are really well chosen and help the kit pop. I definitely recommend it for anyone looking to get into HG gunpla, or who wants a kit with decent color separation, good design, and fantastic panel lines out of the box - I don't think there's anywhere you'd have to scribe to add detail!