#bucue

HGCE 1/144 Zodiac Alliance of Freedom Treaty Mass Production Ground Mobile Suit TMF/A-802 "BuCUE"

The BuCUE is only the second HGCE I've ever built (the first is the Mighty Strike Freedom). I'm not a huge SEED fan, and I've been reluctant to collect much from the HGCE line, especially when seeing other modellers experiences with poor colour correction and the general dated nature of the older pre-SEED Freedom kits. However, I really love the unique zoids-like design of the BuCUE, and hearing good things about the HG kit, I picked up a couple.

The BuCUEs are the villians for SEED's counterpart to the Ramba Ral arc in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. They're a coterie of 4-legged desert adapted mobile suits that resemble large dogs with fighter-jet wings, and have tracked sections on their legs that allow for more tank-like traversal as well (recreated with a flexible black rubber part that with the help of a hidden wheel can morph between a flat track mode or bent leg mode).

The BuCUE can be equipped with either a set of 450mm twin railguns, or a large missile pod. I ended up getting two sets so I could build one of each, just as I did with my HGUC Cucuruz Doan's Island Guncannon.

The BuCUE is fairly decent in terms of colour separation, expecially concerning the contemporary SEED kits it was developed alongside. There's a really nice silver inner frame, and the entire thing goes together without any polycap parts. Almost the entire kit is colour correct, including sections such as the red missiles, intake vents and jets on the wings, and yellow toe parts (which I was certain would be a stickered detail). However, there are also a lot of ommissions. There's no grey sprue, so all of the grey sections including around the intake vents, the rear of the railguns, and the weapon mount need to be painted. You also need to paint the grey sections on the foreleg as well as the beam saber on the kit's "mouth".

There's a foil eye sticker split into three parts to go around the struts, as well as quite a few yellow colour correction stickers to replicate the markings on the weapons and wings. Usually I'd paint details like this, but I had no motivation to paint this much yellow, as it's a pain to paint with.

I weathered the grey parts I'd painted with my usual technique, as well as adding a silver drybrush to make the silver parts extra shiny, and doing some sponge chipping to accentuate the otherwise flat detail of the kit.

Surprisingly, the neck is incredibly detailed. It's recreated using a set of 6 individual vertebrae in silver threaded over a grey flexible wire, with two black rubber pipes running like jugulars along the bottom. This, alongside a few ball joints, makes the neck incredibly poseable and very visceral.

The rest of the kit is just as poseable. All 4 legs are double jointed, with double-ball joints at the hips and a wrist hinge and a ball joint for the foot that lets the enitre leg splay out like a real dog. The wings can hinge up and down a little, and there's a hidden ball joint in the waist for extra poseability.

The kit comes with quite a few marking stickers, including Z.A.F.T. insignia, and stickers for numbering the kit. I supplemented these with a few of my own leftovers to help the kits look properly detailed. I labelled the missile pod unit "109" and the railgun unit "045", mostly based on whatever number stickers I had remaining.

Apart from a missile pod and a twin railgun weapon option, the kits have no optional parts apart from the two pink beam saber effects for the double-sided beam saber affixed to the BuCUE's "mouth". There's also a little removable hatch behind the cockpit area that conceals the 3mm plug, compatible with an action base.

Overall I'm super proud of how these kits turned out. I think I could've done a neater job on the yellow foil stickers, but the mistakes aren't super noticeable. I'm super tempted to pick up either the Cal-re.A or the Justice as a couterpart for my Mighty Strike now.

Only a few more kits to go to clear my backlog before I move!

some junk i’ve been working on the past couple of months:

Modified dog bot

GM Dog with a gun

Actual dog with a gun

“Dog team”