#g-self

Don't worry, I think I can trust this fellow.

This is a 10th anniversary edition of the G-Self Gunpla from the Gundam Base. Apparently, it's way better than the original and needs less color correction stickers, but it still has plenty. (I only put most of the shiny foil stickers on this one and I'm still planning to paint the white, red and yellow parts that are missing).

As for now, he's on a simple standing pose because the moment I try to move him around, he starts to fall apart (yeah, even if it's an updated kit, it still has those very soft plastic parts for the joints). It's a bit more solid than I expected but you still have to be very careful when moving its parts.

This version of the kit also includes lots of spare parts so you can turn this G-Self into the anime version (and also, to make it compatible with his other ton of backpacks from p-bandai).

The G-Self is still my second favorite Gundam design, but I did notice that he has some rather interesting proportions and details compared to other Gundams. He's suppossed to be a shiny, cute toy that can kill thousands of people, and the kit looks pretty well even without some of its color correction stickers.

HG 1/144 Towasanga/Venus Globe Prototype All-Purpose Mobile Suit YG-111 "Gundam G-Self Perfect Pack"

This might've been a bit of a poorly considered impulse buy, but it was a pretty fun build nonetheless.

The G-Self is the main Gundam of Reconguista in G, a somewhat obscure and often forgotten entry in the franchise. Reconguista has some really good looking designs, and some incredible animated sections in the movie remake, but I don't often hear people talking about it, and the model kit line seems to be a little old and rarely reprinted.

This kit heavily shows its age. Despite being somewhat recent (2015), the original retail version of this kit (not the Gundam Base exclusive remake) has limited colour correction and shockingly bad articulation. All of the details on the head (excluding the red parts), the area behind the chest vents, and the red thunderbolt logos, blue sections, and the yellow verniers on the pauldrons, the yellow details on the shield and forearms, the grey sections on the skirts and front of the calves, the white sections and thruster nozzles on the feet, and almost all of the smaller blue Photon Battery parts and all of the coloured detail on the beam rifle need to be recreated with either painting or sticker details.

I tried to paint as much as possible to recreate the full detail of the kit. I initially planned on using my fluorescent blue marker to do all of the Photon Batteries, but I realised that the stickers for these parts are actually UV reactive, so I switched to those. Otherwise, I painted the yellow sections on the sides of the head and on the head vulcans. The black section around the head photon battery has a sticker, but it's a weird one that also covers up the already colour separated red detail (with the wrong shade of red!), so I just painted it all.

The red thunderbolts on the pauldrons are recreated with large, ugly foil stickers, so they had to be carefully painted in. I painted the grey on the skirt (as there's no sticker for this, although whether it's grey or yellow seems to be a little inconsistent) and on the lower legs (also no sticker). There's a nice black sticker that goes behind the chest vents, but I painted this to give it a more matte finish. The vernier on the pauldrons and the yellow trim on the shield felt a little difficult to paint, so I opted to use stickers for them, but I didn't want to bother with folding the blue sticker for the top of the pauldrons so I painted this as well. There are decent white stickers for the feet, but I ended up just painting this detail as I already opened my white paint for the rifle.

All of the trans-blue parts for the larger Photon Batteries are also UV reactive. Some of them go over more UV-reactive stickers, giving a rather nice looking effect, but others are over simple white plastic. The battery on the torso over the cockpit is over dark red, however, so I added some chrome marker behind it to help maintain the vibrance of the part.

I also carefully painted all of the rifle details, including some heat-effects on the barrel. All of the grey parts recieved my usual metallic weathering approach.

The G-Self Perfect Pack comes with a decent collection of option parts. There's two open fists, two open palms, and a right-handed pistol grip for the beam rifle. There's also the beam rifle, a simple Photon Battery shield (that entirely lacks any detail on the underside, showing off some super ugly hollow parts), and of course the titular Perfect Pack backpack.

The Perfect Pack has an arched section with poseable Tractor Fins, and two "Traffic Fins" connected to the main body of the backpack. These are held on with two additional arms, resembling the extra shield-arms from Thunderbolt, and can be freely posed due to the multiple peg and ball joints in the arms. The peg-joints are rather weak, and lack any extra parts to secure them in place, meaning that the Traffic Fins will often droop down or even pop off at the arm joints. This is endlessly frustrating when posing.

The Traffic Fins can be opened into Assault Mode, with each side expanding outwards slightly, and the fins rotating forward to expose the emitter on the bottom.

There are also extra optional effects parts to recreate Reflector Mode, although the 3mm pegs that connect these parts do not properly hold up their weight, and bumping the kit is enough to make them all swing out of position or fall off. There are small hinged parts on the main Traffic Fins that flip out to create the Reflector Mode sillhouette.

The pose looks super intimidating and has incredible shelf-presence, however, so it almost feels worth it.

There are two beam sabers with beam effects in UV-reactive trans-pink. The beam sabers have a cool flat ergonomic-looking handle, and are meant to be stored in the "collar" parts, although the kit lacks the ability to store them anywhere. The beam effects themselves are very long and thin, just as depicted in the show.

Unfortunately, the poseability leaves much to be desired. There's practically zero ab-crunch, and the arms and legs are limited to about 110 degrees of flexion despite appropriate double-jointing. There isn't really any thigh rotation, and the connection for the ankle armor is practically non-existent. Most annoyingly, the head can barely pivot to look upwards, preventing any of the cool and super-dynamic poses this suit achieves in the anime and movie. A lot of the achievable poses look rather stiff and clunky.

To be fair to the kit, the Gundam Base exclusive edition of this kit does rectify a lot of the colour separation and articulation gripes I mentioned, even replacing the UV-reactive blue stickers with reflective metallic stickers (which look better in normal lighting). I wish I had just picked it up when I visited the Gundam Base pop-up instead of settling for this older (and lesser) version.

That being said, this is still a really cool kit, and I'm glad to have a version of it to sit on my shelf, if only to sit there and look cool. I just can't reccomend it to anyone with even potential access to the remake.

The next few builds have already been built and photographed, but I was having trouble sending all the photos to my computer to finish the write-ups. By the time the last few reviews are posted, everything will probably be safely tucked away in boxes for the big move.

Next time, my second proper MG. See you then!

O'm so sleepy help

I feel oddly nervous sharing this. This is my dream Gundam. I made it on Gundam Breaker 4 . It is called the Zeta Luceo (due to creating a lot of light). It is a cross between the Zeta, Stargazer, and G-Self painted in Zeta colors. It is my ultimate Gundam and very special to me. It also has a six winged awakened mode labeled "Zeta Luceo Seraphim".