So, I scooped this kit in like November (?) of last year. It’s no big secret that I’m a fan of ‘The Witch from Mercury’ series. I dig the mech designs and I’m Slowly making my way through a couple of the kits. Despite digging the Gundvolva’s design, I was hesitant on getting one. I’ve still barely scratched the surface of my backlog and I’d just barely started on the MGSD Freedom kit. I really didn’t need a new one.

After watching a few vids on it, I figured it’d be a fun addition to my desk toys. It was fairly Human shaped and it’s got little to no armor so knocking it down to a “Basic Human Figure” for pose reference is a matter of popping off the big ol’ shoulders. Just that easy. = )

So what’s in the box? Not much, really. The Gundvolva is all of four large runners, a small one Just for the face and a handful of stickers. It really is that plain. In the end, that’s a good thing. This is definitely a beginner friendly kit. It’s also one that’s Full of Possibilities… in that is has a couple of mounting points and a super basic backpack with a modern two peg mount.

Snapping the kit up was a breeze. Like the other Witch from Mercury kits, it has some good movement. The shoulder mounts are built like some older kits in that they have a pretty great range of motion. You can actually cross the kit’s arms across its chest! Can’t say the same with the elbows, though. They’re not the double bend like on the Astrays – the closest kit I can compare it to shape-wise.

Another area that was good but could be better was the neck. It has great movement with a solid range both front/back/sides and moving the head up and down. It suffers from a familiar issue with the latter in that it really can’t look up all that far. The head clips to the neck with a ball joint but the back on the helmet bumps into the back of the neck. I ended up shaving a bit off of both to get it to be able to see what’s above it.

My fave part of this kit is something that it didn’t need to have. It has moving knee armor. It’s not a very complicated trick, either. The Gundvolva is using the C-Clip design Bandai has been using on their 30 Minute Missions kits. The trick is done by simply connecting the knee pad to thigh armor and making a little sliding rail on the double-jointed knee. This lets it rotate when you bend the legs. The one part that’s kinda’ fun is the load out. It has a little assault rifle dealie with a removable magazine. It also has two extras stashed on the back of the shield. At first glace, this is a weird thing as the two spare mags are connected. Turns out you can split these into singles. Once separated, they fit in the weapon no problem. Seeing as this kit doesn’t have a standard skit with the little split bead that you can clip apart, I guess this it the Gundvolva’s version. = P

Overall, this was a neat little kit. It suffers from the standard lack of hands that most HGs based off of Grunt suits or basic army builder kits suffer from. It’s also an excellent platform for modding. The Permet sections in the head and chest are simple stickers with the details in the plastic. I think the only other stickers are the eyes and the camera in the rifle. It’s very Straight Build friendly.

As for mine… I have other plans. = )

It seems kind of weird to me that we actually got a kit for the Gundvolva. It's been a little while since I watched the show, so maybe I'm misremembering, but I feel like it only showed up in one or two episodes. And it isn't even really a mobile suit - there's no pilot or anything.

There's no pre-painted shell section, which was disappointing.

I briefly debated trying to paint it myself like I did with the Lfrith Thorn... But this was a grey part, so I'd have to paint in the black background too, and I didn't have confidence that I wouldn't ruin it.

So I just went with the foil sticker. Honestly, once everything is in place, it doesn't look terrible.

I used the foil stickers in the head, too. It's basically just a bit of gold for the eyes and head camera, and then a bit of red for the shell section. And once the shell section is in place you can hardly see that red up in there.

I was really impressed by the part layering and color separation up on the head.

There's neat little nods to the Lfrith in this kit... The shoulders and hips repeat design elements we've seen before. And that shield is very reminiscent of what we saw with the Lfrith Thorn. There's nothing super obvious or overt... But there's a clear sense of a shared design.

I'm once again really impressed with the HGWFM line. These are some fantastic models. Great detail and color separation. Fantastic articulation and poseablility. This one's got a very surprising moving-armor gimmick in the knee that I really don't expect from an HG kit.

It's a little simple. The color-scheme is a little bland. But it still looks damn good.