#hgbdr

PFF-X7/N8 Nepteight Gundam

Voiture Lumiere. A propulsion system from the SEED Universe, designed to catch solar winds for prolonged deep space exploration. Sure, it has some unintended offensive capabilities, such as the ability to manipulate its opponent’s beam weaponry, but its intended purpose is traveling from planet to planet.

The series isn’t over yet, and as such I can’t help but wonder what it’s actual purpose is? Is it merely Hiroto’s Armor for the final battle? Or does it have some kind of greater purpose involving the Eldorans or Eve? I can’t help but feel the ending to this show won’t be so cut and dry.

The Nepteight loses the backpack, which was my major complaint with the Saturnix and Uraven, replacing it with the new, far more solid VL-Ring. It comes at a minor cost, though, as the bands on the arm mounts, as well as how high up the arm they are, get in the way of posing. Other than that, there’s no new issues. The backpack is very well designed to not interfere with anything, and the arms are just a side-effect of the gimmick, which I still like.

The Details: All the returning components have been done the same as the rest; metallic green panel lining and black fill. The new parts have a lot of added gold. Some of it is to replace stickers, while some is to add to its already vibrant appearance.

The backpack has all of its large areas filled in with gold, and the tiny spots with metallic green. The center circular portion of the backpack is done in black, and (though you can’t see it, since it’s only exposed when the backpack is open and from the back) there’s some black fill in some of the small recesses.

Overall, this is definitely my favorite of the Planet Armors, and has less flaws than the other Core II Armors. If you’ve been holding out on getting anything besides the Earthree and Uraven, this is certainly one to consider.

GAT-X303K Gundam Aegis Knight

So I missed the preorder window on the final battle colors set, and I’m kind of regretting it. Not because I’m particularly excited to build each of these guys all over again, but because I have to use one of my Core IIs to hold Re:Rising Gundam together, and that means either Saturnix, Uraven, or Nepteight has no Core, so I can’t display all the Armors. I debated getting the Titans Colors Ver. of the Core II to fill that gap, but I’d rather just go full gold so I can also display the Ex Valkylander, Wodom Pod, and Aegis Knight I worked so hard on.

The Good: And speaking of the Aegis Knight, it’s pretty cool. It has a very similar range of articulation to the Justice Knight since they share a few key points of engineering, but the Aegis definitely has the more impressive accessory pool to use them. And with a total of five modes, it does a whole lot.

In its base mode, it has a larger version of the lance and shield that came with the Justice, replacing its physical sword for a beam one stored on its shield. It has a flight mode, a claw mode that can utilize some of the included effect parts (a yellow remold of the set that released around the same time as the Ninpulse Gundam), and King Mode, which combines all of its weapons into a giant sword. Because of how the effect parts are utilized, it cuts down on the amount of extraneous engineering, making the Aegis considerably clean considering how much transforming it does.

Then there’s Re:Rising Gundam, the culmination of collecting all the final kits from Re:Rise. And it’s a pretty neat bonus. It has its issues, but for the most part it’s fairly stable (thanks to that tail), and it is impressively big, thanks to the Wodom Pod.

The Bad: All that transforming does take its toll on the Aegis, mostly in regards to the shoulders. The actual shoulders themselves are fine, if a little easily misaligned, but the shoulder armor is problematic because of how it’s attached. It’s a ball joint in an open sliding rail held in by friction, so they pop off a lot. It can’t be cased in since they have to be detached for claw mode, and they can’t be separate peg holes because of flight mode, so both these added modes end up hindering how the shoulders are constructed.

Then there’s the heels. They are fists. Not intrinsically a problem, but the point where they ball joints-in comes loose easily, so it has stability issues (thank you again, included stand). On a brighter note, having the heels be ball jointed can actually help compensate for wider leg poses where the ankles can’t bend.

Lastly, the Core Gundam II’s waist can barely hold together when weighed down by a normal set of armor with the Core Flyer pack. It was not meant to take all the weight being forced on it as Re:Rising Gundam. Just be careful if you try posing it at an angle. Oh, and the beam sabers they like to show it using? There’s no actual place to put them; they’re just being pinched in place by the Aegis’ toes.

The Details: If you’ve read my other HGBD:R reviews, you might have a good idea of how I handled the Aegis Knight. Metallic green panel lining, black fill, and repainting all the gold. Most of the fill in this case was just replacing black stickers, other than the considerable amount used to separate the panels of the hip skirt and fill in the gaps in the shield.

Due to the unit’s strange use of the color red (only being present on the hips and chin) I added a few more pops of it in any location where there was an inset panel with that little line indentation. Tops of the shoulders, elbows, backpack, buckle, and ankles. There was a similar mark on the already red hip skirt, but I painted that gold instead.

Speaking of gold, I added a few touches apart from the repainting. The ankles are probably the most noticeable addition, but there’s some present on the back hip skirt as well. Then there’s the shoulders and cockpit, both of which were originally an off-shade of metallic green, but I decided to do them in gold as well to bring the colors together a little better for both the Aegis Knight and Re:Rising Gundams.

Overall, it’s a good kit with some problems, but it only has those problems because it’s trying to do so much. If you’re looking for a solid kit, the Justice Knight is probably going to sate you more, but if you’ve got the team, then it’s a good addition to it.

PFF-X7R Core Gundam [Rize] / PFF-X7R/ANIMA Gundam Anima [Rize]

So every time I think this kit’s name, I do it in the Zero-One Driver voice. And I like this kit. All of the Core/Core II’s Armors were in the form of Boosters, and all of the Alus Core’s Armors were canonically unformed, but came as statues in the kits. Having the parts of the Armor be autonomous assistants is a very cool idea. It’s also extremely similar to my P.A.X.S., which makes me upset I never published anything about them until after Re:Rise came out because I could claim I came up with the idea first. Though it honestly doesn’t matter. It’d just make me feel slightly smarter than Bandai.

The Good: Based on the Core I and not the Core II. It lacks a tiny bit of waist articulation because of it, but it’s not going to fall apart constantly. Thank goodness. I like the Core II, but it is not a stable kit.

And the Armor is a brand new sculpt. Having the legs and arms form Bits is one thing, but having the forearm and shoulder armor combine to do that is a nice touch. It’s got the same posability as all the other Armors, can easily hold all its weapons, and has back storage for all of them, too, which the other Armors lack (though there is still the Booster Mode, I guess).

Also, for all you customizers out there, this set comes with a perfect clear version of the Core I’s base Armor parts. Having parts in pure clear always excites me, because there’s a lot of potential for visual tricks and flare not possible with normal kits. I’m already trying to formulate some ideas for a custom using them.

The Bad: I can literally count the number of new parts on the Core [Rize] on one hand (it’s four), which is disappointing.

Any other issues I have are with poor visual execution. Firstly are those horns, which cast big shadows on the face. I can think of a couple ways they could have fixed that, but it’s fixes with the mold, not something I can fix personally. Then there’s the animal markers on each of the limbs. These metallic stickers look cool, but are very hard to see through the dark transparent plastic protecting them. This is double so for the Wolf and Bear on the legs, which are darker colors.

The Details: Since this isn’t a main-series Re:Rise unit, I actually got to play around with the colors a little more. For starters, all the red and maroon parts have black panel lining, and all of the non-red components have red panel lining. This extends to the Armor as well, which was originally just white and yellow.

There’s black fill in the expected areas, like the thruster on the back, collar, and some of the recesses of the Armor (specifically for forced shading under the chest, elbows, and ankles), but I also used some black to separate out some of the accessory parts. This can be seen on the backpack’s wings, the Beam Rifle’s barrel, and the shield. (BTW, the shield is meant to attach to the Lion arm, mimicking a mane.) Lastly, there’s a few dots of metallic blue in the eyes and head, and I used the metallic animal stickers for the limbs. (It’d be very had to do those with paint, after all.)

Overall, while it’s just the Core Gundam all over again, the Armor was a fresh change of pace. It’s also nice to build a Core that doesn’t want to fall apart on me, after having to build the Saturnix, Uraven, and Re:Rising (the Nepteight wasn’t as much an issue). This is also a great customizer kit because of all the clear parts. Check it out if you’re not totally sick of Cores yet.