#io fleming

Honestly, the timing on this build was pretty terrible.

I was on a Thunderbolt kick... And I had the week off, which I thought was surely enough time to build it. But I was wrong. This build wound up taking me about a month to complete.

Since it's a Ver.Ka, it came with a hefty sheet of waterslide decals right in the box. Broadly speaking - Bandai's decals aren't great. But I completely appreciate having decals in the box. Much better than having to buy some third-party add-on immediately.

I was a little dismayed to see that there were also some foil stickers in the box. I won't be using them - I hate using foil stickers on anything nicer than an HG kit.

Of course I had to paint the tiny little Io Fleming pilot figure... I was a little surprised that there was no standing figure. And even the seated figure was incomplete.

The core fighter in this kit is pretty neat. I love that they go to the effort of building the whole thing, complete with transformation gimmick, when you'll probably never see it again.

The build for the head was a little weird. There's a bunch of clear parts that look like they should be doing some light-piping, but there's really no way for that to happen. Certainly no room for an LED unit. I guess I assume they re-used the design from another RX-78 kit?

Since I'm not using the foil stickers I painted these bits.

I decided to build the base Gundam without the joint-covers first, then decal and topcoat it, then disassemble and reassemble with the joint covers.

This is about where the build really started to feel like a slog.

I spent probably a week doing the decals and topcoat... And then I had a very nice-looking, fully-assembled Gundam standing on my desk... But I still had a whole pile of stuff to build.

So much armor. So many shields. A huge backpack and a couple ridiculously-large weapons. Felt like I was never going to finish this kit.

The end result is just kind of massive. It's so big. There's so much going on. It's amazing and impressive.

I really wish the included stand felt sturdier though. This thing bobs and wiggles if you so much as look at it too hard. I'm not sure I trust that it'll really stay up there for the long-haul.

Amazingly enough, it can stand on its own even without the stand. Even with that massive backpack.