#jesta

It seems weird to call a 2013 kit "older" - but it really feels kind of dated. There's lots of polycaps. A lot of the plastic feels very hard/brittle and marks-up very easily. It comes with the weird, stubby beamsaber effect parts. But that doesn't make it a bad kit.

We get some foil stickers... Largely color-correcting, but there's some nice lens stickers too.

There's also a sheet of sticker-style marking decals that I'm not going to use. You've heard me say it many times before - I don't like these things. They don't stick well and they don't look good on darker plastic.

We get a whole runner of hand parts... We won't be using the armor bits at the top of the runner - we've got color-accurate alternatives elsewhere. But we will be using all of those hands... And I've got to say that the hands in this kit feel unnecessarily complicated.

The closed fist hands are made of three pieces - palm, knuckles, and thumb - plus the armor on the back. That really feels excessive to me. I can't help thinking that could've probably just been a couple pieces.

This kit is molded almost entirely in dark plastic, which I don't love. It's hard to pick out the panel lines... But I guess this kit isn't real heavy on surface detail in the first place.

The head is kind of awesome. I love that orange visor. And the asymmetrical arms are terrific. Plus, we've just got tons of chonky armor all over the place.

We get a lot of options with this kit.

There's a whole pile of hands in this kit. We get two open hands, two closed fists, two holding hands, and a single right-handed trigger-finger for the rifles.

We get two different rifles... But, unfortunately, they're not set up to be ambidextrous. They've got little pegs on the handles that only work with the right-handed trigger-finger. So there'll be no dual-wielding without modifying something.

The backpack can be assembled in a couple different ways... It can be a plain backpack, or we can mount the shield on it, or we can attach the cannons.

Then there's the beamsaber and an alternate bit of side-skirting that holds the beamsaber when it's not in use.

And we wind up with a few extra parts once the kit is built... Several grey bits of hand armor, some standard Jesta shoulder armor, a bit of leg, some front skirting, and a few random bits I can't immediately identify. There's definitely some potential for kitbashing here.

I really like how the shield is attached to the backpack on a little arm. I wish there was more articulation here? But I guess that's too much to ask in an HG. Instead we just get a couple alternate, fixed-pose arms that don't allow for a whole ton of options. It's actually kind of hard to get the shield around in a natural-looking position.

We get two different rifles and they both look pretty damn good. The bulkier one even has a little bit of articulation on the back... But there's nowhere to store them when they aren't in use.

Of course we've got the big cannons on the backpack. They look pretty good. Pretty dramatic. But the longer one has some unfortunate seam-lines.

Like I said - this thing has the old, stubby beamsaber blade effect parts. You get two of them, but just one hilt. And then there's an alternate piece of side-skirting that holds the hilt when it's not in use.

This is really a pretty great kit... I just wish it wasn't so dated.

All the polycaps leave it feeling very floppy and loose. Kind of spongy? The limbs don't hold their position real well. It all feels kind of soft when posing.

And the plastic is all very stiff, hard, brittle, and prone to marking. Worse still - cleaning the nub-marks up is very difficult to do without scuffing the surrounding plastic. It's just very unforgiving.

And, again, the hands are just unnecessarily complex. Yes, I absolutely appreciate having so many options... But we don't really need three bits going into a fist.

But, at the end of the day, it's a very nice kit. It looks absolutely fantastic up on the shelf. Very militaristic and business-like. None of the drama of the typical Gundam protagonist suits.