Everything is miniature up in here. Please notice how small the eye sticker is. Thankfully, I've got these razor-sharp tweezers in my kit!

Torso shot! It only took about 10 minutes to get this far, and I was taking my time. :P

And here it is in its full, itty-bitty glory, complete with Cup Noodle logo on the shoulder armor. :)

This was definitely a fun little kit to snap together. An entry grade entry grade, if that was a thing. One step above a gacha toy.

I just imagine a cool little kid in Japan getting a surprise with dinner one night and getting to put together a Gunpla before bed.

Or maybe it was some grown-ass otaku like me instead who went out and bought every possible variation and spent a night putting them all together in a row while eating multiple cups of noodles.

Posing it on top of the cup here so I can show the size comparison.

Super neato. :)

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The classic torso shot, but also one for the waist/skirt. I absolutely love the white, yellow, and red colors on this unit. It's gorgeous! A little splash of blue, too.

Here is something I put together to show the impressive mechanics of a Master Grade - You have to put together skeletal/mechanical moving parts first, and then you add the armor pieces on top of those frames.

The top piece is the final unit's leg from thigh to ankle, bent at the knee. The bottom piece is the same thing, but only the mechanical parts within. For reference, the piece on the bottom is 9-12 parts (I forget) put together. The armor on top adds around 23 additional pieces!

The ammo belt for the giant chaingun took awhile - Had to get all these pieces snipped and facing the right way, threaded on the rubber strip in the middle.

Here is the final result, fed into the fully built chaingun and ammo backback, showing off the shiny "gunmetal" color/finish from the sprue.

Goodness sakes. Lots and lots and lots and lots of tiny decals to put on this sucker. That Master Grade kit life.

The final result, with no weapons active! Argh, it's so gorgeous, I love it! What a colorful one this is. Very big samurai feel. Awesome shape and form.

But wait... There's more! Let's transform all the parts and get this sucker fully armed - the whole reason I wanted this ridiculous kit to begin with:

Hell yes!

Look at all the missile compartments! The giant, swinging army knife! That big ol' gatling! The chest cannons! This is just pure, awesome overkill.

Funny thing is, you can actually buy more kits to build on top of this to add even MORE missile racks and dual quad gatlings! Yes, 8 gatlings total... I might upgrade this guy someday. For now, though... it's super rad already.

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And here's the main unit, all done. What a radical weirdo! Aside from the unique design (including double horned boots, pyramid-shaped helmet, psychedelic shoulder eyes, and chest that opens up like a fang-filled mouth), he's also packing two Dirty Harry-style revolvers.

How can it get any more interesting?

Well, this is some of his shielding, which looks like a giant, silly choir robe. They convert to bat-style wings, too. Because, of course they do.

"But, wait," you might say, "What about those big yellow hands? What's up with those? Can you, like, make them flip someone off or something?"

Lawl, yup.

And I had considered keeping the middle finger pose on them both for display thinking that would be hilarious, but this guy's hands have additional Gundam heads inside the palms... which can open up and shoot lasers.

Sorry, "fuck you" fingers, but that's way cooler.

What the hell else can we add now? Well, how about a fetus?

So, yeah, this Gundam has another little Gundam living inside of it, connected by an umbilical-looking cord. Sure, that's totally normal. Oh, his name is "Narwhal," by the way.

Even though having him pop out of the chest covers up the top of the main unit, I just had to pull out every single gimmick for the final pose... Behold:

Holy shiiiiiiit, right? This dude fuckin' rules.

This Gundam looks more like a Darkstalkers character than a giant robot.

And that's sweet. Definitely one of my top three favorites now.

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Aside from the instructions, some of the design choices were also iffy - The plastic used was noticeably harder than your average Gundam, and the parts were laid out in weird positions sometimes, which meant lots of jaggies.

I don't know if it was due to the heavier plastic or less-than-perfect design (or both), but I had to use extreme physical force to get several pieces to snap or fit together. My hands were beat to shit when I was all done.

You know how each Constructicon has a windshield in vehicle form? This kit had red, shiny stickers for each, which was cool... but they completely missed a few windshield pieces on the sticker sheet, leaving some plain plastic sections that look off. That's a crazy thing to overlook on a model this pricey.

You may also notice that the purple and green colors on the model itself do not match the ones on the box or the instructions or the original character. That kinda sucks.

Still, my love for Devastator pushed me through.

After some turmoil and more stress than you would expect from a favorite hobby, I completed the big guy. All building faults aside, he looks pretty damned neat.

This one's definitely a big ol' fella. Here is a size comparison to a High Grade Gundam:

The issues with this model are disappointing - Mainly because Flame Toys has already made several other incredible-looking Transformers kits, including a new Arecee model coming up from the new movie.

The poor experience during this build kinda has me spooked, though.

Just so you know - Not that Hobby Lobby deserves your money - but they have Flame Toys models (and Gundams, too!) on a half-off sale quite often. Might be worth the try at that price.

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I asked the people behind the counter if there were any more in this series, and they had no idea - Said a guy just came in and ordered it through them because he was gonna put it together and display it inside one of his anime rides at a car show, but then he never picked it up. My score, I guess!

By the way, there -is- a series, including Mai Shiranui, a transforming Metal Slug tank, and more.

I got home and opened the box... My initial reaction?

Holy hell, why the fuck are there so many sprues?! This looks like what you get in an MGEX Gundam kit, haha. Wow.

So, how does Degenerator Industry stack up against Bandai when it comes to instructions and quality?

Not great, I'm afraid.

While the instructions were far better than my experience with the Flame Toys kit, there were a couple flaws.

First, as seen above, there were a lot of the "your choice" icons, much like you see in Bandai kits.

This usually means that there are two or more styles for the part you're working on. However, unlike Bandai kits, there were no pictures of the differences between the two versions anywhere to be found. How am I supposed to pick if I don't know the changes between them and have no image to guide me? I didn't design the damned thing...

This led to me taking multiple pieces apart and switching to a different part when I later realized the actual functions of each option many steps later.

Just about the only "your choice" part that made sense was when I got to the "breast unit" step:

I would be terrified, too, honestly.

Well, after building both units, I had to choose between "smaller, rocky gray boobs that don't match the outfit" or "bigger, rounder boobs that match the rest of the figure.

After trying both out and consulting a Wikia to see that Nakoruru was now at least 20, I went ahead with the better matching, larger dodonhonkeros.

Another hidden problem I found in the directions and even the initial photos on the outside - I figured out just why there were so many damned sprues in this kit: There were nearly two complete sets of everything in the box. Why, you may ask?

Well, there are no pictures of this on the box or in the instructions in a completed state, but you can basically build a "more accurate to the games" version of Nakoruru, or choose to craft a "wacky cyber armor version" because reasons. Surprise!

When I got the model, I had no idea this was even an option.

There are separate directions for making this version of her, which makes sense, but there are two versions of Mamahaha (that's the falcon) - an alternate white and red motif and a basic Samurai Shodown brown motif - but only one set of instructions.

You see, they use the same sprue letters and instructions for both colors... That wasn't obvious until I'd already built the white and red version, but that's okay - I wanted to match it to her anyway.

So, you know how I said there's almost two copies of everything in the box? Well, the only thing preventing you from building both versions of each model is that there is only one torso for Nakoruru and one head for Mamahaha. If they would have included pieces for a second set of those, then there wouldn't be so many wasted parts when you're done.

I mean, if you don't plan on changing out the parts often, which... I imagine not many people would.

But, whatever, check out the finished product:

She's got an attitude because of the troubles I'm about to mention.

These both came out looking super cool, even though (much like the Devastator kit I built previously) it took a lot of physical force to fit some of the parts.

I even had to soak the head in boiling water for a bit to get the neck joint to pop in! Pretty annoying.

Aside from all that, the sprues had thick sections connecting to the parts instead of thin or precise ones, so I had jaggies on literally every single piece I snipped. It took a long-ass time to fix those as I went along.

I guess no one can beat Bandai at their own game, huh?

Ah, well. They are both done now! Nakoruru and Mamahaha look really rad.

One more mention of waste - With double the parts and such, check out how much bigger the box was than the model, lawl:

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