HG 1/144 Twelve Olympians Prototype Transformable Mobile Suit ORX-139 "Hambrabi"

GQuuuuuuX kits are back, this time with the new GQ version of the Hambrabi from Zeta Gundam! The GFreD was going to be my last kit from this line, and I wasn't initially super interested in getting another GQuuuuuuX kit however the gimmicks included in this one really sold it for me.

The Hambrabi of the original timeline was a custom prototype unit created for the Titans, specifically the Yazan unit, featuring a simple tranformation and extensive auxillary sensors to support better visibility in the Mobile Armour state. The GQ version is mostly unchanged, being a much more limited (potentially even single) unit developed for the anti-Zeon Twelve Olympians and piloted by Gates Capa. This version is pretty similar to the design of the main timeline version, aside from an updated artstyle and some extra detail on the wing binders. The GQ version features a "head" section that can pivot forwards in Mobile Suit mode, and lacks the beam sabers used by the UC version. The inbuild shoulder-mounted beam cannons are also much larger, but overall the design is reliatively unchanged, compared to other GQuuuuuuX redesigns like the Red Gundam, Gelgoog, and Police Zaku.

I kept this build reliatively simple, as I took it with me on a trip to see some friends in Melbourne. Apart from a basic panel line and some limited soot staining around some of the visible vents, I also added some silver pigment to the metallic silver frame sections. The metallic detail of these parts is unfortunately a little lost due to the matte topcoat, and in hindsight these parts would probably benefit from a gloss finish instead. There's not really any colour correction necessary on this kit, which was a welcome surprise.

The various mono-eye sensors on this kit are really nicely concieved. They're moulded in a semi-translucent pearlescent UV-reactive pink, and are absolutely miniscule individual parts. They're actually articulated and you can more them along their "tracks" for the shoulder and rear cameras. The "head" camera is inserted into a ball-joint housing that can rotate freely with the aid of a tweezer or toothpick. The torso camera is not articualted and unfortunately very recessed and thus not very visible in my photos. Despite how tricky these tiny parts were to work with, I do perfer this approach to the often flat looking stickers used for mono-eyes in other kits.

The stingray-like Mobile Armour transformation of the Hambrabi was not featured in the GQuuuuuuX anime so it's surprising that the kit has a transformation, although it's not particularly impressive, resembling just the standard Mobile Suit form bent in half.

The kit has a decent number of weapons. There's a redesign of the Feyadin Rifle long beam rifle used by the Hambrabi and Gabthley in Zeta Gundam. It's done up in a really nice silver and dark purple. The foregrip and auxillary camera are articulated for extra poseability. This pairs well with the extra backpack-mounted beam rifles for a formidable armament.

While in Zeta Gundam, the stock of the Feyadin Rifle becomes a beam saber emitter, with the GQ version, the stock can fold forwards to turn the rifle into a Beam Sycthe, with the barrel making up the handle of the weapon. This is a design feature exclusive to the model kit. The beam effect part is made of a rather nice trans-yellow UV-reactive part.

Also included is the "sea snake" weapon (just as is wielded by the original Hambrabi). This is a small grappling weapon with an electric field emitter that can incapacitate mobile suit pilots. The kit includes a stowed and "active" form, with the latter using a lead wire to recreate the image of the weapon in use.

The kit includes two open fist options for the weapons, and two open hand options in a threatening claw-like pose. The hand options have a new and much more secure peg-based design, which makes them difficult to use but much more secure than older hand designs.

Overall, this was an enjoyable if at times frustrating build. Some of the ankle armour is needlessly loose, and it can be difficult to work with the complex internal design of the head, which uses a lot of small parts to achieve its articulation. Many of the parts are also very thin and feel as if they would be very easy to accidentally damage during assembly. Despite this, I really love how the final result turned out and the kit has a proud place in my GQuuuuuuX display.

Next up, I'm going to try and clear some more of my girlpla backlog.

HGUC 1/144 Mafty Mass-Produced Heavy Mobile Suit Me02R-F01 "Messer Type-F01"

I'm back with another of Bandai's supersized Hathaway kits, this time with Mafty's large grunt suit, the Messer Type-F01. These suits have a prominent role in both the first and second movie, destroying the hotels in which the Earth Federation officials are staying and clashing with the Federation's Gustav Karls (which I built earlier this year here). The Messer owes its lineage to the earlier Geara Dogas from the Second Neo-Zeon war and the Laplace conflict, as well as technical data from the ill-fated Sazabi, and were developed specially for Mafty's forces by Anaheim Electronics.

The Messer has some pretty interesting design details, with much slimmer and more proportional lower legs as compared to most Zeonic-style mono-eyes, and an interesting set of backpack thrusters on spherical gimbals. The rounded shoulder pauldron is switched to the right shoulder, as compared to the typical left shoulder of the earlier Zaku II, and features 5 3-meter long spikes. The suit also features chest vents, as well as thin rectangular vents on the shins, both features typically seen more on Federation designs.

This design is significantly cleaned up and simplified from the more outlandish design seen in the novel (a design better reflected by the Type-M01 seen in Sorcery of Nymph Circe), and rather resembles the SD Gundam Generations and manga adaptation designs. Unlike the novel and manga versions, this version of the Messer is stated to have its cockpit in the head (like its precursor the Sazabi) rather than in the torso (although you can still see design accomodations that would allow for a torso-based cockpit).

Just like the HGUC Xi and Gustav Karl this kit has very modern design considerations and decent colour separation. The Messer does feel a little less refined, with limited elbow and knee flexion and some rather shallow peg connections on the upper arms that can fall out rather easily. The very large and flat head limits its ability to rotate, but there's some great torso design to let it rotate and give it very impressive ab crunch for some great poseability. The kit is absolutely massive, being 23m tall in-universe and standing just as large as some of my 1/100 MG kits. However because of this it's really poorly served by its included Action Base adaptor, which is too shallow to properly interface with Action Base pegs making it super unstable on a stand.

The colour correction is also not as great as the Gustav Karl, with several areas that require some rather difficult yellow foil colour-correction stickers (the shoulder and facial power conduits). You also need to paint the auxillary thruster vents on the front skirt, as well as various areas of grey for the 6 head vucans and the two included on the shield. The Long Beam Rifle is also entirely the wrong colour, moulded in grey rather than the pale olive seen in the movie (and correctly colour separated in the new Type-M01 kit). I didn't end up painting this in, but I added my greenish titanium weathering pigment powder to at least give the impression of the different colours of the rifle. I also added some fluorescent orange paint into the targeting camera as there's no colour correction sticker for this section either.

There's some really nice colouring on the various thrusters on the legs and rear skirt that need to be painted in as well, which was fairly difficult to add in due to the thin red and grey striping on some of them. This isn't strictly necessary as the only super visible thrusters are going to be the ones on the backpack.

The rest of the kit got my usual metallic weathering for the grey sections and a basic matte topcoat throughout.

Similarly to the old Zaku I kit, the main camera is a mono-eye behind a protective screen divided into two main sections. To rotate the eye, you need to remove the front of the face to access the moveable part, which can be a little annoying (compared to other mono-eye kits where there's a switch under the chin that can be pushed to move the eye).

The kit is fairly light on accessories. There's of course the Long Beam rifle, with a special right-handed pistol grip option for it. There's also two open fist options, but unfortunately no open hand options. There's a basic two-part shield which features raised platforms with large vulcans, although because of the kit's design the rear of these are hollow which somewhat breaks the illusion.

On the rear of the shield are two small beam sabers. The included beam saber effects are the standard MG ones (rather than the unique modified parts included in the Gustav Karl), moulded in a very vibrant trans-yellow.

Overall, I really love how this kit ended up looking, although it's by no means my favourite build. It has some great shelf presence, and while I think it'd be greatly improved by some decals, for now I'm calling it good. I might add a few more newer monoeye kits to my collection soon, so keep an eye out!

30MS SIS-J00 Merunja

I'm back with yet another 30 Minutes Sisters build! This time, it's Merunja, fighting Ilshana for title of most chuuni 30MS design. Merunja is the newest 30MS design, and seemingly the most complete out of the box. Unlike a lot of the 30MS line, which are designed with the aim of compatibility and combination with 30MF and 30MM parts (see the other recent 30MS kit, Marical), Merunja lacks pretty much all standard 3mm hardpoints, and a lot of the suggested customisation seems to be from completely exchanging her body parts.

Merunja is almost completely a by-the-book build. I've given everything a thorough panel lining, using my grey liner more like a wash over the fabric parts to heavily accent the wrinkly textures (especially on her sleeves and bloomers). For her extensive skin segments, I applied my Tamiya Weather Master H set to establish plenty of blush and skin pigment variation, giving her skin a much warmer and more realistic look. Other than that, she's almost entirely out-of-box. There's some really clever techniques in her build, especially with her two-toned hair, which involes threading her twintails together to achieve a properly layered look.

Despite being very limited in terms of customisation options, Merunja has plenty of in-box optional parts. Her floppy, almost straightjacket-like sleeves can be removed to insert her hand options (the standard open hand and open and closed fist set found in most 30MS kits). Because the sleeve-extension parts use a 3mm peg, there's a new wrist joint part (although for some reason there are only four included, so you need to swap the non-open fist hand options between the two useable wrist parts).

The major acessory is her large pink chainsaw. You can remove the handles to slide them into her open-fist hand options, and it can be held at a variety of angles. There's a set of special elastic sticker decals depicting paint splatters which, with some encouragement, mould closely to the underlying complex detail (such as on the chainsaw's chain).

There's also a small plush bear. This is a reliatively simple side build but it has impressive colour separation for a build that, in older kits, would probably require painting. There's even a degree of poseability in the bear's arms and legs, and it can be gently nestled in Merunja's arms without falling out. Unfortunately it cannot stand independently. According to the manual, Merunja often talks to it, but it never replies.

The kit includes a special hairpiece that lets you swap out and remove Merunja's hood. There's also special ankle pieces you can swap in to remove her legwarmers and expose her striped thigh-highs. This reveals that her footwear is simply a set of slippers, that can also be removed to show a new "sock-covered foot" mould with a greater level of detail.

Merunja comes with a set of adhesive eyepatches. The eyepatches can be applied over the tampo-printed face options, giving them the realisitic impression that they're sitting loosely over her eye. Swapping her face parts with the face options lacking the eyepatch allows for some cute storytelling.

Despite the clear trend away from customisation and upgradability with a lot of the recent 30MS releases, the build itself was super enjoyable and makes use of a lot of really well thought out building techniques to preserve colour separation. I'm also a big fan of a lot of the recent 30MS moulds, which have promoted a greater focus on accurately rendering textures. I'm really looking forward to what Bandai is planning for the series in the future! Next up, I'm going to try and tackle some kits that have been in my backlog for a really long time.

HGIBO Tekkadan 3rd Group Gundam Frame ASW-G-08 "Gundam Barbatos Adapt"

After many years, I'm returning to the HGIBO line with the new HGIBO Barbatos Adapt. I've never been the biggest fan of the HGIBO line, due to the reliative weakness of the polycaps used (especially with the narrow-waisted Gundam Frame kits) and the poor colour correction with heavy sticker usage. While this allowed the kits to be very simple, interchangeable, and cheap, I always felt that this made the build experience less enjoyable as compared to the follow up HGWFM series. This new kit is a total reimagining of the line however. There's still a lot of stickers, but the build experience is significantly more modern.

The Barbatos Adapt is an intermediary form between the 6th form destroyed in the Battle of Edmonton at the end of Season 1 of Iron Blooded Orphans, and the Barbatos Lupus that was built offscreen between seasons and debuts in the first episode of Season 2. Most of the damanged nanolaminate armour is stripped off, replaced with sections of unpainted chassis or exposed frame, and you can still see the missing section of the V-fin that was broken off during the Battle of Edmonton. There's a new set of boosters (reminiscent of the 5th form) and some new shoulder armour pieces as well.

Unlike many of the earlier HGIBO kits, the colour correction is significantly more tolerable. There's a new head mould that separates the grey details on the faceplate, and there's a lot of decent parts choices and re-moulds that help give the kit better separation and an overall more polished look. You can really see the difference in level of detail when you directly compare this build to the older HGIBO Barbatos (although some of the improvement is also due to my better Gunpla skills). I did end up cutting off all of the safety nubs to help accentuate the sharper design of the various fins (as IBO has always had a very angular style).

There's still a reliance on stickers, including some white ones for the upper arms that I ended up keeping (as working with white paint sucks). There's several grey sections on the boosters, waist, and arms that I painted, along with the exposed V-fin frame and some smaller details on the head that don't have corrective stickers. You also need to correct some of the yellow vent details on the leg boosters and a brown detail on one of the neck armour "fins".

There's a small detail sticker for the Tekkadan logo on the left shoulder, but given that it's a rather ugly foil sticker, I elected to use spare stickers from my MGSD Barbatos instead. I supplemented a lot of spare stickers to help give the kit a nice amount of extra detail. I also ended up painting the Gundam Frame logos on this kit with my fluorescent orange marker, rather than using the foil stickers, as the provided stickers are not metallic and look very flat.

The kit is overall a lot more poseable, owing to a complete rework of the HGIBO Gundam Frame. The shoulders , torso, and waist have been completely redone with extra parts giving the kit the ability to flex laterally as well as forwards and backwards. There's even a few parts that give the illusion of articulating pistons just like the ones present on the MG and MGSD versions. There's new hip parts that let the legs swing much further forwards, and there's a new shoulder design that lets the arms articulate to a much wider degree of motion.

In terms of weaponry, the Barbatos Adapt is very limited. There's a redesigned large katana, similar to the version wielded by the 4th form but much larger in size, paired with a small wakizashi-style blade intended for additional defense, both supplied byt Teiwaz and initially intended for purely cermonial use. In the short video in which the Adapt appears, both of these blades break very easily, hence the much more robust sword eventualyl developed for the Lupus. Both of these swords are neatly stored on the boosters.

This was a really fun build to put together. It looks a lot sharper and more impressive than the older HGIBO kits, and I really hope that we see the new HGIBO Gundam Frame used for some HGIBO revives, especially with the 10th anniversary having just passed. Until then, I'll keep patiently waiting for Bandai to make a MG Barbatos Lupus Rex.