#msgundam

 So here’s the deal... I pre-ordered this on the US Premium Bandai website back in October. The thing about P-Bandai (especially the US site) is that kits tend to sell out fast. This means that, when the Engage Zero went up for sale, I jumped on it ASAP.

 Turns out I really didn’t need to as I’m Pretty Sure you can still order a kit from the US P-Bandai site at the time of this posting. o.o

 Anyhoo! Now that I got this kit in and got the change to build it, I'm really happy I didn't risk the wait. The Engage Zero is a neat little kit. The story is it’s supposed to be a Federation/Zeon joint creation and you can tell in the build. The head and body have a lot of design cues from the classic RX-78. The colors are very much Gundam Mk.II inspired. The limbs are VERY Much inspired by Zeon suits. It sports a back skirt similar to the Qubeley with some Neo-Zeon flavored arms and legs. The beam rifle has a Gundam SEED feel and the shield looks like it’d be at home in Gundam AGE.

 As for the build… it has a handful of color stickers. It’s not a Terrible amount, but it does have some to add some red bits to the arms, legs and Gigantic space backpack. The only stickers I used were the eyes, a handful for the lenses and I tried for the classic Gundam “Crotch V-Fin". See... this is an area that – in the past - questioned if it really needed a large sticker for. Most times, the bulk of sticker is the same color as the plastic piece you’re putting it on with only the V-Fin being different. Well… this kit came with Just the V-Fin.

 To give you an idea of the size of the this detail: It’s so small on HG kits that you can just leave it blank and the natural highlight and shading of any kind of light setup will make it pop and noticeable.

 This kit comes with this teeny tiny fiddly little golden metallic sticker for Just the V-Fin. I tried for a few minutes trying to line it up on the piece and get it to wrap around like it should and Yeah! Nope. I took the thing off. Although this was kinda’ sorta' planned to be a straight build, I’m adding that to the list of things to be painted in later. This kit looks great on its own and will look better with some panel lining. It also has a lot of very nice open space that’s just begging for some decals and detailing.

 Enjoy some in-progress shots! = D

 Final Thoughts: I love it. It's a very feminine looking kit without going the full "Not Sailor Moon" distance that the Nobel Gundam goes. The color separation is great with only a handful of parts needing stickers. Although it comes with a whole thing of polycaps, it hardly uses any. Instead, it has a lot of plastic on plastic joints. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I’ll find out in time.

 The poseability on this is top notch. Massive space backpack aside, it’s well balanced and can hold a fair number of poses. As others have pointed out, the shoulder armor prevents it from getting its arms to go straight out. Like anything, a little bit of sanding would improve that but it’s not a deal breaker by any means.

 It also does something I rarely see from Bandai – It has a set of open hands, holding hands and a custom trigger hand for the rifle with backing parts for the whole set. That’s Two pairs for basic hands and a special trigger hand with Five backs so you don’t have to loot them from the others just to use them. = )

 Overall, I’m diggin' the Engage Zero. It was a relatively simple build with a nice payoff. I Might try to mod the back to accept something beyond the single post backpacks but, for now, it’s a nice little kit.