HG 1/144 World Economic Union Mass Production Transformable Mobile Suit SVMS-01 "Union Flag"
Picked up this funky little HG 00 kit from model building club last weekend. It's a pretty simple late 00s kit, just like others from its time, with just three sprues and not much in the way of optional parts. Regardless, it's still a very creative kit with a surprising amount of colour separation, even if it really only has two colours.
The Union Flag is one of the grunt suits from 00 Gundam, being the main fighting unit of the Union of Solar Energy and Free Nations or World Economic Union (world here being Europe, Australasia, and Japan, like some sort of bizzaro NATO, probably leading to the UN baby blue of the kit). It's a very Macross looking design, "transforming" into a fighter jet inspired flight form in a very seamless manner, without any parts-forming whatsoever (more than one could say of the HG Zeta or HG Macross kits). There's a bit of clever engineering in the waist and pelvis that lets everything rotate into orientation.
There's stil a fair amount of painting, despite the simple bicolour scheme. I added grey to the backs of the hands, the barrel and top of the linear rod rifle, and the insides of the air intakes and jet exhaust ports, as well as adding my standard metallic drybrush and pigment powder to all the grey sections. I also made sure to add a lot of sooty oil staining over the intakes and exhausts to give the impression of use. I also painted over the safety nubs on the wings, turning them into blue and green navigation lights (as I don't have a metallic red). I still don't trust myself to cut them off cleanly. I also added a bit of metallic weathering pigment over other high-points on the blue parts of the kit, helping accentuate the worn and used nature of the machine, and mask how plasticky the blue looks right out of the box.
This is a pretty simple and plain looking kit, with no included marking stickers so I made sure to deck it out with a ton of custom markings and decals. I don't have any 00 decals, so I had to just freehand the Union logo, but I think I did an alright job at it.
I also included some hit markers, a flying group decal on the leg, and a unit number, as well as some cool stripes and caution markers. There's a metallic silver sticker that goes behind the (UV reactive trans orange) visor, which was appreciated as it added a lot of nice shine even without a UV light. The M motif works well as a pilot identifier. I stole it from the Gyan decals meant for M'Quve, but I think it looks great here, contrasting nicely against the blue. I just wish I had some proper NATO or UN decals, as I feel these would've been thematically appropriate and gone well with the blue colouration of the kit.
I do think I should've placed the wing markings the other way around, as they look upside down when the kit is viewed from the rear.
This kit included the linear rod rifle, which slots into the waist in flight mode to form the "nose" of the plane. It's a little loose in the hand, and being designed to look good in plane mode makes it look a little awkward as a weapon, but I think I managed to make it look cool in a few poses. The gangly proportions of the kit certaintly don't help.
The kit also includes the bizzare "defense rod", a shield modeled after an aeroplane propeller that is meant to rotate in order to deflect incoming damage. It seems super impractical, but they manage to make it look cool and effective in the anime. I painted on the white tips as I don't like dealing with foil colour correction stickers when folded over sharp edges - they tend to lift.
Oddly enough, there are these little tabs under the wings that look like spots to add missile pods or other weapons, although none are included. If I find any spares from other people in my model club I'll probably come back and add them.
Further included is the sonic blade/plasma sword. In the anime, it's a small flip-out combat switchblade that vibrates at ultrasonic frequencies to cut through armour. It can also generate a plasma blade turning it into a large sword. Unfortunately, the age of the kit relegates this weapon into a single "chopstick" piece, only allowing display of the plasma sword form. There's also not really anywhere on the kit it can be stowed, so I'm not sure where it comes from. I painted it with metallic blue, but I really would have preferred a traditional transparent beam effect piece.
Overall it was a fun little build, that let me prectise using my new liquid panel liners, as well as pracitse decals and weathering. Might take a bit of a break from gunpla for a bit, until I have more display room.
