baui: 2013-08-04

- Completed Gunpla-

RG Rx-78-2 Review?

At long last, after a month of a very slow 'work in progress', iv'e now completed the RG RX-78-2, the granddaddy of all Gundams. At first i thought it was going to be a relatively small and quick job but didn't realize how much time and work this little guy would actually require. Given, I wasn't really working on him very regularly and when I did, I wasn't able to give him my undivided attention. But with that said, he is now complete!

Being my first RX-78-2 I was really excited to get him started and built but as you probably are quite aware by now, I did have alot of time restraints. Nonetheless, he is done and I think looks pretty good.

I was really keen on getting him painted and fully complete but encountered some problems on the way. The paint mixture wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be. Namely the other shade of red. In my case, it turned out more like a purplish red. A variant color of maroon maybe?

For a lack of pictures, I cant really call this a proper review of the kit but will give some insight of the pros and cons of this kit.

POSING

Posing with this guy is great. The knee can produce a very nice bend, almost a 180 degree bend only constricted due to the leg armor but will produce this bend when posing with just the inner frame.

You may find the arm sagging ever so slightly when built straight out of the box, foretunately it will only do this when holding the beam rifle at a high position. However after I painted the little guy, the arm stays perfectly in the same position as you had intended. You can bring the arm up as far as you want, this little guy aint moving.

His hip rotation is very good and you will be able to pull a lot, if not all the poses you want him to do. His side-skirts, front-skirts and back-skirts do not at all hinder the movement of his torso nor his legs.

His arms also bend an almost 180 degrees but of course is limited by the armor.

His head does have the 'chicken head' ability, increasing the posablility of the head movement. His head is also able to produce a full 360 bend around, not limited to any armor or armaments.

The only con I can think of with this kit is the feet. As this is my first RX-78-2 im still inexperienced with posing him with those feet. I find it difficult to pose him standing on his own due to the design of his feet. This is purely a nit-picky complaint due to the MS design, not at all of the kit. Maybe when i continue to play around with him, i'll learn but for now I say that it is a challenge to keep him standing on his own due to the curved design of the feet.

His shoulders attach along the insertion point within the arm to main body, allowing it to be able to move up and down. However this being said, if you move it up with no support from the top of the arm, it will in most cases fall back down and rest on the top section of the arm.

Weapons

I currently lack pictures of the weapons after completion so will have to use the W.I.P 2 pictures as reference.

The beam rifle on this guy looks great. The camera on the rifle is able to rotate but is limited to only going one side. It can only be moved to the right and not much at all for the left side movement. The decals really add to the kit and there is an amazing opportunity for detailing the inside of the beam rifle. The small opening in the rifle design allows you to be able to see all your awesome detailing work if you did any.

The rifle also has a peg much like the Nu Gundam Ver. Ka which swings out and plugs straight into the cavity located in the center of the forehand, creating a very snug and tight connection.

The hyper bazooka looks great and the decals really make it pop. I also like how in a a 1/144 scale kit, they were able to add those extra little details such as giving you 3 pieces to make up the rockets inside the magazine which really adds a lot to the look of the bazooka. Just like the beam rifle, the hyper bazooka also has the peg design which flips out and connects to the forehand, creating a very reassuring fit.

His shield is great and the engineering efforts put into its design are most welcome. On the back of the shield, there's a sliding mechanism that allows for the shield to be held at a high/low position and anything in between. This mechanism isn't a ratchet joint of any sort so will allow you to adjust to your exact liking and very smoothly as well. The only complaint I have with the shield is that although there is a hole in which to place the peg into his arm, it is a little big which proves a little difficult to pose the exact way you want it. The best way to hold the shield is to have the Gundam's hand fully grasping onto it. Which really isn't much of an issue because if you wanted, you could just paint the peg and that will produce a tighter fitting.

He also does come with two beam sabers, both at a 1/100 length which doesn't bother me at all but might for others.

CORE FIGHTER

The core fighter looks awesome! More so than the weapons, the decals really bring out the life in the core fighter, it definitely looks more appealing with the decals on him that bare. The wings are able to flip inside and the core fighter has the ability to turn into a fully functional core block which can be inserted into the Gundam.

A very minor gripe is that there is no pilot sitting in the core figther but then again, it would be very difficult and fragile to produce a tiny 1/144 scale figure of a sitting Amuro Ray. Again, minor gripe and does not at all take anything away from the kit.

MISCELLANEOUS

The clear sticker decals that came with the look very nice especially with the shiny gold, copper and silver. Although I had used only one clear sticker, from experience from other newer RG's, the stickers adhere to the plastic but you may find in time that it falls off or it becomes very easy to accidentally remove the sticker. This however applies only to bare plastic. If you are going to do an OOB build, it may pose the issue but will be no problem on a painted surface. A layer of clear top coat should eradicate this problem for all.

A common complaint that I had encountered when doing my research on this kit was that after building him, although he looked great and was very posable, he had a lot of falling pieces, namely the skirt armor. Im happy to report that that problem did not occur in my built, even straight out of the box. The only trouble I had with falling pieces was the front skirts. This however is a very minor issue and quite a nit-picky issue as it really wasn't a big deal and didn't happen very often. After painting though, the skirt armors do not fall off, nor do any other pieces. I had heard from somewhere that BANDAi had addressed the issue of countless falling pieces after their initial production run for the first batch. This may be the reason why I hadn't encountered such issues.

PROS AND CONS

As a summary, here are the pros and cons of this kit:

Cons:

The shield peg system is a little bit loose for OOTB build
The front-skirts sometimes fall off when posing
The feet design make it difficult to stand by itself
Some decals are in places difficult to reach
Clear stickers dont adhere perfectly for very long on bare plastic
The head piece for the eyes were not clear

Pros:

Great MS Design
Amazing posability
Amazing amount of detailing on the kit
Very flexible inner frame
Decals on the kit look awesome
The added core block to replace the core fighter when in use
Transforming Core Fighter
Armor separation and sliding
Shield mechanism allows for more range of poses for dynamism
Color separation and a nice contrast and complementary choice of colors
Priced at a very reasonable and affordable 2500 yen (around $27 aud)

Keep in mind guys that some of the pros and cons are only there due to my personal taste but in no way inhibits the play ability and value of the kit itself.

This review has been a long time coming and i'm just happy that iv'e been able to make one.Hope you guys had enjoyed reading this review and there are plenty more to come!

Well as always guys thanks so much for viewing.

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- W.I.P 2 (Update)-

RG Rx-78-2

Hey guys, its been a forever since my last post (at least it feels like it) and since then iv'e had quite a bit of progress on this build. Last time I had just finished painting the kit and hadn't yet started on top coating, panel lining or decaling. Well, i'm happy to report that iv'e not done all of them. And without further ado, lets get things started.

Last time I was waiting for the decals to show up. It took about 2 weeks to land on my doorstep but I was a bit busy anyway so I wasn't too fussed about it. Anyway, here's comparison of the water-slides with the clear stickers that came with the kit

As you can see, iv'e only used the eye sticker for this kit, everything else will be using the water-slides.

While I was waiting for the decals to show up, I decided to spray on some clear top coat to prepare the kit for the decaling and panel lining. Unfortunately, these are the only two pictures I have of the kit topcoated (I think I deleted the other pictures for more space on my ipod)

Next step was to panel line! Unfortunately, I had also deleted some of the WIP pictures relating to the just panel-lined kit. To make up for it, here's some pictures of the kit top-coated and partially decaled (using the water-slides):

For this step, i'm going to need the following:

Water-slides, cotton tips, a craft knife (box-cutter) and a small bowl of water.

Just wanted to get the weapons out of the way, they were the quickest to complete and it was pretty late at night so i decided to leave it at that.

The next day, I was pretty cut for time because of a sudden three SAC's being announced so I was only able to complete this much.

Well that just about does it for tonight guys, its getting pretty late and I know it's been a while since my last W.I.P and I wasn't really able to give you guys a proper insight on progress due to a lack of a progress report but i'm going to make it up to all of you and post up the completed kit and review tomorrow. That's right, its been so long that iv'e actually had enough time to complete the kit, to the best of my ability (relative to my time-constraints and laziness). As always guys, thanks heaps for viewing and keep coming back for more updates