Big thanks to the ffffffffalliteration with the letter f folks at Forbidden Planet for selling me this kit. This article isn't sponsored, but I wouldn't at all mind if I was sent one of those fancy-schmancy Nu Gundam Ver. Ka kits you have on display, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, network-network.
Back to the Universal Century again, this time with a kit from Gundam Unicorn. I'm looking at the preview images for this kit and I'm liking how...swole this one seems to be. No time to waste, let's begin building!
Dear god, it's one of those manuals that folds out rather than has itself formatted like a booklet. Look, I know it's likely to keep the costs of High Grades down as much as they should be, but people like me with relatively limited desk space really don't like it when gunpla kits do this. Especially not when the page it opens to isn't even the start of the instructions.
What is this. What even is this. Why is the front of the torso not fitting straight no matter what I try to do? Why does it fit completely tightly on one side and refuse to come apart, but doesn't fit at all on the other side? Why is it that this part has to have so many outcroppings that I feel like I'm going to cut my hands open every time I try to pry it apart for another go? If I am asking these kind of questions about a High Grade kit, that's not a point in its favour.
Several tries later, and it still wasn't fitting properly. A High Grade kit should not be this much of a figurative and literal pain to assemble at any stage, let alone something like the torso. It only eventually fit after I trimmed the side of one of the connections with my craft knife, something I've never needed to do with any kit I've worked with, let alone a High Grade. And even then, I'm not sure that's what solved it. I'm not even past the first page and this kit is already not looking at a good writeup from an assembly standpoint.
I'm fairly sure I've got the horns the right way round, going off of the numbering and the connector angles, but I'm not so confident in how they fit - trying to get them in at the right kind of angle feels like I'm going to snap them at the top. I managed it in the end, but it's weird. The way the connector easily shows the gap, it looks like something should fit over the head to cover it up, but looking ahead, it doesn't.
The wing-like appendages on the torso kind of alluded to this, but the red insides of these arm parts in particular are annoying for the large stickers. They're those kinds that you line up and press down so that the sides fold inwards, covering the interior of the part, and you don't need me to tell you these are difficult to attach without some white hanging over the edges or lumps appearing.
Yep. Sure is...swole. Looks big, chunky and varied enough to probably make some of the more annoying moments I've had with this kit. We'll see, though. Onto the legs.
These long red stickers on the middle of these parts are best attached by folding them before attaching them. Without doing that, they're almost impossible to fit correctly into the part.
Annoyingly awkward-to-attach parts seem to be a recurring theme with this kit - one of the armour panels on these leg parts got stuck in such a weird angle I had to force it into place with my teeth. Obviously I don't recommend doing this, but this kit can boast the spiky shoulders and unique claw-like hands as much as it wants - from an assembly standpoint, I'm not exactly enthralled by this kit so far.
We're already at the coloured back portion of the manual, so I'm assuming there isn't really anything in the way of weapons to go (other than the beam effect parts). But that doesn't mean we're done yet.
And that's all there is to the High Grade Byarlant Custom. Not a bad-looking kit, certainly one that stands out among your average set of Gundam models. However, as mentioned before, judged purely as a building experience, this one was a pain at several moments. Not only are there a few parts that refuse to align properly without some serious force and stickers that need a whole ritual in and of themselves for a chance at fitting correctly, but there were even a few occasions where I had to pry the parts apart again to re-fit a part I had on the wrong way round. Not only is this misalignment really easy to do even with the manual's assorted symbols, but on two occasions where I had to do this, I noticed one of the connectors had snapped and had ended up stuck inside the part it was connected to, Epyon whip-style. Thankfully, this tight fit means they fit back together without the need for any plastic glue, but it's still not a great state of affairs.
All in all, not a bad kit, just one to only build when you really, REALLY know what you're doing when it comes to High Grades. It may be swole on its own merits...but as a kit, it ain't no High Grade Penelope, that's for certain.
Stay safe and keep clipping, folks!
The Good
+ A big, badass High Grade
+ Nice variety of colours in details like the piping and chest accents
The Bad
- Many parts are extremely fussy about being lined up properly
- Colour-correcting stickers are difficult to line up
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