With the EZ8’s torso, there was less snapping of things together, and more plugging of pieces into one another. That might not sound like much of a difference, but it is. The final product looks much the same as any other Gundam torso, but it was a weird way to get there.
One nice thing about the torso is that it feels - how should I say it - robust. The skirt armor is big, but not too big, and it feels sturdy. Some delicate panel lining rounds out the finished piece.
Legs
I’m starting to think that the legs are the most important part of a Gunpla kit. They’re bigger than any other piece of the body, which means a lot of attention is drawn to them. If the legs (and feet) have good detail and articulation, it can make up for deficiencies in either of these areas elsewhere in the kit.
The EZ8’s legs are more complicated than I expected, perhaps because I was prepared to compare them to the Tryon-3. And while the Tryon’s legs were very busy looking, they weren’t big on fine details or articulation.
This isn’t the case with the EZ8. Again, it isn’t Real Grade level, but it’s good. The foot and heal move separately, and the knee can bend to a startling degree. Best of all is that the legs feature the one gimmick I was hoping they’d include - the ability to store the beam sabers in the leg armor. The execution isn’t fancy, but it works.
Overall, the legs feel sturdy, aside from one piece on the back, which is on a ball joint and likes to pop off easily.
Due to their size, there are a ton of panel lining opportunities on the legs. Since these were built after I the learned the hard truth about Testor’s spray paint, I tried to use much lighter strokes, hoping that it would lead to little or no bleeding. That didn’t quite work out as well as I hoped. Almost immediately the ink on the torso started to warp and bleed. I managed to wipe it off as before it could dry that way. Unfortunately, I missed some bleeding on the back of both legs. It was in an inconspicuous area, however, so I took a took and scraped off a bit of paint, hoping to get to the messy marker ink underneath so I could erase it. But the ink had mixed with the paint, and came clean off. Knowing this, I applied the same process to other parts of the model. With a delicate touch, I was able to get rid of some of the worst bleed over without removing much topcoat. I did some sight tests, and you’d have to have the model up to your nose to tell that any paint was scratched off. That’s a more than worthwhile tradeoff, considering how much cleaner the model now looks.
Other Thoughts
The beam saber compartment in the legs was the hardest part of the build. There’s a slot on each saber that plugs into a tab on the inside of the compartment; the manual doesn’t do a good job of showing you this, and so I spent a long time trying to cram it in until I figured out the secret. The rear skirt armor does not move. I have no idea whether this is going to affect the model’s ability to pose. I felt a strange feeling when assembling the knee joints, and it was only while writing this post that I figured out why. The joint is incredibly similar to the one built into the inner frame of Real Grade kits. This explains the excellent articulation (though I don’t believe the frame is just for show. It still enables more fine grained movements).
The photo gallery for this day’s build can be found here. After this, there’s only one more post left for the EZ8.