Let’s wrap this Option Set up by showing it in action.
Smooth Bore Gun
When it is all painted up, this piece looks really sharp. I love how it creates an illusion of depth, as if the barrel apparatus runs across the entire length, and is wrapped by grey metal on the backend to create the stock.
This is the largest gun I have ever built for a model kit. When stood on end, it is taller than the 1/144th scale kits it is designed for.
There’s no way we could store this on the back of any High Grade kit, but thankfully there is a solution. The barrel can be removed and attached to the stock. This “folded up” version is still fairly tall, but it can be strapped to the back of the Astaroth.
Or rather, that’s the way it would work in theory. It seems as if the control arm used to store the Astaroth’s sword is incompatible with the Smooth Bore Gun. Let’s check the instruction manual.
Oh, I see. This gun is intended for the Gundam Barbatos, and the Barbatos has a different backpack setup than the Astaroth. For storage, I could plug the gun directly into the model’s back, but it looks like it is necessary to hook it to the control arm during use, otherwise the mobile suit won’t be able to keep it steady.
Thankfully I have some polycaps lying around from older models, including a ball joint that works to bridge the gap between these two incompatible parts.
The ball joint is still necessary when equipping the gun to the Astaroth, but even with it in place, it barely works out. The control arm has to be stretched to its limit to remain hooked up to the gun, and without the ball joint, I don’t think it would reach at all.
Once you have it all set up, you don’t want to make any drastic movements. You can have the gun aim up and down by tilting the model itself at the waist, and that’s it (to be fair, this kind of gun doesn’t need a huge range of motion).
All told, this is my favorite piece in the Option Set, both in form and in function.
SMG
I’ve equipped the SMG alongside the Astaroth’s standard gun for size comparisons.
The SMG is certainly much smaller, and this works in my favor. The Astaroth’s standard rifle is the closest I’ve seen a Gundam weapon resemble a real human firearm. Any time I put the Astaroth in a remotely realistic pose, it reminds me of a human holding an assault rifle in one hand, which doesn’t look right at all. The compact SMG works much better in these situations.
Unfortunately, the gun doesn’t fit snugly in the Astaroth’s hand. Care has to be taken to ensure if doesn’t fall out.
Lance
The lance attaches to the SMG easily enough. Unfortunately, it is quite heavy, so one handed poses aren’t easy. On the other hand, I can’t think of any interesting two handed poses. I mean it’s a lance. How many times has a Gundam used anything like this? Here is the best I could come up with for photography purposes.
Shield
The shield flat out doesn’t work with the Astaroth. Like other shields, it supposed to be both gripped by a manipulator and attached to the wrist. This is intended to provide two levels of support, and keeps it in place.
With the Astaroth, there’s no way to attach it to either wrist, and the handle is too narrow to fit snugly in the suit’s hand. It constantly tilts downward, looking limp and useless.
Jokingly, I removed the extra large hand/shield/claw thing from the Astaroth’s left arm and placed the shield in its place. It actually stayed put, but it looks terrible. This one’s a no go for sure.
Mobile Worker
I think this came out nice. I managed to achieve some nice color separation in the wheel base, and the detailing is pretty nice. A bit of glossy topcoat makes it stand out even more.
Here’s the Mobile Worker standing next to the Astaroth, to give you an idea of scale. That’s quite a difference in height.
Originally I thought the mobile worker’s upper body could rotate freely, but this is not the case. You can get a bit of side-to-side motion, but nothing too wild in the way of action poses.
Conclusion
In terms of this being a lesson on painting, this was time and money well spent. My work went from childlike to halfway presentable, and I’m proud of the accomplishment.
As a set of accessories to actually use, however, this was a bust. I thought that Bandai was marketing the fact that these IBO kits have interchangeable parts, but I guess that only applies to armor. In regards to weapons, what’s good for the Graze is not for the gander. None of the weapons fit comfortably on the Astaroth, and while I can finagle the two guns to fit, that fit isn’t comfortable enough to support many poses.
This makes no sense to me. All my Real Grade kits came with the same manipulators. Each one has the exact same notch etched into the palm, and each gun has a matching tab coming off the grip. You plug it in and everything works. Weapons can be swapped. It’s so simple I thought it was a universal standard.
But it’s not, at least where High Grades are concerned. With HG’s there’s no common design. I’ve seen some that resemble the Real Grade style, but I’ve also seen the opposite, where the notch is on the gun and the tab is on the palm. The Astaroth’s manipulators have a wide angled groove carved into them, and all it’s weapon grips are the exact same width. Essentially, it is designed to only support its own gear, like a weird Gunpla version of DRM.
It gets worse from there. You know that manipulators have a square patch of armor applied to the outside. It turns out that there is also no standard for how they’re attached either. Imagine you suffer a manipulator break. You have a few spares from older kits, but the armor for your broken kit won’t attach to any of them. You can either repaint the spare, deal with the color mismatch, or just never use that hand again.
I think this is madness. I support the inclusion of specialty manipulators (the Kampfer has one that exists solely to hold its shotgun two-handed), but why not come up with a standard that works for the most basic weapon types?
Oh, and I almost forgot - now that I know that the weapons aren’t compatible, it becomes clear to me that the only way to get the most out of these Option Sets is to make sure you have all the kits that match the included accessories. I know Bandai does all sorts of things to convince people to buy models, but this is rather shameless.
I don’t ever give letter grades to model kit stuff, but I feel like I need to mark this one a D just to emphasize my disappointment. The overall detail of the accessories is entirely offset by the lack of out-of-the-box color separation and the incompatibility of most of the weapons.
Other Thoughts
- I should mention that it took me over a week to find time to topcoat these parts, and then several more days to photograph them. And when I finally sat down to take pictures, I spent half the time fiddling with the accessories to get them to fit on the Astaroth. I was planning on concocting twice as many poses as I did, but decided it wasn't worth doubling my efforts.
-
After finishing the vast majority of this post, I decided to take a few more photos; in particular, I wanted to replicate a few more of my favorite poses using the Smooth Bore Gun. These poses involved holding the gun by its barrel, so I figured I’d borrow a manipulator with the three finger/trigger finger split from a Real Grade model. This is where I learned that the ball joints on Real Grade manipulators are smaller than those on High Grades, meaning there is even *less* standardization than I thought when I originally wrote this post. I’m honestly not trying to make this Option Set look even worse. It’s doing that quite well on its own.
Thankfully I still managed to achieve one of the poses. I just had to remove the thumb from a HG manipulator (and then spend two minutes balancing the gun):
PS - I realize that the EZ8 isn’t in the photo I based this pose on. I also realize that I have it backwards. Hopefully you still get the point. - While I'm still glad I learned how to paint, the rest of the experience with this set was so bad that I've honestly questioned whether it was net positive overall. I'm at the point where it is retroactively worsening my opinion of the Astaroth, despite the fact that none of this was its fault!
