Gunpla Birthday - SD Unicorn Gundam

My kids are increasingly taking in interest in my favorite things, at least as much as a toddler can genuinely take interest in something. That includes Gundam, or “Gingum” as they like to call it. To be clear, they aren’t watching it (aside from 20 minutes of Gundam Build Fighters), and they don’t really know what it’s about. They just know that I have a bunch of these robot things and that they look cool. They’ve also been desperate to build a model kit with me, which is something I simply haven’t been able to accommodate. There are too many sharp objects, paints, etc. that they simply should not be near, and they’d easily break or lose the pieces.

And yet, they ended up getting their wish anyway. Look at what they gave me as an early birthday present:

I might not be able to build a High Grade with my kids, but an SD Gundam? I figured that that was something we could do together. So we sat down this afternoon and put this little guy together. Let’s talk about it, shall we?

About SD Gundam Cross Silhouette

The title of this post simply refers to this model as an SD Gundam Unicorn, but the full name is something like:

SD Gundam Cross Silhouette Unicorn Gundam (Destroy Mode)

That’s is quite a mouthful, and a needless one at that, but that “Cross Silhouette” bit is worthy of mention. SD Gundam Cross Silhouette is the name of a whole (ongoing) line of SD kits with a special gimmick. You can assemble them normally, in which case they look like a standard SD Gundam. OR you can take those same parts and attach them to a special Cross Silhouette inner frame, which makes the model a bit taller, and gives it better articulation:

For comparison, here is what the Gundam Ground Type looks like normally:

And here is how it looks using the CS frame:

As you can see, the arms and legs are both a bit longer, which gives them the space they need to have a better range of motion (while still very clearly looking Super Deformed). However, this being a modern Bandai product, there is a catch - the CS frame is sold separately.

As usual, I am torn on how I feel about this. When Bandai does things like, say, sell CS frames separately, or stuff Iron Blooded Orphans weapons into accessory packs, it reminds me a bit of the video game industry, where you increasingly pay full price for a “starter” version of the game (which you then need to augment with additional paid addon content to get the full experience). I can’t help but wonder whether this is a deliberate attempt to get people to pony up by appealing to their sense of FOMO. A lot of companies these days make money by exploiting the human brain’s blind spots¹.

However, splitting it out like this does make each individual package (model, frame, etc) cheaper, and that makes it easier for, say, a kid on an allowance to slowly buy the bits they want or need, one by one, over time. There is something to be said for that².

About the Gundam Unicorn

I actually watched Gundam Unicorn for the first time a month or two ago. I wasn’t a huge fan of the show³, but nevertheless, this kit feels appropriately timed.

There’s also a bit of a story behind it. My wife doesn’t know that much about Gundam, but she does know that our children love unicorns. So when she happened to learn that there exists a Unicorn Gundam, it was an easy choice to make. As a dad, I can’t help but find that heart warming. How could I not love it?

Anyway, this is the Unicorn Gundam in its “Destroy Mode”. That’s when it starts to glow red and gets super powerful. That’s about all I feel like saying about it.

About the Build

I really did build this kit with my kids. Because of the way SD Gundams are manufactured, you can break the parts off the runners with your hands without creating nub marks. You really don’t need nippers or a hobby knife to assemble them (though I had both in my pocket just in case). Furthermore, since the pieces are big and chunky, they can withstand being manhandled by three year olds without breaking. As I sat there trying to do the actual assembly, my girls sat next to me examining the runners. Sometimes they’d breaking out a piece and either play with it, or to try and assemble it. It was extremely cute to watching them take a piece and tell me “it’s a rocket!”, or try to get an arm joint to fit into a foot piece. This will, hands down, be one of the most memorable builds of my entire life.

Of course, all of this also means that I didn’t get any work in progress photos. I just barely got a picture of the runners:

They’re a bit jumbled together, but there are five of them in total, plus a decal sheet.

Assembly of the model is no different than my previous SD Gundam. The trickiest thing about it were the clear red parts. It wasn’t always easy or intuitive to figure out how they fit in between the various white armor pieces.

Eye Decals (and how to make them better)

One of my gripes with the SD Build Burning Gundam is that you had to make a choice between which set of eyes you wanted to use:

Since the eyes are decal-based, changing from one type to the other is a one-time, permanent switch (unless you are somehow extremely good at removing and preserving stickers).

Thankfully this is not actually the case for these Cross Silhouette kits. Bandai came up with a clever way to let you have both. Underneath the models helm, you will find this piece here:

On one side of it, you will see the “cartoony” eyes, which are, as usual, a decal:

On the other side, you will find the monochrome, “traditional” eyes, which are made out of plastic:

If you want to change which eyes to use, all you have to do is remove the helm and reverse the piece:

What a clever way to solve the problem.

Accessories

The kit comes with a decent amount of accessories. You get a nice-sized Beam Magnum, a decent-sized shield, and a pair of beam sabers (and beam saber handles to mount on the backpack):

My only gripe here is that you have to paint the beam blades. That feels extremely old fashioned, and not exactly child friendly (these are meant for kids, right?). Perhaps the concern is that they wouldn’t be sturdy enough if the beam sabers were made out of two pieces.

Decals

The kit comes with two big gold stickers to slap on the V-Fin:

This means that only the front of the V-Fin is color accurate. That seems perfectly fine for an SD model.

You also get some decals to put on the shield, which you can see in the Accessories photo. I think I put them on backward 🤫

Of course, you also get the eye decal, and two green stickers for the front and rear helmet cameras.

Finished Build

Here now is our “Unicorn Gingum”:

Back when I assembled the SD Build Burning Gundam, I felt that it didn’t need a lot of panel lining, but this guy is killing for some extra detailing. Here it is after some extra TLC:

That is much better. Seriously - this kit is Exhibit A as evidence that a little detailing goes a long way.

Except that it wasn’t a little bit of detailing. Not even close. It took me well over an hour to touch this model up. It has a ton of lines and grooves to fill in, and because they are so small, I ended up having to do multiple passes with the panel lining marker to fill them in (in some cases, the marker tip was too wide, and I instead had to use paint and a brush). I wasn’t expecting to have to put in so much elbow grease!

Still, it was absolutely worth it. The SD Unicorn may be small, but it is a stunner. I’m not going to say that it looks better than the full sized Unicorn, but I think I personally like this one more. The regular Unicorn looks too plain in standard mode, and too busy in Destroy Mode. I feel like this little model captures the essence of the mobile suit without being overwhelming.

Articulation

I know I just got done saying that you don’t buy an SD Gundam for its articulation, but that doesn’t mean I can’t compare the level of articulation between two SD’s. And I can tell you that compared to the Build Burning, the SD Gundam Unicorn has garbage articulation.

You can understand why simply by looking at them side to side. The Build Burning has space for its limbs (including its head) to move around, whereas the Unicorn is extremely cramped. This makes even some of the most basic poses harder than they should be.

Stability

This model has some of the loosest joints I’ve ever encountered. The head, arms, and legs all pop off extremely easily. The mere touch of a finger is enough to send a limb flying off. I might have to do something to tighten them up, because I’m not even sure if I trust it to be stable as it stands still on a shelf or a desk.

Conclusion

This is one of those “look but don’t touch” kind of kits. From an “objective” standpoint, I don’t think I would recommend it. It’s fragility and stiffness relative to other SD’s outweighs its visual splendor.

However, I had so much fun building this kit with my children, and they’ve grown so very fond of it. For those reasons alone, this is, and will forever be, a special model to me.

PS - Consider that last photo a sneak peak of the subject of my next post.