Gunpla Build - Gundam Alex (Part 3)

Upper Torso

Here’s a fun little easter egg. Inside of the chest armor, you will find this tiny little glimpse at the 360-degree panoramic cockpit:

You can’t see it once the entire chest is fully built, but it is a nice little detail nonetheless.

Admittedly, the finished chest is not emblematic of my best work:

The detailing at the top of the chest is pretty sloppy, and I accidentally cut away some of the decal. I tried using a tiny glob of paint to fill in the “R” and the “X”, and weirdly enough, it actually kind of worked:

Despite some of these errors, the upper torso still looks pretty good from a distance:

Side note - this is the first time in a while that I didn’t paint the chest vents gold. They use the same orange-yellow color that’s used elsewhere on the model, and I thought it would be better to preserve a sense of visual consistency.

Backpack

I love the look of this backpack:

Maybe it is the decals, or maybe it is the fact that it looks so big and powerful. Maybe it is the fact that it matches the color of the body (which, weirdly enough, is a rarity among Gundams).

Whatever the case, it looks so simple yet impressive.

Head

Yet again, the Gundam Alex does its own thing. The “cap” at the center of the V-fin is blue instead of red:

It also has rather large and vivid decals on both sides:

Compared to the head of the original Gundam, the Alex is looking quite different:

Already it takes some of the jankiness out of the design in favor of something a little more lean and mean. However, it looks a lot like the head of the Gundan Mk II:

In real life, the MK II was designed drawn years before the Gundam Alex, but I like that the latter was intentionally designed to resemble a rough draft of the former.

Arms

Usually, the arm is the last place you expect to find any surprises when building a Gundam-type model. Then again, the Alex has been nothing if not unique.

First, we have the shoulder, which is made to look like it is wrapped in some kind of flexible sheath, much like the Gundam Local Type:

Second, there is the blue “cap” that houses the Gatling guns. The entire forearm is unique in both size and shape, being taller, thicker, and longer than usual:

Pop Quiz - how exactly do the gatling guns work on this model? In War in the Pocket, they fit inside the arm, and flip oepn when needed. Unfortunately, due to the small size of this model, such a feature would destroy the structural integrity of the arm (the only way it’d fit is if the arm itself was paper thin).

Instead, the kit does a mild form of “partsformation”. You have to pop off the blue cap, stick the gun on the wrist, and place the cap back on top:

Granted, the illusion is shattered when viewed from this particular angle, but from a more natural angle it really does appear as if the gun is popping out of the arm.

If I have one complaint about the arm, it is that the articulation is not very good:

This 90 degree angle is the best you are going to get out of it.

Conclusion

I’m going to save the fully constructed model for the next (and final) post, but suffice to say that this part of the build was a breeze to get through. It was a nice break after all that careful detailing work from earlier.