It’s been a week, but I’ve finally taken some photos and am ready to wrap this build up.
Articulation
Despite having a full inner frame, the range on most of the body parts is poor.
Head: The upward range is so-so. This is the best I could muster, and I had to pull the ball joint as far out as I could just to get it:
Downward is much better:
Arms: typical of a modern model kit, the arm socket can swing out and away from the body, giving it (in theory) more crossbody range. But the arms are so short and stubby that it only does so much good.
The shoulder armor keeps arm from moving too far upward - you’re not going to pull off a Final Shot with this thing:
Not even the elbow bend is that impressive:
Torso: I spoke earlier about how the hips are much wider than the waist, and I assumed this was to allow the upper torso to fully rotate during the transformation. It turns out I was wrong about that. Turns out that the upper torso cannot do a full rotation without being blocked by the front skirt armor:
Thankfully, there is a fix - you can gently pull on the body in order to “pop out” the torso joint. Doing so gives you full 360 degree rotation.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t help at all with the front or back bend:
Legs: You can swing the torso joint down and out to (theoretically) give the legs extra range:
In practice, it doesn’t do much.
The back bend is good enough:
The knee bend is good, but the front leg lift is hampered by the front skirt armor:
Thankfully, it manages a heck of a split:
Wings: Technically speaking, the wings don’t have full range of movement. For example, I don’t think you can rotate them upwards to make them parallel with the ground. However, they do just about everything else. And when they’re fully unfurled, they are a sight to behold:
It’s amazing how they were able to cram in so many individual sections and layers, and then figure out how to make them all fold up:
And on top of all that, they’re extremely sturdy. The only part that is delicate are the tiny little pegs that keep the individual sections in place when folded up. If you aren’t careful, you can cause them to shear off when opening up the wings.
Posing
I had all sorts of cool poses in mind, but this ended up being a really bad photo shoot. I struggled to bring all my ideas to life, despite spending quite a lot of time trying to make everything look just so.
Part of the problem was, of course, the poor articulation, but that wasn’t the only problem. There’s also the matter of this special Action Base Adapter:
Whether in Bird Mode or Mobile Suit mode, this adapter is the only way to connect the model to an Action Base. And while it is sturdy as heck, it is also highly restrictive.
Allow me to explain. Most models use a standard peg-type adapter:
The nice thing about this is that you can rotate the model on the peg. To illustrate, let’s bring out Wing Gundam’s arch nemesis:
The Tallgeese is facing “forward” relative to the base, but we can easily pivot:
Throw in some additional rotation at the torso, and you can create great turning poses:
Now, if you have a clip-type adapter, you can still sort of simulate this, by changing the position of the adapter on the base. But Wing Gundam’s special adapter is a pain, because it only seems to fit one way. Your model is going to face straight whether you want it to or not.
When you consider the fact that Wing Gundam is the kind of mobile suit that feels at home in the air, this kind of restriction feels particularly stifling. The photo below should have been a great action pose, but instead it looks goofy:
Even a simple shooting pose like this was more challenging to pull off than it should be. It’s just not as easy to manipulate a model on a base when it’s so stiff:
And then comes the articulation to make a bad day worse. The lack of good cross body range means that this pose doesn’t look nearly as good as it should:
And this doesn’t look too hot either, not with that right shoulder flipped upside down:
These still poses are about the best I could manage:
But overall, my luck was so poor, so motivation sapping, that I managed to mess up the framing on all these shots of an excellent pose:
I’ve had photo shoots that were as demoralizing as this, but never one for a model I liked so much.
Bird Mode
I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial in stating that even most fans think that Wing Gundam’s transformation into Bird Mode is dumb. No matter how you slice it, it looks like a robot with a shield strapped to its face.
And yet the transformation sequence for this Real Grade model is way more complicated than you might think. It isn’t as simple as twisting the torso around and slapping on the shield. Every single joint has some sort of special mechanism that has to be activated. The shoulder armor has to be flipped down. The claws have to be extended. The torso joint has to be clicked open, the backpack has to be lowered, and the knee has to be unlocked. All of this so that you can create … well, this:
Does it look better than other iterations of Bird Mode? Yeah, sure. At least from the top. But nothing can hide the fact that from the bottom, it looks, well …
And you know what? I’m kind of pissed. How the heck to they manage to add all sorts of crazy, hidden mechanisms into every single joint, and yet none of them do anything to help improve the model’s articulation. It boggles the mind.
Alternate Bird Mode
A whole bunch of promotional photos show this model in a sort of “alternate” Bird Mode. Interestingly, the instructions don’t show you how to do it. At least, it doesn’t give you step by step instructions. There are a few photos, and it turns out that’s all you need to figure it out. All you do is swing the legs forward, remove the gun, bend the shield, and voila:
Honestly, I think this looks pretty cool. At least from above. Once again, you don’t want to look at it from below:
Unfortunately, the claws are in the wrong place, so our bird here can’t easily swoop down and pick up unsuspecting prey:
Conclusion
I don’t know what to make of this one. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that this model got me to appreciate the design of Wing Gundam is a triumph the likes of which few models have or will ever achieve.
Having said that, there are so many other problems here. The articulation should not be this bad for a model with an inner frame. And while the model does look good, there is no escaping the fact that it doesn’t really look or feel enough like a Real Grade. I mean, just look at how it compares standing next to its pals:
It looks a little different, sure, but it doesn’t look all that much out of place. And while that is good for the visual cohesion of my little display here, it isn’t really good by any objective measurement.
While I disagree with some of the observations made in this video review by Hobby Clubhouse, I do agree with the reviewer that it feels like something went wrong with this model during its development. Everything about it, even some of the good stuff, feels half baked or compromised, as if it needed just a few more months of development and tweaking to get it right.
At least, that’s what I hope to be true. Because if this is in fact a preview of the future of Real Grades, we as fans have a lot to worry about.
I’ll guess we’ll have to wait and see.
TL:DR I don’t regret getting this kit, but I’m not sure if I’d recommend it to anyone else. It’s too hard to focus on how good it looks without thinking about how much better it could be.