Let’s crack our knuckles and get ready to build this Burning.
We’ll start off with our usual shot of the runners, though to be honest, I didn’t really take a close look at them before starting the build. Without knowing exactly how many pieces it will or won’t use from the HG God Gundam, it’s hard to make any meaning from these parts:
Accessories
This is going to be very simple. First we have the tonfas:
Each one is two pieces (the body and the tip). Nice and easy.
Next we have the beam sabers:
They’re very different in shape than usual, looking more like long sword handles instead of lightsabers. However, this is the way they look in G Gundam (at least it’s the way Domon’s beam sabers look), and I definitely dig them. It’s a nice change of pace, and their length should make for some nice two handed sword poses.
Most green-colored beam blades are some sort of neon green, like the ones in Gundam Wing. But these ones are more of a teal:
They also come in two different sizes - something I feel more model kits should do - and are much wider than usual. They look a lot more like full-on blades than the normal, lightsaber-esque sticks we typically get.
Unfortunately, the blades are (in my opinion) too long to use in the tonfas. It looks weird when the blade is significantly longer than the tonfa itself:
All of which is to say that, as much as I love the look and the color of these beam blades, I’m not sure how much I’m going to use them. Like the God Gundam, the Blazing certainly can use a beam saber, but it’s really not it’s main mode of attack.
Feet
These feet.
These stupid feet.
I originally started working on this kit in mid-December, and these are the sole reason for why I immediately stopped.
The problem was one of color. I noticed that the bottoms of the feet are a completely different color than the tops. I thought this looked weird, and assumed that maybe I was supposed to paint them.
But no! As it turns out, they look like this in the instruction manual:
And even on the box art:
Normally I take Bandai’s coloring suggestions seriously, but I couldn’t abide by this one. I wanted the bottoms of the feet to look different - specifically, I wanted to paint in all the cutouts/indentations to be the same color as the top of the foot. That way there would be some color continuity between the two parts, and it would also look like someone bolted a grey, shoe-like protective plate to the sole.
The only trouble with this plan is that the Blazing Gundam uses a very weird shade of blue. It’s like … a navy blue bordering on purple. And I hadn’t the foggiest idea as to how to replicate it.
And I do mean “foggy” - I was in a really bad mental state last month (and was really tired), and at no point in time did I consider looking at the color guide.
Except as it turns out, that wouldn’t have helped. Because this time around I did try and follow the color guide, and the result was a far lighter blue (to be fair, the color guide says to use “bright blue” and “wine red”, and I’ve no idea if the paint tones I used are close to what it has in mind).
In any case, all’s well that (eventually) ends well. I found out, through a happy accident, that I could get a pretty close facsimile just by mixing a splash of “hot rod red” paint into a healthy measure of “English Navy”. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s certainly close enough for my purpose. Check it out:
And with that, the foot can finally be assembled, and I can move on to the rest of the model. First, the components:
And then the final assembly:
Is it just me, or do they look a bit like two toned wingtips?
Special Foot
The “Special Foot” is made out of clear green plastic, and is for use when you want to pose the Blazing Gundam doing its “Blazing Kick” move.
Unlike the regular feet, it’s very simple, consisting of two half pieces snapped together:
One problem with this gimmick is that the pieces are so clear that you can see through them, which means you can see all the injection molded plastic inside. It doesn’t exactly look realistic, so let’s see if we can “fix” it.
As I accidentally learned building the GM Custom, a layer of gloss spray coat, combined with a layer of glossy Pledge, will end up making clear parts look a bit like frosted glass. I tried to do this again on this foot, but the results were not quite what I was looking for:
It didn’t frost up quite as much as I had hoped. I’d say it still looks better than before, but I guess this trick isn’t all that reliable.
Legs
The legs are straightforward to build, but I’m impressed with just how much surface detail is etched into some of these pieces.
I’m impressed with just how much work the claws are doing here. They’re so simple in shape, but with some some heavy panel lines they end up looking almost cel shaded.
