Gunpla Build - High Grade Gundam Helios (Final)

It’s time for the Helios to fly. But first, a few bits of housekeeping …

• While the model can stand up on its own, it's not easy with those wings on its back. That's why most, if not all the photos in this post are going to be done with the help of an Action Base. (And not just any Action Base, but a clear green one that I bought it just for this occasion)
• Embarrassingly, for most of these photos, the wings aren't properly assembled. The individual wing segments are layered incorrectly, a fact that I only discovered when taking the last few photos. To be fair, I think they're still in the correct order, so the photos shouldn't look off perse. But I wanted to be upfront about this, as I know that many Gunpla fans are extremely eagle-eyed.
• After a successful test of the new lightbox, I decided to go with an appropriately colored background.

I’m not sure that was such a good idea …

First off, the blue background doesn’t actually mesh well with the green Action Base (or the green beam saber blades). They end up looking like a slightly different shade of blue, which isn’t what I was going for.

Second, I should have stopped and examined the first half dozen photos before continuing on, because then I might have been able to do something to fix the lighting. It’s way too bright at the top, and too dark on the bottom. Not only is it harder to see the lower half of the model, but a lot of the photos also look a little washed out and fuzzy, like they were taken with a camera from the 1970’s.

I just really wish I would have caught this earlier. I could have tried to futz around with the camera settings some more, or maybe I would have simply switched to the white background. I guess practice makes perfect and all - I’ll try to do better with the next model (and if I do finally get better at taking photos, perhaps I’ll even bust the Helios out again for another shoot).

Visual Design

I’m not a fan of the mobile suit designs from Gundam SEED (or SEED Destiny), but I really like the look of the Helios. Naturally I find myself wondering what it’s doing differently, or if it even is doing anything differently. Maybe I’m just a hypocrite who dislikes SEED’s mecha designs for superficial reasons.

I had to think long and hard about this, so that I might come up with a satisfying answer. Here’s what I came up with:

• Outside of the wings, most of the features borrowed from the Freedom and Destiny Gundams are on the periphery. We’re talking things like the hands and the beam rifle, both of which are fairly minor bits. On the other hand, both the satellite cannons and most of the actual body are largely taken from the Gundam X and Double X, both of which I like quite a lot. The idea that this is a remix or reinterpretation of SEED designs is at most half-true, and it’s that other half that I find most appealing.
• Building the Helios helped me to better understand why I dislike SEED’s mecha designs. The problem is less with the actual designs themselves, and more to do with their color palettes¹. The factions of the Cosmic Era largely use the same colors as the factions in the Universal Century, but the tones are all much darker (the amateur color theorist in me feels like all the colors used in SEED have a lot of grey in them). Everything looks too dark and muted, which clashes with the not-at-all-realistic designs.

On the other hand, when you take those same designs and paint them in the cheery, clean color palette of the Helios, it’s a perfect match. It’s simple really - crazy, over the top designs pair well with bright, over the top colors.

So yeah. I think the Helios looks great, and it made me finally appreciate the SEED aesthetic on some kind of level.

Testing the Articulation

Starting with the head, we get pretty great up and down movement:

Moving to the arms, we get a nice bend at the elbow, but the shoulder armor prevents it from lifting too high up:

The torso can rotate freely, though it doesn’t have much of an ab crunch:

Indeed, rather than facilitating any sort of ab crunch, the ball joint in the torso is a liability. It is extremely loose, meaning this model loves to split in half during poses. It’s a bit worrisome when it happens while you’re standing, and you watch as either the upper or lower torso plummet to the ground.

Now to the bottom half. The knee bend is good, but I’ve seen better leg lifts:

Finally, the Helios could do a solid split if I remembered to actually try a split:

When you factor in the nice toe bend, I’d say the articulation in the lower torso is very good overall. On the other hand, it’s only so-so in the upper torso. That’s probably okay for a mobile suit like the Helios. It’s going to do a lot of middair shooting poses where it’s arms are sticking straight out, so they don’t need to be able to do much. On the other had, it’s actually quite important to have good leg articulation when propped up on an Action Base. You need to do something with them other than stick them straight out¹.

The beam sabers look terrible with this background. I feel like you can barely see them:

It looks a bit better here, though it also (still) looks more blue than green:

Okay, it finally looks green in this one:

This here is literally the only action pose I did with the Beam Rifle:

With so many on-board weapons, the rifle feels superfluous. I just wasn’t feeling it.

In fact, I wasn’t really feeling poses at all this time around. The Helios looks great, but it doesn’t feel super poseable. That’s not to say that it isn’t. It’s just that it feels like the kind of model where you unfurl the wings, stick all the guns out, and just leave it like that.

So that’s exactly what I did:

Those gun-tipped wings are a bit of a pain to swing forward. They have to be at just the right angle to clear the other wing sections (though it helps when are wings are assembled properly and in order).

Conclusion

This was a fun build, one that’s far easier than you might think. And it looks like a dream.

But for whatever reason, it just doesn’t feel that dynamic to me. That’s not a bad thing in this particular case, as I don’t think it needs to be. Sometimes a model kit is destined to nail one or two poses, and that’s that.