I’ve built a few SD Gundam kits over the years. In my experience they’re all over the map in regards to quality.
You’ve got kits like the SD Build Burning, which looks fantastic out of the box, and even better with a few minor decals and a silver sharpie marker for color correction:
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the SD Wing Zero. I got this for my kid as a Christmas gift, and if I had done some research into it I may not have bothered:
If you had told me prior that there exists a model kit that uses massive, color correcting decals for the shield, shoulder armor, rear skirt armor and more, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here it is!
Then there’s the SD Sgt. Verde Buster Gundam:
This one is also not color accurate out of the box, but unlike the Wing Zero it also doesn’t come with a ton of decals. You just have to paint the hell out of it until it looks right.
As you can see, SDs vary not only in regards to color accuracy, but also in regards to what they asks of you to make it color accurate. All of which is to say that I had no idea what I was getting myself into with Command Gundam.
In retrospect, I wonder why I pulled the trigger on this kit. I already have one other SD model that I haven’t touched for lack of wanting to paint it. I got this without even knowing whether I was about to fall into the same trap.
I guess luck was on my side; as you can see from this parts layout, it looks to be pretty well color separated out of the box:
It may not be obvious from this far zoomed out, but there are a lot of small, color accurate parts on these runners. That’s not to say that there won’t be any work to do, just that the hardest work seems to have been done already.
Let’s zoom in on a few of the most interseting bits:
This is what I’d consider a “good” decal sheet. It’s mostly made up of fun, interesting decals (such as the four sets of eyes, as well as the fake military logo), as well as a bunch of small color correcting stickers that aren’t strictly necessary, but still make life easier should you choose to use them.
Next, we have this big chrome V-Fin:
I love when kits come with chrome plated parts like this. It makes them feel a bit special, and the parts just look cool.
Building the “Frame Gundam” Mode
If we look closely at the instruction manual, we’ll see that it has you build the Command Gundam in its “Frame Gundam” form first, without all of its gear attached:
So let’s do that first and see how it looks.
I’m not going to do a play by play of this part of the assembly. It’s similar to most standard SD models, using the same number (and kinds) of parts. The one thing I wanted to highlight was the eyes. The eye piece is double sided, which means you can choose up to two of the four varieties of eye decals to use:
The only other SD I have that does this is an SD Unicorn Gundam that my kids have since destroyed. It’s a nice feature, even though it’s a bit of a pain to make use of. You have to pull open the helmet in order to pry out the eye piece and switch it, and the helmet pieces aren’t exactly loose fitting. Plus, you’ll still have two eye decals that will wind up unused, even though they all look great. It would be even better if there was a second eye piece you could swap between.
Next, here are some (but not all) of the weapons:
These are all unpainted and undetailed, and I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with them. As you can see, there’s a lot of surface detail that can be painted, but I’m not sure if I want to. Command Gundam is literally a cartoon character. Equipping it with hyper detailed, realistic looking weapons kind of defeats the point.
Alright, let’s look at the “finished” model:
Even in this incomplete form, it still looks pretty complete. It’s the same approximate size and complexity as other “standard” SD models.
However, it’s obviously not fully complete. There’s all sorts of gaping holes - in the chest vents, below the crotch-V, in the helmet, etc.
But still - if this was all I got in the box, I’d still be pretty pleased. Which is why it’s exciting to know that this isn’t all there is to it.
But we’ll put the rest of it together in Part 2 of this build.
Additional Thoughts
The one thing I don’t like about this model so far are the feet. They’re a lot bigger here than they are in illustrations, they’re oddly shaped. and the metallic silver color clashes with the rest of the body.