Our girl is all dressed up and ready to pose. Let’s dive in and see what the WOundwart can do:
But before we get started for real, let’s get one thing out of the way - yes, the Woundwart can stand up on those twiggy little slats it has in lieu of feet:
They actually do a fairly good job of holding up all the weight. The only thing you need to be mindful of is that they tend to move around a lot anytime you pick the model up, so you frequently have to readjust them. It’s a bit of a pain, but there’s an easy solution - put it on its included display stand, and keep it in flying poses. That’s the Woundwart’s “natural” state, and I think it looks better that way.
About the Visual Design
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but when you put the Woundwort’s exaggeratedly feminine design in black, paint the nails red, and top it all off with a shiny gloss coat, it gives off a bit of a dominatrix vibe.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing - if it’s true that Re Zeon is run by female supremacists, it’s actually extremely on brand.
I also think it’s a more fitting design for the Woundwort than its original white color scheme. Between the Titans and Re Zeon, the Woundwort was never used by anyone you could plausibly consider the “good guys”; the OG white look is bit too pure and heroic, while this is just dripping with “bad girl” energy.
On a more general note, however weird you think this design looks, it looks even weirder in person. From a distance, it certainly looks humanoid, but zoom in and you realize that the Gundam Wiki’s description of this MS is very accurate: that is, it really is a drum shaped frame with a bunch of components strapped to it. You can easily imagine any of the body parts being swapped out with some other component as needed, which is not something you expect from most mobile suits (and especially not a Gundam type).
Detailing and Stuff
I don’t normally talk about the level of detail in High Grades, as it’s usually not worth writing home about. Generally speaking, if it’s anime accurate, it’s good enough for me.
And that’s usually the case, since it seems like most mobile suits are designed with Gunpla in mind. In other words, most designs aren’t allowed to be so complex as to make a High Grade version impossible to sculpt and engineer.
But I wonder if that’s still generally the case for all Gundam manga. When you consider that it was approximately 4-5 years between when the Advance of Zeta manga was first published, and when the very first High Grade Woundwort kit was released, I really wonder if the original design was ever made with model kits in mind.
I say this because of the way this thing looks. If you read through this series of build posts, you’ll know that some sections of the body are made out of quite a few parts. This results in a level of intricacy that’s a bit more than you’d expect from a typical High Grade. On top of that, some of the individual parts are extremely complex in shape (particularly everything in the legs). I mean, how many High Grades have a moveable cockpit hatch?
And while it’s a bit hard to notice on all the dark black armor, there is a surprising amount of surface detailing and panel lines if you look for them. Granted, I didn’t end up filling them all in - I thought that might make the overall kit look too busy - but it’s all there.
All of which is to say that the more and more I look at this kit, the more I realize just how much is going on with it. Even if you factor in all the color correcting decals, this does arguably feel a bit more premium than usual.
The Hands
I cannot overstate just how much the Woundwart’s open hands add to its personality. There’s something about the way all the individual fingers are positioned that makes them so versatile. In some poses they look elegant and ladylike:
And in others they give off total Boss Babe vibes:
And sometimes they just let you do fun, humanlike poses that you normally can’t get away with:
Articulation
My personal opinion is that this is a model where the articulation doesn’t really matter. This is a statement piece - you find a simple pose that looks good, prop it up on the base, and put it on the shelf. Let the visual design to the talking.
However, I still tested most of the articulation just to satisfy my own curiosity, and since I’ve done all the work, I might as well share it with you.
Starting from the top, the head is on quite a swivel. It can go up, and it can go down:
And while it can also go all around, you may have to move those little shoulder wings out of the way:
You can get a 90 degree arm lift; despite the fact that there’s no armor blocking it, you can’t get any more range than this. The joint simply doesn’t allow it:
The elbow bend is similarly limited by the odd construction of the joints:
Though that weirdness also allows us to extend the arm out like this:
The torso can move freely, though you may have to move the cockpit hatch out of the way:
Thanks to the hinge joints used for the mobile armor transformation, the legs can pretty much do a perfect split (it’s not quite perfect in this photo, but I was able to move them a bit further. They just didn’t want to stay in place).
The Woundwart does technically have a knee joint, and it does move:
Because the hands are also on weird hinges, they too are quite expressive and articulated:
Lastly, we have the, um …. booty. It has a tremendous amount of range. You can have it like this, at waist height:
Or you can raise it up near its back:
It can also swing out like this:
I’m not sure exactly what the purpose of all this articulation is, but it’s there if you want it.
(I didn’t test the ab crunch, but that’s because it doesn’t really have one. That’s one area where the articulation is DOA).
All in all, the articulation is surprisingly good considering how weird the design is. But that weird design also means that the Woundwart doesn’t really lend itself to highly dynamic poses, so it’s all kind of a wash.
But again, that’s not really a knock on it. There’s nothing wrong with some kits being statement pieces instead of posing pros.
To Be Continued
You know a kit a special when it takes six posts to get through it, and I think that’s what we’ll have to do here. There’s still a whole bunch of gimmicks to cover, and this post has already gone on pretty long. I’ll see you for one more post. I promise it will be the last one.