Let’s kick off Garbage Time 2023 with a build that may either be simple and pleasant, or my worst nightmare:
This is the High Grade Gundam Barbatos Lupus from Season 2 of Iron Blooded Orphans.
About the Mobile Suit
Reminder - I haven’t finished watching Season 2 of IBO, so this section is going to be brief.
Throughout Season 1 of IBO, Barbatos goes through six minor variations. But by the end of the season it’s damaged enough to require a complete overhaul (just in time for Season 2, of course).
Since by this point in the story, Barbatos and the rest of the Tekkadan crew are full fledged members of the Space Mafia, they enlist the help of the Space Mafia’s engineers to fully rebuild Barbs into a brand new, more powerful form.
It’s pretty much the same mobile suit with all of its stats boosted. At least in the episodes I watched, it managed to run roughshod over all of its opponents.
Eventually, somewhere around the midpoint of Season 2, it has to fight an evil Mobile Armor, at which point it gets totalled (and rebuilt) again.
Weapons and Stuff
The Lupus uses way too many different weapons for me to bother trying to count. It starts off the Season using a giant Sword Mace:
But very quickly trades those in for two smaller, single handed maces:
It also uses a pair of wrist mounted guns:
And then there’s a whole bunch of other stuff it uses in the episodes I haven’t watched yet.
In a way, the situation is the opposite of the OG Barbatos. That suit changed its physical form many times over, but largely stuck to a small core set of weapons. Meanwhile the Lupus keeps its physical form intact, but frequently switches weapons. Go figure.
Accessories Packs and Stuff
The Gundam Barbatos - in all of its forms - may be the nadir of Bandai’s “Buy all our playsets and toys” BS.
If you wished to build all six of the original Barbatos’ forms, you’d need to buy multiple model kits and a single accessory pack.
As for the Barbatos Lupus, you won’t have to buy more than one model kit, but you will have to buy multiple accessory packs (four to be exact).
Again, neither situation is great, but of the two, I think the Lupus is slightly less worse.
I’m about to say something that would generate a lot of heat with the Internet Gundam community, but it doesn’t really matter what weapon Barbs has equipped. It’s main strategy in the show is to overwhelm its opponent with speed and aggression, while occasionally shooting things (read: its battles are samey and boring). As long as it has something big and heavy to smash with, it’ll look fine.
In other words, if you buy the Barbatos Lupus Gunpla, it’ll come with the Sword Mace, and then all you have to do is toss it a spare gun you might have lying around. That’s all it really needs.
About the Build
The original Barbatos was one of the least color accurate High Grades I’ve seen from the Modern Era1.
Here is how it is “supposed” to look:
And here is how it actually looks as an out of the box build:
Granted, some of the color correction I opted for was unnecessary, but some of it (like the yellow on the shoulders, the black toes, etc) are pretty iconic parts of Barbatos’ look. All in all, I feel like you’d have to go back well over a decade to find a big, flagship High Grade that’s in such dire need for color correction.
I’m hoping the Barbatos Lupus isn’t quite as dire. I guess I’ll find out one way or another.
- For context, I consider the “Modern Era” to have started around 2015, which is the year the HG Barbatos came out, and also the year that the High Grade Revive Gundam came out with its awesome articulation. That was when High Grades really started to come into their own in terms of quality, which is why Barbs’ lack of quality was so striking. [return]