Gunpla Build - High Grade Full Armor Gundam 7th (Build)

For such a big, bulky unit, you’d expect the Full Armor 7th to have a lot of parts. But you would be incorrect:

Remember, though, that this is a sub-$20 kit. This is par for the course for that price range.

Here is a closeup of the decal sheet:

It isn’t very big, but it is pretty dense. And most of them are for color correction.

Now, if you look closely at the runners, you’ll see that something is missing. Did you find it?

In case you didn’t, this kit has no effect parts for its beam sabers. I find this quite shocking, and I’m wondering why they were omitted. I can’t imagine it was a cost cutting move. I’ve seen plenty of kits before with piles of unused parts. Wasting plastic doesn’t seem to be one of Bandai’s big concerns.

If I had to take a guess, I’d wager that someone decided they simply weren’t necessary, and that builders would be so occupied by this model’s giant guns that they wouldn’t care about posing it with its beam sabers.

Whatever the case, I don’t like their omission, just on on sheer principle.

Now, let’s get to the build.

Beam Rifle

When I was building this, I thought it looked significantly larger than a standard Gundam beam rifle. In fact, I thought it looked a lot more like the Jesta Cannon’s massive gun.

As it turns out, that’s not really true. It’s actually roughly the same size as the classic beam rifle, trading in a bit of length for height:

And it’s actually considerably smaller than the Jesta Cannon’s rifle:

What can I say? I was dead wrong on this one. Nevertheless, it still has a very “heavy” look, with some nice surface detail.

A few notes on the build process. First, I used the last dregs of the grey spray paint from Cima’s Gelgoog to recolor both guns. They both came out looking pretty nice as a result.

Second, I did most of the work on this during the summer, and it appears that I did nothing back then to remove the seam line running along the top the rifle. I think it’s because it looks less like a seam line and more like surface detail, and I decided it would look better this way.

Shoulder Cannon

In contrast to the beam rifle, the shoulder cannon is, in fact, huge:

It even dwarfs the Jesta Cannon’s gun:

In fact, one could argue that it’stoo huge for a shoulder mounted gun, but I guess it’s not uncommon for MSV mobile suit designs to be a little bit on the crazy side, so I’ll let it slide.

Once again, we get a lot of nice surface detail on this one. I added a little bit of color, but I tried not to get too carried away.

Beam Sabers

I’m including these for the sake of being thorough, but without any beam effect parts there’s not much to see.

I know I have plenty of spare beams lying around to use with these, but I still think it’s weird that none where included in the kit. I’ve seen Entry Grade and SD kits with no beam effect parts, but I’ve never seen that happen with a High Grade. Guess there’s a first time for everything.

Shield

Amazingly, this doesn’t really require any color correction. It’s all plastic and panel lining.

In terms of the visual design, I think it looks great. The extra bits of armor plating make it stand out from your typical Earth Federation shield.

(Also, the EFSF logo is a waterslide decal. It’s not included in this kit)

Head

This is a fairly standard Gundam head with a bit of grey extra armor plating running along the sides. Of course, that extra armor plating has to be color corrected, and the model does come with some stickers to help with that. I just can’t remember if I used them or not. I think I tried to, but gave up and used paint.

In any case, armor plating aside, it’s pretty classic look that’s not that far off from the Grandaddy Gundam. It even keeps the old school white V-Fin. I find this especially noteworthy considering that the RX78-4, 5, and 6 switched to the yellow V-Fin. I don’t know why the Full Armor 7th went back to the white one, but I’m certainly not going to complain.

Chest

I believe this is one of the only parts of the body that requires no color correction. Everything you see here is color separated plastic.

It does, however, feature a whole lot of panel lines. Normally I’d consider that a good thing, but with this particular kit I had a lot of trouble with the panel lining. Some of the lines are so small and narrow that even the super fine tip of a Gundam Marker was too wide for them.

That means you have to rub away the excess marker ink in order to thin out the panel line, which isn’t normally a problem. But on this kit, I was often left with some nasty, smeary streaks. I don’t know if it’s the type of plastic it uses or what, but a lot of the lines simply aren’t as clean as I’d like.

In terms of the visual design, it certainly is different. There’s no red at all, and the chest vents are significantly different than what you’d see on a traditional looking Gundam.

Lower Torso

This has a teeny bit of “mandatory” color correction, which is the little strips of grey running along the bottom of the front skirts. Everything else is either optional color correction, or panel lines.

I want to take a moment to focus in on the Crotch V. It uses a shiny foil sticker that just doesn’t look right. It’s weirdly shaped (it’s square rather than a long rectangle), and the foil finish looks a bit tacky. And since there’s nothing but a flat surface underneath it, there’s no depth or dimension to the V. This stands in sharp contrast to the Powered GM, which has a nice, three dimensional V (despite being several years older). This is a small, but very clear example of what I mean when I say this kit feels older than it is.

Feet

These look extremely similar to Grandaddy’s feet, albeit much larger. Here’s a comparison shot:

There’s a bit a of extra armor plating, but overall it doesn’t mess too much with the look.

Legs

This is by far the worst part of the build.

There are a lot of parts, a lot of decals, and overall they need a lot of color correction. I had to come up with a genuine plan of attack - “paint this first, then assemble this, etc” - in order to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Let’s break down all the color correction. Keep in mind that this is all for the legs:

• Everything grey is color corrected. There are stickers for most of it, but not all of it (for instance, the grey inside the joints)
• The black strip along the back of the ankle is painted
• The grey bit on the top of the knee - the one with the yellow circle in the center - is made out of two decals layered on top of each other. It works surprisingly well
• There’s a tiny bit of yellow running along the bottom of the ankle armor which is painted
• The yellow sections on the leg itself are painted. Yes, I know the black panel lines I did look terrible

I’ll admit that the final result looks pretty good. They’re nicely bulky, with lots of layering of colors. It just wasn’t a pleasant building experience. It’s a lot of work, with a lot to keep track of.

Shoulder Armor

The only color correction that is “required” here are the red decals, and a bit of grey on the sides of the shoulders. Everything else you see here is optional (though I do think it helps bring out all the detail).

The shoulders also have some nasty seam lines running along the top and the sides. I tried my best with them, but they really stand out against this particular blue.

Arms

These weren’t too bad. There are only some minor panel lines running along the white plastic, and the only color correction is the grey inside of the joints. Beyond that, it’s all just panel lines.

In terms of visual design, these are quite beefy for a Gundam. But I think that’s more than appropriate for a “Full Armor” mobile suit like this.

Backpack

Every bit of yellow you see on here had to be painted. It’s not much in the aggregate, but since it’s yellow paint, it was nevertheless a huge pain.

But there’s another, bigger problem with the backpack. The two holes that the beam sabers slot into are formed by the empty space between the two parts that make up the backpack:

What this means in essence is that if the two parts aren’t squeezed together tightly enough, the holes will be too large, and the beam sabers will sit too loosely.

It’s an unfortunate design flaw that probably could have been avoided. The silver lining is that it’s fixable (just squeeze the parts together as close as they’ll go), but it’s still kind of annoying.

In terms of the design, I’m not really sure what the red and white thing is on the left side. Perhaps it’s a counterweight for the cannon?

Tail Stabilizer

There is a long, nasty seam line on the center piece, and a bunch of the grey bits that need painting, but overall this was easier to build than I thought it would be.

Hands

We get a pair of holding hands, and a pair of open palm hands:

At the risk of sounding too demanding, I think all most model kits should come with these four hands at a bare minimum. They cover a wide range of use cases, and open up a wide range of expressiveness. And four tiny hands is not at all a burden, either on the engineers designing the kits, or on the bill of materials.

Instead, it sometimes feels like a miracle to get four hands in a High Grade kit, and I think that’s damming. You can do better Bandai.

Finished!

Finally, after so many months, the Full Armor Gundam 7th is complete:

The build may not have been enjoyable, but I’m really starting to like the way it came out. I’m actually looking forward to taking some photos of this one.