Right off the bat, this is shaping up to be a good build:
We’ve got what looks to be a pretty good amount of inner framing for the body, some of those cool, squishy, rubbery parts for the power cables, and some color correcting decals for those that should handle most of the color correction on this kit.
And on top of all that, we get a display base! It really feels like they went the extra mile with this one.
Torso
As you might imagine (judging by the shape of this mobile suit), this part of the build is a bit weird.
We start with the head, as well the two sections of its chest (if you want to call it that). Eventually these will all fit together, but I kept them separate until they could be topcoated. There are hidden hinges that allow the chest sections to pull away from the torso, which is ultimately necessary not only for the transformation gimmick, but also to give it sufficient range of movement during poses.
The head is then attached to the rest of the torso like so:
Take a look at the cutout inside the fuselage: when the Gaza C transforms into mobile armor mode, the head section swings down and inward to tuck into that space.
Next we add the power cables and the center chest plate:
And then finally attach the other two chest pieces, and we’re done:
A few notes:
- This is all color separated plastic, which I think is really impressive
- Okay, so there’s one sticker; a silver metallic one that goes behind the green sensor on the chest. But that’s not color correction so much as a way of making it look more realistic.
- Interestingly, the green eye sensor does not have a similar sticker. I tried painting the inside of the eye with metallic paint, but there’s just not enough surface area for the paint to cling.
- There are some seamlines on the fuselage, which I tried my best to remove, but the results were less than ideal.
Rifle
For some reason, the main gun is called a “Knuckle Buster”. It’s a strange name, that’s fine with me. It’s rare for mobile suit weapons to get any sort of special name, and even rarer for a grunt suit, so I’ll take it:
It’s a pretty simple construction, but it looks nice. And outside of the little yellow sticker, this is once again all color separated plastic.
There’s another seamline to deal with here, but this time I think it came out much better.
Now to attach to the body. It simply clips into the hinge on the right chest piece:
Considering that the hinge can also pivot left and right, the gun ultimately has quite a bit of range. But it remains to be seen whether it ends up getting in the way during poses.
Lower Torso
From the outside, this looks pretty standard:
But on the inside, there’s an impressively complicated bit of inner framing to help with the transformation:
Notice how the upper torso tucks neatly into the cutout in the lower torso:
It’s easy for this to get out of alignment as the torso moves up and down. You just have to keep an eye out for it, because it looks pretty ugly when they’re not lined up.
(Side note; I didn’t take a photo of the backside, but there are two purple stickers back there. I’m really glad I didn’t have to paint that instead)
Arms
The shields (I’m assuming they’re shields) are all made out of color separated plastic. They even have a space for storing the beam sabers:
But when we get to the arms themselves, we encounter one of the few areas of this kit that require painting:
Basically, on the inside of the arm, there’s some pink plastic that needs to be painted grey, and some grey plastic that needs to be painted pink.
We also get some more purple stickers around the wrists; again, I’m glad I didn’t have to paint that.
A few more notes:
- The armor on the hands are simply circular purple discs. That may seem silly, but it’s part of the transformation gimmick. When the Gaza C transforms, its hands tuck into the arms, and those discs end up covering up the opening.
- There’s a hinge inside the shoulder joint. It looks like a bit of an eyesore, but there’s no real getting around it.
Legs
We’ve got the last bit of color correction here. First, we have some more power cables to paint pink:
And there are some thrusters embedded inside the legs that you can paint the color of your choice:
And as you might imagine, there are some pretty nasty seamlines to deal with:
I actually struggled a lot with these. Some of the parts don’t fit together very tightly, and so the seams began to separate, even after treating them and sanding them. I tried gluing some of them together, and it seems to be working okay so far, but I can’t tell if it will hold up long term.
Feet
These are kind of like bird talons, and each “toe” is separately articulated:
Finished
This was a great build. The seamline removal was the most “difficult” part, but even that wasn’t too bad relative to other old High Grades. This is yet another 2006-era HG with surprisingly excellent engineering and color separation, and I can’t wait to see how it looks in the lightbox.