For whatever it’s worth, I actually took a photo of the runners this time:
That weapon pack is deceiving. It may not look like many parts, but they have a lot of surface detail. Speaking of which ..
Color Correction and Detailing
Since the weapons are all made of dark blue plastic, it’s kind of hard to bring out the surface details unless you use a really light paint (which might not look very good). I opted for a gunmetal mix, in hopes that it would be noticeable.
I’m not really sure that turned out to be the case, so in some places I added a bit of weathering compound for good measure. But after that, I decided to just leave it be. After all, these Planet Armors are meant to look like toys, so there’s no need to make them look hyper realistic.
On another note, I tried adding some black panel lines (and other black color fills) on the Core Gundam’s accessories, and that turned out to be a bad idea. They’re made out of a very light grey, and solid black lines and fills are a little too harsh:
This actually had even more black on it originally, before I tried dialing it back and scraping some of it off.
I probably should have left those holes on the shield alone, but not it’s too late. Trying to clean out all the paint from those little spaces would be a nightmare.
On a final note, on a whole the detailing work for this kit wasn’t terribly fun. That’s largely because I’ve done already built eight other Planet Armors, and so it’s not exactly exciting anymore. But it’s also due to the fact that this one needs a bit more TLC than usual.
For example, the head crest needs a lot of extra color correction on account of its targeting sensor. And the wrist-mounted launchers needed a bit of black paint to hide away some marks.
I still did it all, of course; I felt like I had to for the sake of thoroughness and consistency. But it wasn’t pleasant.
But hey, it’s done now! And I won’t ever have to do it again (unless they make a new one, but what are the odds of that? …)
G-3 Core Gundam
Here it is:
At the risk of sounding like a buzzkill, I think the green highlights take something away from the calm, neutral G-3 color scheme, but I still think it looks pretty good all around.
Just like the Real Type Core Gundam, this one comes with some specially colored beam effect parts:
The light grety Beam Spray Gun looks phenomenal paired up with the Core Gundam. And that’s … kind of a problem.
Many of the Planet Gundams - including the VeeTwo - has a weapon that’s built by adding attachments to the Spray Gun. And on all of these armors, all of these attachments are molded to match the color of the original Beam Spray Gun, as included in the standard Core Gundam and Core Gundam II.
Which means that if you try and add those attachments to this light grey gun, it’s not going to look correct …
I mean, it doesn’t look bad, but if you want it to be accurate to the show, you’d best have an Earthree Gundam lying around.
VeeTwo
Okay, it’s time for our last Core Change. Docking … go.
A lot of the things I said about Marsfour apply here as well. For example, I absolutely love the color. Not only is it so different than the rest, but it’s also a green tone that we don’t often see on Gunpla.
I also love how, like Marsfour, it is armed to the teeth. It may not be quite as purely dakka dakka as, say, Heavyarms, but it’s got enough beam weapons and missile launchers to be a one mobile suit army.
And look at those thrusters on the backpack! No wonder this thing is able to zip across the battlefield.
The Amazing Transforming Gun
VeeTwo’s gun attachments can be combined in a variety of ways. The standard form is to slap one attachment in the back, and one in the front to make an extra large rifle:
But you can also just ditch the Beam Spray Rifle altogether and fasten the attachments to each other:
Or you can just equip the one attachment on its own as a smaller gun:
The possibilities are certainly not endless, but it’s nice to have options.
Without the Gun
Or you could just pose it without any handheld weapons:
Admittedly, there aren’t a whole lot of viable action poses, but at least it still looks really cool:
With the G-3 Core Gundam
These color schemes were truly made for each other:
Just the perfect pairing of calm, cool tones, which ironic considering this is the heavy weapons armor.
Limited Change
Before I wrap up, I just had to do the Limited Change from the show:
Conclusion
I still love Build Divers Re:RISE. I still love the idea of the Planets System, as well as most of the specific Planet Armors.
But if I could go back in time, I would have stopped myself from trying to collect all of them. Some are just not quite as impressive in real life as they are on the TV screen, to say nothing of the fact that the build process gets stale after long.
I guess it’s a reminder that there can be too much of a good thing.
But hey, it’s over now. And now it’s time to move forward to something new and exciting …