Gunpla Build - High Grade Wodom Pod (Build)

Here’s a question - how does the build of such a weird, alien mobile suit compare to a normal style Gunpla?

Answer - they’re not that much different at all.

Before we start, I just wanted to point out that this kit comes with one of those cheap, simple, three piece stands, which I seem to be encountering in more and more kits over the years. It’s always nice to have some of them lying around as spares.

Head

The head is just a couple of big dome-shaped parts snapped together, with a whole bunch of stickers for good measure.

That includes four stickers to make the monoeye:

And two for the monoeye track:

There is so much surface detail running along the head, and I wanted to bring it all out with some panel lines. Initially I used a light grey paint, but in the end I thought it looked way too busy:

So instead I switched to some sparkly turquoise paint I had lying around:

It gives the model some nice, Tron-like lines without being overwhelming. It ended up turning out better than I expected.

A couple more observations. The little section in the back can slide out, and the very back of the dome contains a slideout hatch:

I don’t think this hatch is for May’s Mobile Doll to come out of; in the show, it always looks like the entire dome pops up to let her exit. So I’m not entirely sure what its purpose is. Mecha Gaikotsu took his High Grade Mobile Doll May and had her sit in the open space, but I can’t tell if that’s the intent.

Torso

I mean, this is the closest thing the Wodom has to a torso:

It’s got a big curved slot at the top to attach the head, and then a bunch of sockets for the legs and arms to attach to. I like how it’s just this fusion of weird, curved shapes.

Now let’s talk about the rear skirt armor (is it skirt armor? Is it the butt? I have no idea!):

It’s got a lot of surface detail, but I’d advise against trying to panel line it all, as it would look way too busy.

And then there is the underside, where we not only get even more surface detail, but we also get a sticker for some reason:

I’m not sure what this blue circle is supposed to be (though it reminds me of a Identity Disc from Tron, making this the second Tron reference in a single build). I’m also not sure how visible it’s going to be on the finished model. But it’s there.

Arms

These are some pretty normal arms, albeit with some funky looking joints:

I don’t think these holdings hands can actually grip anything, but to be fair they’re not supposed to.

Guns

There’s some opportunity for lots of panel lining and color correction here if you want to take it on:

In particular, you might want to consider filling in the barrels of both the gun and the missile launchers.

And don’t forget those little black shields on the side of each weapon, which have quite a lot of panel lines of their own.

Legs

We’ve got a bit of mystery on our hands here. In the official lineart for the Wodom Pod, we see there is supposed to be a bit of turquoise in the shin:

And there are some shots from the show (including the one below) where we see the same:

But when I look at the photos in the instruction manual, it looks a little off:

The size of the turquoise area is much larger, but more importantly, the surface detailing seen here looks very different than it looks on the real world model:

That vertical bar shouldn’t be running straight down the center. Instead, the whole middle, trapezoidal area should be recessed, and that should be where you add a bit of black paint.

So what to do? Well it gets weirder still. If you look at the artwork on the front of the box, it shows the shin as being entirely unpainted:

And sure enough, I haven’t been able to find a single photograph of any builder coloring this section in. Not even on these awesome looking customs:

In the end, I too left it unpainted. It’s not worth the hassle of trying to get it right, especially not when Bandai themselves can’t be consistent about how it’s supposed to look.

Which is not to say I did no color correction; I added some black on all the vents that run up and down the shin (though again, the surface details don’t really line up with how they’re supposed to look when painted).

Here are the legs in their finished form:

This is the one area of the model where we can really see a lot of those wonderful panel lines that Syd Mead’s designs are famous for.

Wodom Pod+ Armor

Here it is all laid out:

Mecha Gaikotsu complained in his review that the inside of the head armor - the two parts that are shaped like a bow - are hollow on the inside, and that this looks bad considering that’s the side that’s facing forward. I’m not entirely sure I agree with him. For one, there is some surface detail on the inside, so it doesn’t look completely rough and unfinished.

Second, those “bows” are literally the skirt armor for the Re:Rising Gundam. And since all of the mobile suits in Build Divers Re:RISE are literal Gunpla, you can make the argument that these are supposed to look like real world Gunpla parts (in this case, that means you’d expect the underside of skirt armor to look a bit hollow).

I’m not saying you have to like how they look, but I do think it makes sense for them to look that way.

Finished

That’s it for the Wodom Pod. Construction-wise, it’s basically the same as any normal Gunpla, albeit slightly easier due to how large some of the parts are. And since there’s not a ton of color correction to do, it’s a fairly quick build to knock out (which is a good thing for me, considering that April is starting to look like a very slow build month for me).

Next time we’ll take it for a spin.