I hate to say it, but this is my first real dud build of 2025.
(Also, apparently I didn’t adjust my camera settings properly for the black background, so some of the photos are going to be blurry. I’m not going back to redo them though!)
Spoiler Preface!!!
I recreated some scenes from With From Mercury that most folks would consider spoilery.
I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again: the Schwarzette looks better on TV than it does in real life.
On TV it’s got lasers coming out of its GUND bits. The shell units are all crazy and glowy, and even the sword has a bright sheen to the blade. It’s all so bright and shiny and distracting, which is why everyone went gaga over it when it appeared (myself included).
But as a Gunpla, it has no lasers, the shell units are a bit dull, and the blade is just a standard pink effect part. All the distracting razzle dazzle is gone, and what you’re left with is a mobile suit that doesn’t have enough color, and which is made out of a lot of flat, overly simplistic shapes.
It’s basically the equivalent of dangling a set of keys in front of a baby.
Now, in most cases, the people who fall for this eventually have a Come to Jesus moment where they realized they were hoodwinked, at which point they go through a second, more sober re-assessment of the thing in question. But that really hasn’t happened with Schwarzette, at least not as far as I can tell.
And it seems to me that the main reason why is that, for all the bluster and chatter surrounding it when it was on the air, interest in Witch From Mercury dropped like a lead balloon once it was finished. No one’s reassessed the Schwartzette because most people have forgotten about it and moved on.
That’s basically what happened to me. I saw it on the shelf, and literally thought to myself, “I forgot this one existed!”. And rather than reassess the design and make an informed decision, I simply remembered all the hype and excitement for it from back in 2023 and bought it, no questions asked.
I’m human, which means I’m just as liable as anyone else to be distracted by the dangling keys. And that’s why I’m left with this dud of a Gunpla.
At this point I don’t have much more to say. Like with Aerial, you can attach the GUND Bits to the body, but most of the configurations don’t look very good. They’re all look like a poor man’s version of the Gundam X’s flight mode.
And since it doesn’t have that much in the way of weaponry, I just could’t be arsed to come up with any interesting action poses.
I’m just going to leave you with some more photos, and try to move on to what will hopefully be another, better build.
And now here are some recreations of some scenes from the show:
And that’s it! Now get outta here 😜!