Gunpla Build - High Grade ECOAS Jegan (Build)

Let’s crack this sucker open and see what we’ve got:

Looks like the simple assortment you’d expect from a standard grunt. I shouldn’t be surprised by this, but considering the high quality of my other Unicorn kits, I guess I expected this one to have a little more too it.

Still, we shouldn’t judge a Gunpla by its runners. Let’s build it and see what we’ve got.

Let’s zoom in on the sticker sheets:

We get a whole bunch of ECOAS and EFSF markings, as well as some numbers if you want to give it an identifier. I ended up replacing most of these with waterslides, but I still ended up using a couple stickers, most notably the extra large “ECOAS” letters (you can barely see it in the photo, but it’s white, and in the dead center of the sheet).

Then we have a sheet of foil decals, which includes two decals you’re supposed to apply to the front of the head visor to give it its pink lights. I just painted the lights in, so I didn’t use these.

Shield

I really, really appreciate the fact that the builtin missiles on the shield are color separated:

There are other parts of this model that are not so fortunate, so I’m glad that at least I don’t have to deal with it here.

Once we close it up, and slap some decals on there, we’ve got a simple, but nice looking shield:

Weapons

So, we literally saw this Beam Rifle only one build ago, and lo and behold, it’s exactly the same here.

I really like the look of the Bazooka. It’s long and lean and mean, and I really like that extra magazine in the front. In terms of color, you’re supposed to paint in the stripe that’s in the middle though of course you don’t have to (I’m kind of surprisd they didn’t give us a sticker for it)

Lastly, you will notice that we get two different beam effect parts of different lengths. I wish more models would do this; sometimes you just want or need that shorter blade.

Head

Apparently the Jegan Head has a nice big monoeye camera right in the center. If you paint it, it’s going to be extremely visible behind the clear faceplate, but if you don’t paint it … it’s probably still going to be extremely visible.

While I usually like when Feddie grunts have some sort of surface detail underneath their visors, this camera is not what I had in mind. As a point of comparison, the High Grade Gustav Karl has a similar camera, but it was much smaller and in the back, so it doesn’t stand out as much.

I’m curious though how it might look in the lightbox.

Anyway, moving on, we get a little antenna on the side, and of course we’ve got the special visor. This doesn’t actually move up and down, but is rather a parts swap. There’s a version that’s “up”, and another one you can replace it with that’s “down”:

Chest

This goes together like pretty much any Feddie grunt model. The one interesting about it is that the ECOAS Jegan’s special chest armor is simply an extra part that fits on top of the standard Jegan chest, which you can see here (sans cockpit hatch):

Here it is all finished up:

Backpack

This thing has three fairly massive thrusters in the back, as well as those two signature stick-shaped thrusters that come up behind the shoulders:

It’s … fine? It looks like a powerful set of thrusters for sure, but it’s not visually striking.

Lower Torso

This reminds me a lot of the torso on the Jesta Cannon, since the grenade packs are assembled in exactly the same manner.

I’m not a fan of the design of this. I don’t like how it has no front or rear skirts. It’s stripped down without any obvious reason for why it’s stripped down.

Tight Fit for the Beam Saber

The beam saber is holstered in the right skirt, and it's not easy to get it to fit in there:
Which means it's probably going to be even harder to get it out!

If this were a Real Grade or Master Grade, it'd probably have some sort of spring-like mechanism to allow it to pop in and out, but sadly that's not the case here.

Feet

They’re color separated, but they have no toe bend or articulation, which seems to be par for the course for the Unicorn line.

Legs

This is where we get our first taste of some of the annoying color correction this model asks of us. It’s one of those kits where you have to layer black with some other color.

In the case of the legs, it’s not so bad, because we have a lot of space to work with. But this is just a teaser for what we’re going to get with the arms.

In terms of their visual design, the legs look an awful lot like those on the Zaku. In that way it is similar to the Gustav Karl, in that both are Feddie mobile suits that have more than a little of the Zeonic aesthetic in them.

Arms

The Jegan has three openings (are they thrusters?) on the sides of each shoulder, as well as similar openings on the front and back. These have to be painted just like the thrusters on the legs, except the area we are working with here is much smaller, and thus much more challenging:

It’s not my best paintjob by any stretch of the imagination, and I probably could have done better if I really tried, but I can’t stand having to do this kind of color correction, so I’m just going to leave it be. It’s the one big black mark I have against this kit.

Seamlines and Detailing

I already discussed the color correction on the ECOAS Jegan. It’s not much, but it’s also really annoying and difficult, so much so that I suggest you just leave it all alone (or maybe use some black paint or black marker on its own, without any tan).

As for seamlines, there aren’t many. You’ve got some on the rifle and bazooka of course, but not so many on the mobile suit itself. It does a good job of trying to cover up some of them, while others are made to look like panel lines.

Conclusion

Aside from the color correction, this wasn’t a challenging build, but it also wasn’t a pleasant one either.

Comparing it to other recent builds, the GM Night Seeker II was more fun because it’s a more modern kit with some delightful engineering (the ECOAS Jegan is from 2011, while the Night Seeker is based on a model from 2018).

The Gustav Karl was more fun because it had some clever engineering to accommodate its sheer size. Even the Desultor was a better ride, on account of it being so low fuss.

This Jegan was simply a little more of a pain in the ass, while also just being kind of boring. That probably explains why I put it down in the middle of tme month to build something else.

I suppose the good news is that I don’t plan on building any more Jegans any time soon, so I shouldn’t have to deal with this again.