Gunpla Build - High Grade Char's Gelgoog (Build)

Just looking at this spread, I’m seeing some good things:

I’m seeing multiple parts just for the feet alone. I’m seeing a Beam Rifle that looks like it’s almost entirely made out a single piece of plastic. And I’m seeing multiple color separated thrusters. This is all good!

But I’m also seeing some potential issues regarding color accuracy. Let’s dive in and see what we’re up against.

Shield

The Gelgoog’s shield is supposed to be a combination of bright purple in the front, bright yellow trim along the edges, and grey on the inside. But for this model, we get dark blue for the front (which may have a tinge of purple), and golden yellow for the trim and the interior.

I find this a bit head scratching. When I built the Methuss (which, I’ll remind you, is a model from the same year), I was surprised to see that it was molded in orange plastic, rather than yellow. I assumed that Bandai was unable or unwilling to match the color more accurately.

And yet the color of the shield here is clearly what the Methuss should have been - so why wasn’t it?

(In all seriousness, I think I know the answer. The Methuss does look orange in some scenes, so it’s not actually that much of a stretch to make it in that color)

I tried to at least paint the front of the shield to be a brighter purple, but it didn’t go very well. I have some pretty cheap, low quality purple paint, and it ended up drying very inconsistently, with lots of dark spots. After seeing how poorly it came out, I stripped the paint and decided to just leave that part alone. The base color may not be show accurate, but that doesn’t mean it looks bad - just different,

I also tried adding a waterslide decal with the Zeon emblem to the front, but it turns out that none of my decals were large enough (I eventually moved that decal to the chest, so as not to waste it).

In the end, the only thing I painted on the shield was the interior, which was easy enough to slather in a nice coat of dark grey.

You might notice that the paint is a little patchy. That’s because I did a second (uneven) coat after some of the initial coat scraped off. I figured it wouldn’t be super noticeable, since most people don’t look at the inside of a shield

The other interesting thing about the shield is the way in which the arm mount is attached. You insert it through the shield perpendicularly, and then rotate it into place:

Beam Rifle

Beam Rifles on most High Grades are assembled in the exact same way. The main body is split into two halves that you fasten together, and then you add parts for the scope, the muzzle, etc.

That’s not the case here though. The main body of the rifle is almost entirely one single part, with just one little tiny side panel needed to complete it. I don’t have a photo of it, nor is it really shown in the manual, so you’ll just have to trust me.

Anyway, what this means is that the rifle only has one small seamline that’s so hard to see that you can easily just leave it be:

This is what I meant when I said that these 2006-era kits have engineering that feels ahead of their time. They just do all these surprising little things that even (very) modern kits fail to replicate.

Usually I’d add a bit of extra color separation to a weapon like this, maybe some metallics or something. But I liked the look of this one as-is, so I left it be (other than painting the scope, of course, which is supposed to be a bright, almost bubblegum pink):

Beam Naginata

This is such a cool melee weapon. I’m surprised more mobile suits don’t use something like this:

Not much more to say about this one, as it’s a pretty simple construction.

Feet

A nice simple assembly, with some good surface detail on the underside:

Legs

The engineering here is (mostly) great. You’ve got a color separated internal thruster, and a separate part for the shin armor. This hides the inevitable seamline, at least from the front (though it’s still highly visible in the rear). This is a technique that you see a lot on newer models, but not so much from something ths old.

Also, for whatever reason there is a lot detail on the inside of the leg.

Now for the bad parts. As is common for older kits, the interior of the leg is largely hollow. This doesn’t really affect it visually, since the thruster obstructs your view of the inner workings:

It just feels … cheap, like there should be something more in there.

The other problem is that while the seamline is well enough hidden on the lower leg, they’re not hidden at all on the upper leg and the knee. And since this is a mobile suit without traditional skirt armor, that means there’s nothing to hide them from view.

*The seam on the knee is a major pain. Since it’s not a flat surface, it’s extremely difficult to try and erase*

Lower Torso

This may not look like traditional skirt armor, but it’s sure assembled the same. The leg holes of its “short shorts” are attached in the same manner as regular side skirts:

*There is another thruster cluster on the backside, which is good, since the Gelgoog has no backpack*

Staying on the backside, there’s this little panel here:

You might think that you can remove it, maybe to mount something like an Action Base. Surprisingly, you’d be wrong. As far as I can tell this has no functional purpose, and is entirely decorative.

(For the record though, it does support Action Bases)

Upper Torso

The upper torso is actually made out of two sections. First is the “top” section, which includes those polygonally shaped vents that run around the torso’s perimeter. These are made out of their own separate part, which snaps into the underside:

This construction is then attached to the “bottom” section, which contains the cockpit. This is mounted on a ball joint, giving the model a pretty decent amount of back and forward ab movement:

*The Zeon logo on the chest does not come with the kit. That’s the waterslide decal I tried to apply to the shield, before deciding it wasn’t going to look good*

In fact, it moves so much that you have to be careful how you position the chest during standing poses, or you can conceal quite a bit of the cockpit:

Moving around to the back, we have another panel:

Unlike the one on the rear skirt, this one actually has a purpose. The two holes allow you to backmount the shield and the Naginata respectively.

I have two issues with this. Firstly, the Naginata can already plug into the inside of the shield, so I don’t know why it needs to attach directly to the back of the mobile suit as well.

Second, remember how the mounting peg on the shield attached so weirdly, and then had to rotate into place? Well when you mount it to the back, you have to rotate it again to expose the second, larger peg.

*The mount rotated to reveal the second peg*

I just … don’t know why they couldn’t have just made a smaller hole and used the same mounting peg for everything.

Whatever the reason, the important thing to know is that if you paint and topcoat the shield, be careful when moving the peg. The paint may make it harder to do so, and you don’t want to apply so much force that you’ll break it.

Head

The head has rear fin and a front antenna, and be warned - on my model both of them were extremely loose, so much so that I had to fasten them with super glue after one popped off and got lost for a good 20 minutes.

Here we get another example of great engineering. You can remove the top cap on the head in order to adjust the position of the monoeye:

Sure, it may not be as fancy as modern monoeyes (which can either be adjusted without disassembly, or can even move on their own), but it’s still really impressive for 2006.

Arms and Shoulders

There’s nothing crazy here regarding their assembly, but man these were a pain in the ass. There is, of course, a huge seamline running down the center of each shoulder pauldron, and since the shoulders are so angular it ends being really hard to sand that seamline down.

There’s also a seamline running down the outer face of each shoulder. It’s not super noticeable, but you might still want to remove it to get a nice, flush look.

As for the arms, there’s a seamline running down the forearm, as well as another running the ball-shaped area that the top. That one can be ignored if you want, since it will be mostly covered by the shoulder armor, but it’s still potentially visible from certain viewing angles.

Wrist Mounted Beam Guns?

The Gelgoog Jager has wrist mounted beam guns, and if you look closely, you'll notice that the forearm of the OG Gelgoog has the same exact shape.

However, whereas the Jager has a gun muzzle in its wrist to indicate the presence of the weapon, the OG has nothing of the sort, since canonically it doesn't have these guns.

*The arm of the HG Gelgoog Jager, where you can clearly see the muzzle*

I find this really weird. It looks like there should be something there - because there should, in fact, be something there - but there's not, I guess because Okawara didn't think of it for his initial design. Or maybe he did, and the idea got scrapped? My mind is reeling now.

Hands

In addition to the standard fists, we get a trigger hand and an open hand!

Also, they’re pretty chunky hands, which makes them kind of fun to paint.

I swear, they used to give extra hands so much more back in the olden days. Why can’t Bandai be as generous as they used to?

Conclusion

That’s it folks! We’ll return to the Gelgoog once I take some photos. To be clear, I’m not exactly in a rush to do so. Part of me wants to get back to building the Nu Gundam Ver Ka, and part of me wants to start another small project. We’ll see how it goes.