Got a P-Bandai haul in recently. Let’s see if we can have some fun with this one. I’d love for more weird Gundam X grunt suits, but I’m glad we at least have the Daughtress.
About the Mobile Suit
The Daughtress is essentially the After War analogue to the GM. Developed by the U.N.E., it’s your classic generic grunt suit, armed with extremely basic weaponry, and made in such numbers that even after an apocalyptic colony drop there were still enough of them leftover that even bandit gangs and others could field them in great numbers.
There are three things about the Daughtress I find particularly interesting. First, the fact that its body is vaguely GM-like, but the head is not. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it looks like a Zeon design, but the fact that it focuses so heavily on its “eyes” does feel a bit Zeonic.
Second, it does sometimes get equipped with special gear, including a shoulder mounted cannon. I really like the idea that the Daughtress is this single modular unit that can be outfitted as needed, rather than every single minor variation resulting in a brand new model number.
The third (and to me, the most interesting) thing about the Daughtress is that unlike the GM, we do see scenes where it’s actually effective in combat. Grandted, it’s usually when they attack in overwhelming numbers, wining either through attrition or overwhelming firepower.
But hey, that’s ok! That’s exactly what the GM was supposed to do in the Universal Century. Except, no story ever bothers to actually depict the GM that way. I can’t prove it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Daughtress gets more kills in Gundam X’s truncated TV run than the GM gets in the entire UC timeline.
About the Model Kit
The vibes around this one aren’t great. It’s very (very) simple, and some builders think it cuts too many corners:
- The underside of the feet are partially hollow
- It only comes with one weapon
- Most of the color on the shield comes from a pair of very large stickers
And all this despite the fact that it’s only six years old, which means it is still extremely modern by Gunpla standards.
I can acknowledge that all these things are true, and that they are suboptimal, and also just … not care. In my current mindset about Gunpla, I’m much more interested in answering the question of “what else can I do with it?”. And as we’ll see, I was able to do quite a lot.
Custom Paint Job
One thing I appreciate about Gundam X is that the grunt suits are used by many different organizations (including by bandits and mercs). As such, we see them in lots of different color schemes, either because they wanted to add a personal touch, or simply because it’s easier that way to tell friend from foe. Either way, it’s a nice bit of wordlbuilding.
With that said, my favorite color scheme for the Daughtress is the one used early on in the show by the Alternative Company, the weird group that kidnaps Tiffa in the early episodes. That became the basis for my own custom paint job.
My version is not a one to one match; I’m using darker shades of both blue and grey, and I didn’t perfectly match the color placement seen above. But it’s close, and besides, I think it’s perfectly fine (sometimes maybe even preferable) when an alternate Gunpla color scheme isn’t fully screen accurate. It makes it more personal.
Having said all this, the paint job didn’t quite come out the way I wanted. The blue paint I used ended up being way more glossy than I wanted, and it dried very oddly. Regardless of whether I primed it or not, it didn’t like to cling around the edges of parts, meaning I had to do multiple coats to get full coverage. But even that didn’t work sometimes. In some places it looked like it dried similarly to the sticky red shell of a candied apple. You could just see the plastic trapped in that shell of paint, like a mosquito in amber.
Furthermore, the orange paint I mixed up to use on the chest and feet didn’t dry consistently, so it’s a bit darker in some places than others.
And on top of all that, despite letting it cure a while, a blast of clear coat caused some of the blue paint to strip away (thus leading me to cover these spots up with either black paint or metallic weathering comound)
In the end, what I got was a model that has a sort of unintentional patina all around it, which gives it a naturally weathered look. It’s not bad, perse, just not what I was going for.
But hey, the more I try to do custom paint jobs, the more these kinds of things are going to happen (and the more lessons I’ll learn).
Photos
I took quite a few photos of this thing, so let’s break here and we’ll look at those in the next post.