Bandai

Gunpla Build - High Grade Leo-R (Build) 2025-03-16

Alright, let’s crack this open and see what we have:

I’m detecting at least two runners from the original High Grade Leo, and I think all the others are original to this kit. Let’s zoom in a bit on that sticker sheet:

Apparently those big blue stickers are meant for arms, right around elbow joint. I’m disappointed that these aren’t made of color accurate plastic, but it looks like it’s due to the fact that it reuses the original Leo arms, and thus they couldn’t easily do so.

I guess the saving grace is that this is such a minor detail that you could easily leave the stickers off without really affecting the final look of the model.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Gundam Astaroth Rinascimento (Build) 2025-03-10

Since this kit reuses runners from both Astaroth and Astaroth Origin, it ends up having way more parts than it actually needs:

As you can see, I got a little carried away and started building before taking this picture

In fact, this is exactly how many spare parts you’ll wind up with:

I suppose that if you really wanted to, you could use these parts to create an even more customized, asymmetrical design, but I’m just going to stick with what’s in the instructions.

Gunprimer Tools 2025-03-05

Today we’re going to talk about some tools.

Gunprimer is a Korean company that sells “premium hobby tools”. If you go to their website, you’ll see that they sell quite a lot of things, but in the Gunpla community they’re probably best known for their “Raser” glass file:

I’ve heard nothing but praise about this thing for years now, and now I’ve finally taken the plunge. The only question is, does it actually work?

Action Base 7 Followup 2025-03-02

Just a quick followup on the Action Base 7. As of this writing, both of the control arms on both bases have broken. Just as I feared, the parts fit together so tightly that the torque they generate was enough to shear off and/or break the joints and connectors.

Suffice to say that I’m disappointed, but I’ve also learned my lesson; either stick with the Simple Stand, or with Bandai’s older Action Bases. While obvious in retrospect, the screw-based joints of the Simple Stand (and Action Bases 1 & 2) and the gear-based joints of Action Bases 4 & 5 offer better stability and are less prone to breaking.