Gundam

2022 Leftovers - High Grade Guntank 2023-01-02

In my Gunpla Retrospective for 2022, I mentioned there was a kit that I assembled but hadn’t yet painted or detailed. This is that kit.

I finally got a chance to finish the job on January 2nd (I had the day off while my kids went back to school, giving me the entire morning to myself). I don’t plan on counting this as part of the 2023 Gunpla retrospective when that comes around in December, as I don’t consider this a 2023 build.

Anyway, now that I got that out of the way, let’s get back to our regularly scheduled intro post.

I wasn’t planning on building this one right now, but my daughter really wanted to “build a Gingum with dada”. When I was around that age, there were many times where I would have done anything to play with my dad, but for any number of reasons it never happened. That’s why it was so hard to say “no” to her.

I figured the Guntank would be a good choice for us to build together. It’s simple, it’s easy to build, and if something went horribly wrong, I’d only be out ten bucks.

So let’s build a Guntank!

2022 Gunpla Retrospective 2022-12-31

I had a lot of fun writing my 2021 Gunpla retrospective. The only problem is that I waited until February of 2022 to write it. So when it came time to write the 2022 retrospective, I decided to wait until the literal last day of the year to publish it.

This year I’m adding in a third category, for a total of 3:

3 kits that surpassed expectations
3 that failed to meet expectations
Kits which were my flat-out favorite for the year.

With that said, let’s begin!

Premium Bandai has Arrived! 2022-12-19

And just in time for the holidays (not like that really matters. I’m not off from work yet, and even if I was, it’s not like that gives me any more time build than normal).

Anyway, these are not my first ever Premium Bandai products, but they are the first two I ordered directly from P-Bandai, all the way back in July.

I’m not going to say I was anxiously waiting all of those months. In fact, it was fairly easy to wait patiently. But once I got the email that the order had shipped, I was like a kid waiting for Christmas to come. For better or worse, the exclusive nature of P-Bandai gives these items a special allure that makes it feel like you’re getting shipped a box of treasure.

No guarantees as to when I will get around to building these, but I’m excited either way.

PS - This is proof that not all Premium Bandai items come in a monochrome box, as evidenced by the Entry Grade Nu Gundam on the left. But that’s a special case where I guess Bandai decided to sell an item that’s normally exclusive to a physical store in limited quantities online.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Zaku I (Final) 2022-12-18

Here now is the finished High Grade Zaku I:

It turns out that I was correct about this being the same general mold as the Zaku I Sniper Type, so this build ended up being extremely familiar. It also means that this model has the same quality of articulation, so if you want a deep dive on that, take a look here. Ad if you want the TL:DR version, it’s better than you’d think for a 2006 model, but it’s not quite up to modern standards.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Zaku I 2022-12-02

I guess I caught a case of good karma. I missed out on a few kits back in August, and one of them just showed up in the (same) hobby store months later. I suppose good things can come to those who wait:

So yes, this is the original High Grade model of the Zaku I. And while it may be older and less technically impressive than the more recent Gundam: The Origin version, there’s a lot about this one I prefer. But first, let’s do a bit of history.

Ranking the Gundam Wing High Grades 2022-11-17

Folks, it took me three years, but I finally did it. I built models of all five of the Gundam Wing Gundams.

I love these little suckers. They made me finally appreciate these mobile suit designs after nearly two decades. That’s an impressive feat.

And now that the job is done, let’s rank them.

Specifically, let’s rank them in order of how much my opinion of each design has improved. That means that the #1 pick isn’t necessarily my favorite (nor is the #5 pick my least favorite) design overall.