Gundam

Review - Cucuruz Doan's Island 2022-09-28

Back when Gundam: Hathaway came out last summer, Sunrise announced rather quickly that Netflix secured the rights for the film in several western regions.

However, the same thing did not happen this summer for the premiere of Cucuruz Doan’s Island, the latest and greatest Gundam film. That led me to suspect that maybe, just maybe, the film might get a limited theatrical run instead.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. Last night the subtitled version of the film was shown in a “one night only” release (with a dubbed version airing tonight in the same theatres). Naturally I grabbed a ticket as soon as possible, and I’m here now with my intentionally vague and spoiler free review.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Gogg (Final) 2022-09-18

For the sake of conversation, let’s say that Home Alone 2022 kicked off my summertime model kits builds, and that this Gogg build is my last (I’m not going to get another kit finished before the end of September, and despite the fact that October can be surprisingly warm in my neck of the woods, I just can’t think of it as summer).

In that case, I’d say that the Gogg was the most pleasant experience of them all, and in addition to being the most pleasant surprise. I wasn’t expecting much going into it, but I’m impressed with what I got out of it.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Gogg (Part 1) 2022-09-11

Alright, let’s take a look at this little Gogg.

But first, a few remarks.

I'm covering the entire build in a single post. There's just not enough going on here to justify stretching it out any further.
I got some new toys at the hobby store, and I'm going to try them out with this build: Granted, it's just two sheets of waterslide decals, but this is the first time I've ever purchased aftermarket decals like this. I purchased these two particular sheets for use on a few particular model kits, none of which are the Gogg. But there are so many of them here that I think I'll use some on the Gogg to spice it up and make it look a bit fancier.
A lot of the photos you'll see here are from before I went back and added weathering. The final build is going to look a little bit different once it's all done.

Now, on to the build:

Gunpla Build - High Grade Gogg 2022-09-04

For this build, I’m going to be tackling the oldest model kit I’ve ever built. It’s HGUC #008, hailing all the way from the year 2000.

It’s a pretty simple model, and it’s a bit on the ugly side, but nevertheless there’s something about it that I find endearing.

It’s also a first in the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. Specifically, it is the first amphibious mobile suit ever seen on screen:

Gunpla Build - High Grade Victory Two Gundam (Wings of Light) 2022-08-28

Now that the Victory Two is finished, let’s try out some poses:

Eh … sorry, but I can’t do it. That pose would look fine for just about any other model, but the V2 looks downright naked without its Wings of Light.

Thankfully, I have some we can use:

But first things first. There’s a lot I want to talk about regarding these Wings, and that’s what we’re going to do in this post. If you want to see how they look on the model, you’ll have to wait for the next (and final) post, where I’ll actually get around to taking photos.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Victory Two Gundam (Part 1) 2022-08-26

A bit of housekeeping before we begin.

While I did this build back in December 2021, I recently went back and took some comparison photos between it and the High Grade Victory Gundam. As a result, the photos throughout this build are a bit scattershot, and come from different periods of time.
Since I built this model so long ago, my commentary about the build is entirely from memory. I may get some details wrong in the process.

Good? Good. Let’s begin.

Parts and Pieces

The V2’s runners

Gunpla Build - High Grade Victory Two Gundam (Intro) 2022-08-25

It is time to finally (finally!) chronicle a build that I did all the way back in December 2021. It was right after finishing the Real Grade Nu Gundam. Despite feeling exhausted after that gauntlet of a build, I still felt compelled to knock out one more model before taking a nice holiday rest. Something quick and simple that I could “relax” with.

It ended up being quicker and simpler than I even imagined. I started it on December 7th, and finished it up by the 13th, less than a week later. Which was a bit of a problem, because at the time I had yet to finish watching the show that the model came from. So now I had a mobile suit that I didn’t know enough to talk about. Even worse, this suit is the mid-season upgrade in its respective series, and I didn’t have its predecessor MS to compare it to.

That’s why I put it on the shelf until the time when I could discuss it properly. Which, as it turns out, is now, almost a year later.

Let’s finally (FINALLY!!!) talk about the High Grade Victory Two Gundam: