MG Exia Review – Part 6: Legs

Legs

The foot has a rather ridiculous amount of joints in it that allow for a pretty impressive amount of movement given its design. I rather like it’s subtle side-to-side pivot.

MG Exia Review – Part 5: Waist

Waist

Not a whole lot to say here other than everything is just very clean and sharp. The grey pieces on the front skirt armor are the same piece as the under-armor detail on the skirt armor’s rear, which I couldn’t help but think was pretty clever.

MG Exia Review – Part 4: Arms

Arms

The GN Condensers in the arms are actually two clear pieces. Below the transparent green piece is a clear piece, which really aids it having a lens-like look. The picture on the left is the arm assembled with just the green piece, whereas the right shows it assembled with both pieces.

MG Exia Review – Part 3: Head

Nice and short part this time around…

Head

Okay. Wow. This is an absolutely amazing head to have built out of the box. The attention to detail and part separation is somewhat absurd.

Everything on the Exia’s mean face just reeks of sharpness.

Also to note is that there are of course GN stripes on the head as well. The effect created by them being semi-transparent is quite nice.

Arms are next up!

Update: I noticed later that there is also laser etching on the green parts on the side of the head. Very subtle but hot damn it’s nice.

MG Exia Review – Part 2: GN Drive & Torso

GN Drive

As I mentioned, some of the chrome parts are on the inside of the GN Drive to aid in light reflection.

With the flywheel, as shown above, you get one of the problems that occur with chrome parts, which is the nubs from taking them off of the tree. I just fixed this one up by a quick dab with a silver marker.

MG Exia Review – Part 1: Formal Introduction & Pre-Build

Master Grade Gundam Exia Ignition Mode

Introduction

I’m playing around with a new format for model reviews for this… My Sinanju review was popular far beyond anything I expected, so I wanted to make this one as up to snuff as I can. Reviews will be separated into various sections (obviously) that I’ll post as I go along, and I hope to have the entire thing done within a day or two. I won’t be doing reviews all that often as I only will do them for significant kits I get, such as MGs, and I just don’t get that many of them, but I’d like to help out people when I can.

A question I would like to pose is this: Would you be interested in me putting up a separate gallery of hi-res pictures? They would be the pictures you see here, just significantly larger, as the ones I post are downsized from my 12 megapixel camera (which has a focus that doesn’t suck, so rejoice if you got frustrated with the Sinanju’s pictures). Anyhow, let’s begin, shall we?

The MG Exia is something I’ve been anticipating since it looked hella nice to me, and I didn’t have a 1/100 Exia kit. The details in all of the pictures I had seen looked excellent, so I was pretty eager to get it and snap it together. I elected for the Ignition Mode due to the initial pricing (more on this below) made it pretty not a huge leap from the normal edition, plus I’m a sucker for gimmicks… Included in the Ignition Mode over the regular mode is two LEDs to light up the front and back of the GN Drive, parts to convert the Exia to Exia Repair (as seen in Gundam 00 episode one of season two), and some of the parts, such as the GN Sword and GN Blades, have been chrome plated.

A question I’m sure plenty of people are wondering is whether this is really worth it over the non-grade 1/100 Exia that was released almost two years ago, which I’ll answer to the best of my ability without having the 1/100 Exia myself. This review can be looked at quite effectively as a review of the standard MG Exia, as the vast majority of the review applies to the standard MG as well as Ignition Mode.

Let’s take another look at the boxart:

There are two tragedies about this thing’s box art:

1. I don’t have a scanner big enough for it.
2. That “Premium Price” thing you see is NOT a sticker.

These are both sad because the box is fucking awesome, and I don’t think you can really deny that… The premium price bit on the box is because the initial release of this kit costs 5000 yen, after which it will be 6500 yen. Also, a fun fact is that the green text on the bottom is printed with a reflective/metallic finish.

MG Exia Review – Introduction: Rant and Awe

The postman bore gifts today!

This was actually quite surprising, since I used AIR shipping (usually 1-2 weeks) and these shipped on the 24th, which means they got here in 4 business days. Woot.

The stand is for the Exia, and the Arche was due to an error in my last order, as RainbowTen accidentally sent me a GN Archer rather than an Arche Gundam, but they sent the Arche for free and let me keep the Archer, so all is well.

Just a side note for anyone who has an Exia Ignition Mode on order, order you batteries NOW. I received this and took a trip out to CVS to get the batteries it requires (LR41/Energizer 392). CVS was out of them, but they were $5 EACH. I meandered down to Walgreens, who actually had them in stock, but again, $5 each. I hopped onto my phone and did a quick check… You can get a 10 pack on Amazon for $1.55.

So in the end, I don’t have batteries for the LEDs yet, but I ordered 10 of them (you need 4 to power both LEDs) for a total of $6.34, which is about what I’d pay when you include tax for just one of them at my horrendously markup-happy drug stores.

Anyhow, review of MG Exia is forthcoming. I’ll start putting him together tonight, and luckily I have my new camera now, so the pics will be a lot better than my Sinanju buildup!

MG Unicorn and Sinanju: WIP – Thoughts and Awesome Conversion Kits

So I finally can take another wack at my MG Sinanju because my replacement parts arrived the other day. Basically… I more or less destroyed some of the black parts on the Sinanju, mainly the shield, while experimenting with how to paint the gold trim. Oops.

Meanwhile, I have my eternally-in-progress Unicorn. Neograde is preparing to release some option parts that include two sets of gatlings and parts to convert the head into Unicorn Unit 2 Banshee that looks absolutely awesome.

These were sculpted by 08team PIA, the same person who did Neograde’s excellent Kshatriya. Now I’m VERY tempted to spring on this when it gets released next month and then just make my current Unicorn into the Banshee, but the problem of course, is that you know as soon as I do this, Bandai will release an MG Banshee with some special goodies of some sort… The only thing that comforts me is that I can’t possibly think of what it could include that I’d want, so odds are life will go on, haha (UNLESS they modify the legs…).

Ultimately, it depends on what the price off these parts are, but I’m nearly certain that I’m sold and my Unicorn will be becoming a Banshee, and then when I get a chance I’ll get another Unicorn, mod the legs again, and paint it up nice ‘n pretty.

So I’m off to give the Sinanju a second go. Wish me luck.

1/144 HG Susanowo: WIP – More Hip Work + GN Sword III

First up, more work on the Susanowo:

Leaning back a bit there Graham…

Anyhow, the adjustments were limited to seperating the hip joints a bit from the crotch. Not sure if they’re seperated enough though… The struggle for less suckage continues. I’m yet to slightly de-extend the chest too.

On a different note, I repainted the GN Sword III from the Trans-Am Raiser for my current 00 Raiser:

In the close-up pic you can see some of the paint chipping due to me making a mistake and not sanding down the beam part enough, so it scraped off some of the grey paint on its way in. Hardly noticeable in person, but a shame nonetheless.

1/144 HG Susanowo: WIP – Proportion Check

Slapping it together to see what I’ve got…

I don’t know how happy I am with the torso… I think I might have extended it a tad too much. Same goes with the hip armor. There’s something still bothering me about them that I’ll try to address…