Witch From Mercury Model Kits

Witch From Mercury Accessory Pack 2023-10-19

It’s been a few months since it ended, but let’s talk a little about The Witch From Mercury. More specifically, let’s talk a bit about it’s mecha.

There are certain traditional tropes that GWitch plays straight. For example, its lead Gundam gets a midseason upgrade that drastically changes its look, and the show doles out a steady stream of (previously unknown) prototype MS, each of which threatens to stop our hero(ine) in their tracks.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Darilbalde (Photos Part 2) 2023-07-30

Okay, so maybe I didn’t need to make a second post for photos. I didn’t end up taking nearly as many as I expected.

As it turns out, having a second pack of Witch From Mercury Weapon Display Parts is convenient, but it doesn’t make them any less of a pain to use. They’re still liable to tip over if they’re not connected to an Action Base, and it’s still hard to position them in my relatively small lightbox.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Darilbalde (Photos Part 1) 2023-07-29

So.

I’m writing this from the future. Specifically, the middle of September.

I want to be clear that I did finish this build on July 26th, as the previous post implied. But it took me until the middle of September to actually do the photoshoot for the Darilbalde. That means this is a backdated post (hey, it’s my blog, I’ll do what I want with it).

Gunpla Build - High Grade Darilbalde (Part 1) 2023-07-26

This build ended up being a bit different than usual. For one, I didn’t document the it blow by blow. In fact, I may take a break from doing so for a little while. I realized that my (current) aversion to doing all the prep and staging for pre-build photos was keeping me from building at all. At that point it’s just not worth doing.

Second, I didn’t just prep, but fully assembled all the body parts before doing any painting (I’ll explain why in a bit).

The Parts

The Darilbalde has surprisingly few parts:

That’s not a judgement, just an observation.

No wait, it is kind of a judgement actually. Or maybe more of a concern.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Gundam Ilfrith (Part 1) 2023-06-09

It’s time to put on a brave face and dive into this build. First, the runners:

It may not seem like a lot at first glance, but don’t be fooled. The C-Runner in particular is loaded with parts. This is a more detailed model than you might think.

There are a couple of observations I’d like to point out before we get started on the build proper.