With the Tallgeese in the bag, I decided to take a month long break building. That … did not last long. Not more than a few days later, I got the itch again and cracked open my third consecutive Gundam Wing kit - the High Grade Maganac:
A bit of background: the Maganac is just one unit in the 40-person Maganac Corps, which lives and fights in the Middle East, and which aids Quatre Winner and his Gundam Sandrock early on in Gundam Wing (and then again at the very end). Despite being a grunt mobile suit, all 40 pilots survive to the very end of the story, which either means they were all very good, or their mobile suit of choice was.
As for the details of this particular kit, it came out last year, a few months before the High Grade Gundam Sandrock (which makes sense considering what I said above.
As a stunt of sorts, Bandai went ahead and made a special set filled with all 40 of the Maganac Corps, meaning you can build the whole army if you really wanted to:
Personally, I am fine with just the one.
This is the part where I usually explain why I like this particular mobile suit, but I find I end up repeating myself when I finish the build, so this time I intend to just get right to it. Here are the runners for the kit:
Not a whole lot of parts on this one, but keep in mind that this is not only a High Grade, but a rather inexpensive one at that.
Unlike with the Tallgeese, I do not plan on doing a random build order this time. That did not work out as well as I thought it would have, so I decided to go back to my usual build order, starting with weapons and accessories. First off we have the shield:
This is a very very simple design, but I love it. For one, this is the rare shield that is tall enough to actually protect a standing mobile suit from top to bottom. You do not see that nearly as often as you might think.
Second, with a bit of panel lining on the front, you can simulate some nice depth and parts separation. On the back, you have some …. things, which I painted to get some more color separation.
Lastly, the kit comes with a sheet of number decals so you can number your Maganac between one and forty. I choose my birthday.
The Maganac’s melee weapon is, interestingly enough, a Heat Hawk! And a rather fancy one at that!
While only one piece, it has quite a lot of details one can color in if they so choose. Which I did. Maybe it looks a bit busy, but I still love it. I painted the blade yellow after seeing some photos of the kit that did the same. It may not make sense, but it fits the color palette of the model well enough.
Perhaps the best thing about this Heat Hawk is its size. It is big. The handle is long, and the blade large and wide. This was a bit of a revelation to me. Last year I lamented the fact that I struggled to pose the Zaku II with its own tomahawk, and mentioned that part of the problem is that the weapon is simply too puny to look threatening. But take a look at it compared to the Maganac’s version:
One looks like a butter knife, while the other looks like something that you use to split skulls open.
Last among the weapons is the Beam Rifle. I forgot to take photos of it unpainted, but here is a zoomed in shot of the parts on the runners, to show you that all the pieces are fully, 100% black on the runners:
Not the sharpest of photos, but hopefully see that there are a number of details on there that one can paint to give it some pizzazz. I ended up going through three different iterations of coloring, before finally landing on this look:
One might argue that it is a bit too busy, but to be honest, it was even busier looking in my first iteation. I particularly like the touch of brown, which makes it look a bit old timey. Of course, there is also the ammo pack, which would just look weird in black.
There are two different was to assess this weapon. In terms of final looks and appearance I think it is fantastic. I was originally skeptical when looking at photos of the kit - it seemed like such a simple, nondescript gun. Seeing it all touched up like this, however, changed my mind. While it is simple, something about it looks right. It is not too large, but not too small.I could see someone firing it from the hip at close range, and using the scope for longer shots, making it a truly multipurpose Beam Rifle.
In terms of assembly and work, however, this gun lies in stark contrast to, say, the Dober Gun from the RG Tallgeese. That gun has decals and at least two colors of plastic, meaning it looks pretty good “out of the box”, so to speak. It also has all sorts of articulation.
The Maganac’s rifle, however, has no articulation, and is a single color out of the box. You absolutely need to paint it in order to make it look decent. For me, this is, weirdly, a good thing. I like being able to add the colors and details of my choosing, and I find that easier to do on a weapon like this, where the assembly is simple but the detailing is high. If I were at a point in this hobby where I had no interest or ability to paint, however, I would not be happy to have such a bare bones, toylike weapon as my main accessory.
This is not an attempt to make a judgement, perse, but is simply an observation on the differences in model kit grades and what they can mean for builders.
That is it for weapons. In the next post I plan on taking a look at the lower torso.
Other Thoughts
- If you look closely at the picture of the 40 Maganacs, you will notice that some of them look different, featuring larger shoulder armor. Part of me wishes they would have charged more for the kit and added those as an option. When I think of the Maganacs from the TV show, that is the design I remember, moreso than the one that comes in this kit.
- Even at this early stage I can tell that the build of the Maganac is going to resemble that of the Sandrock in one key way - a lot of the detail and color separation is going to come from layering pieces on top of one another.
- Bandai made some additional Maganac kit designs that represent the units used by the Corps’ commanders. Unfortunately they are Premium Bandai products, meaning they are extremely difficult to obtain outside of Japan.
- I have one other observation about the weapons. One of the other benefits to their simple construction is the fact that, without any moving parts, they are extremely sturdy. After having so many issues with the the tiny, finicky parts on the Tallgeese’s gun, I am beginning to value the peace of mind that comes with sturdiness.