Lower Torso
Most High Grades have very simple skirt armor. It’s not at all shocking to find that each skirt (front, sides, and rear) is only one piece (plus a polycap). That’s definitely not the case here:
There’s some lovely parts layering going on here. Each section of skirt armor is made out of at least two pieces, and this helps create some wonderful depth and texture:
Just like on the God Gundam, the beam sabers slot into a notch in each side skirt:
If we attach the legs, we’re left with a pretty good looking (half of a) mobile suit:
Upper Torso
I love the fact that the chest doesn’t have a single white piece:
To be fair, that’s often the case with many Gundam-type mobile suits, but it feels particularly notable here, since the chest is where you find most of the color for the entire body:
Compared to the God Gundam, this doesn’t look all that different. It ditches the vulcan cannons, and that’s pretty much it.
One thing I don’t love is how the upper torso is so much more narrow than the lower:
It look like it’s sitting on a wide platform. To be fair, I understand that this was likely to ensure that the body can fully rotate during action poses.
Backpack
The backpack is a modified version of the God Gundam’s. The main thrusters still face straight back, but it doesn’t have the same set of downward-facing thrusters on the bottom. It also doesn’t have the original set of feathery, foldout wings; instead, they’re replaced with a set of four fixed wings that look much more like they came off an airplane:
I like the backpack in isolation, but I think it looks a bit dissonant when equipped:
I like the thrusters - they lend the Blazing a sense of speed, like it could use them to quickly close in on the ground. It’s the wings that bug me. They would make more sense if this was an MS that fights in the air. But on a (primarily) ground based, close ranged fighter, they feel too big.
Thankfully, they look a bit different when viewed from the front:
From this angle, only the top wings are visible, and they look less like wings and more like … I dunnno … flair.
Arms
Pretty standard construction here, save for the foldout wings on each forearm. They remind me of a Swiss Army knife, looking like a wild array of blades when deployed:
But then neatly folding together when not in use:
I love this shoulder armor. It’s a simple, two piece affair, but those deep panel lines look great when painted in. You can fake a really great sense of part separation.
If you look closely at the photo above, you can see that I equipped two different sets of holding hands. They’re your standard closed fists types, though one has a hole in them for equipping beam sabers. For a melee type mobile suit, I guess that’s all you really need.
However, there is one other pair of hands. They are leftovers from the God Gundam, where the fingers are stretched out like they are when performing the “God Finger” finisher:
They’re a little goofy looking, and they’re made out of a different, rubbery kind of plastic, but they’re the closest this model has to opened palm hands.
Head
There aren’t enough parts to build the regular head and the masked head at the same time. There is only one V-Fin, and only one set of eye decals. That means you have to make a choice - you either have to choose one head to use permanently, or you have to be willing to remove the V-Fin and the eye plate in order to swap between the two.
I’d rather not take the risk of breaking any parts, especially considering that I don’t like the masked version. So I chose to build the normal (and still “masked”) face:
Extra Parts
Now that the model is done, we can see just how many spare parts we’re left with:
It’s quite a lot. We’ve got the wings from the back, a bunch of alternate parts for the legs, and completely different shoulder armor. It’s not enough to build a separate model, but it’s still quite a set of spare parts.
Finished
Here’s your end-of-post teaser of the Blazing Gundam:
Pics and all that coming up next time.