Last year, Mrs. Wolfe got me a pretty cool, pretty funky model kit as a gift. This year she followed it up with a kit that isn’t funky, but is definitely cool.
As one might expect, Bandai was one of many companies that wanted to cash in on and/or demonstrate some pride in the 2020 Tokyo olympics. Thus they created two different promotional Gunpla. The first one is - you guessed it - the Olympics Gundam:
The second one is also an Olympics Gundam - namely, the Paralympics:
I know that the Paralympics is officially considered on roughly equal footing as the main games, but it still warms my heart to see it get some attention like this. As someone who has grown to have friends and family with special needs over the last decade+, I’m a big fan of things like the Paralympics and the Special Olympics. Seeing it commemorated this way is a groovy sight indeed.
About the Model Kit
This is a recolor of the 2015 High Grade Revive Gundam, with unique new Olympics decals, and one added (and one removed) accessory:
The new accessory is, of course, this special display stand (and its big, beautiful Tokyo 2020 decal):
Meanwhile, the kit doesn’t come with clear effect parts for the beam sabers. If you look at all the official promotional photos and/or packaging, you might notice that neither Olympics Gundam is ever shown holding a weapon:
That makes a lot of sense considering the tie-in to the Olympics, an event that promotes unity and friendly competition. And since the beam effect parts are always on their own separate runner, they’re easy enough to exclude.
Less easy to exclude are the rest of the accessories, which are all attached to the same runners as the body parts. And since this is Bandai we’re talking about, there was no way they were going to make new molds for this kit. Thus we still get the rifle and bazooka:
As you can see, I have them (mostly) assembled, but not painted or detailed. I’m going to leave that for another day. I’m not interested in using them with this particular model, but I would like to use them with my original Revive Gundam. I did a a pretty bad job with its weapons, and I’d the chance at a do-over.
Oh, and we get a shield too. I think it looks particularly nice in this color scheme:
As for the model itself, I decided to do very little in the way of detailing. Partly because I didn’t feel like doing it, and partly because it didn’t really feel appropriate. This kit isn’t meant to look anime accurate, or realistic, or hyper detailed. Even the instruction manual shows it as a straight build, with only the head getting any sort of panel lining.
Ultimately, I touched up the head, the beam saber handles, and the bottoms of the feet. And to be honest, I really could have gotten away with just doing the head:
It’s a nice, clean, simple look, and I really don’t think it loses anything by not having any panel lines.
I think it would have been nice if they provided water slide of dry transfer decals, but yeah, that’s Bandai for you.
Comparison to HG Revive
I know these are the exact same model, but why is it that the legs on my original Revive Gundam seem longer?
The upper leg piece on the original model juts out beyond the skirt armor, but this doesn’t happen on the Paralympics version. I must have done something wrong when the building the former, as the latter is clearly the way it is meant to look.
Really, looking at these side by side makes me realize just how bad a job I did with the original Revive. the V-Fin broke twice (and is not crooked as a result), the bazooka looks dire, and I should have just used the normal eye decal instead of the reflective eyes. It pains me to think that as recently as 2020, I was doing work this shoddy (though to be fair, I’ve built almost two dozen more kits since then. I guess it was a lot longer ago than it seems, and I’ve had a lot additional practice).
Conclusion
I didn’t take many photos of any action poses, but suffice to say that this model made me realize just how expressive Gunpla can be when not posing with any weapons (and without doing goofy poses or stances).
This is a really cool, really special model, and I’m proud to have it on the shelf.
Other Thoughts
- The color scheme here is really nice. If you left off the decals, you could pass this off as a Famicom Gundam.
- The stand is similar to the ones included in Bandai’s Star Wars kits. Rather than be on a swivel joint that allows full range of motion, both the forward and side-to-side tilt can be adjusted to one of three fixed angles. It’s “good enough”, but you have to remove and reattach the connector pieces every time you want to adjust, so you have to be careful.