Gunpla Build - High Grade Xi Gundam (Build Part 2)

The Xi Gundam is almost complete - or so I thought. There’s still a good deal of plastic in the box, so there must still be a lot to build. So let’s pick up where we left off and see it through to the end.

Wings

If you only saw the lineart of the Xi, you’d be forgiven for not even knowing it has wings in the first place. Sure, you can see them if you look close enough, but they’re not super obvious either:

But they’re definitely there, and as it turns out, they’re quite large - and fairly colorful too! And just like with the legs, it’s best to take a “divide and conquer” approach to assembly.

I started by building this much of each wing:

A few notes - the yellow wingtip is a sticker, while all the red and grey bits are my own personal customization (those areas are supposed to just be panel lined, not painted).

Also, there is technically a long seamline running down the side of each wing, but they’re honestly pretty hard to see, and I would suggest not bothering with them.

After getting all this done I topcoated each wing, because I wanted to get a full coat before layering these additional parts on top of them:

It’s basically just a blue enclosure to allow us to attach the wings to the body. And while it may look simple, it does feature another bit of tricky color correction: these little thruster things have to be painted orange and black on the inside:

This was much harder than I expected. It is so cramped in there that even my tiniest paint brushes barely fit. In the end, I should have (or at least could have) added a few more coats of paint to make the orange even brighter, but I also know from past experience that sometimes striving for perfection can cause one to go too far and make it worse.

In this case, once it got to a point where it looked good enough, I hit the brakes.

Now let’s attach them:

They really are big, aren’t they? Maybe too big, but I guess we’ll have to see.

Arms

This is just a little more complex than on a usual High Grade, with the forearm in particular being extra chunky (and extra armored):

A few notes. First, we get even more missiles on the inside of each elbow:

And on the other side of the elbow, there’s a removable cover that you can take off when you want to attach the shield:

Looking at the inside of the wrist, there is a seamline, but I’m not sure you’re supposed to try and remove it:

Moving upward, we have the shoulder armor. Or at least part of the shoulder armor:

The Xi Gundam is unusual in that it has big, multilayered shoulder armor; this is just the section that mounts directly to the actual shoulder:

This doesn’t look correct, but am I the only one who doesn’t think it looks too bad? Yes, the shoulders in their incomplete state look a bit anemic, but if you mounted a big weapon or something there, or gave it a bazooka, would you really notice?

Okay, fine, you’d probably still notice. So let’s build the rest of it.

(The rest of the) Shoulder Armor

Each piece of armor is made out of three main sections. You have these two “main” ones that represent the front and back:

And then this smaller section, which covers up the rest of the backplate:

Side note - that orange sticker you see is not symmetric. It’s supposed to go on in a specific orientation. If, like me, you put it in upside down, good luck trying to fix it. I attempted to remove it so that I could reinsert it, but all I did was scrape some of it off. What you see here is my attempt at filling in those scratches with a bit of crusty paint:

Good thing this is in the back where nobody is going to see it.

Moving on. Once you have the front and back plates assembled, you put together a small joint to connect the two, as well as another little joint for mounting the beam sabers:

Let’s flip it open and look on the underside:

There’s a lot of surface detail on this side, and I’m not entirely sure what it’s all supposed to be. Heating vents? Thrusters? Is that thing on the left a fan (it looks too asymmetrical to be a fan, but I can’t tell what else it could be)?

I just threw some weathering compound on it and called it a day.

And with that, the shoulder armor is done. But how does it attach? I don’t have a photo to show you, but there’s a mounting peg on each set of shoulder armor, and a hole that sits between the Gundam’s shoulder and its chest. That’s where they plug in.

And with that, the mobile suit itself is complete. But we still have a couple of weapons to look at.

(Side note - look at me doing the weapons at the end! How daring of me)

Shield

I’m not going to say it makes zero sense for the Xi’s shield to be a slightly modified version of the Nu Gundam’s, considering they technically come from the same development lineage:

But it still seems kind of weird to me. I just don’t think it’s a great fit visually, you know?

It’s been a while since we had to do any serious color correction, but we have some here. Those four grey bumpers along the perimeter have to be painted (though not those two grey bits in the center - those are actually stickers).

Speaking of stickers, there’s also on on the inside; it’s that white bit at the very bottom tip:

It’s kind of funny, if for no other reason than because that same textured surface is made of plastic on the outside. Whatever works I guess.

Beam Rifle

I’m not a fan of this. I appreciate that it’s color separated, but I also don’t understand why it’s multicolored in the first place. I’e seen weapons mix various greys, blacks, and even white, but blue?

And then there’s the fact that it has two camera sensors (which is fine), but they’re not the same color (which is not fine).

I mean, I’ll take some photos with it, just for the sake of completion, but I’m not going to like it.

Hands and Beam Sabers

You would expect such a large mobile suit to have big, chonky hands, and you’d be right!

I think these might be even bigger than the Messer’s, which is impressive (though fitting, considering the Xi itself is bigger). They’re so big that you can actually panel line them if you want to.

I only showed four hands in this photo, but there’s actually a fifth one. It’s a closed right hand, and I think it’s meant to be used with the Beam Rifle, since the space between the fingers looks bigger than on the other two closed fists.

Also, we get two open palm hands, which is a rarity upon rarities. I think they did it so you can recreate the pose on the front box art, but whatever the reason I’m not complaining.

Lastly, there are the beam sabers. These are so big they’re actually built out of three (or was it four?) separate parts.

Finished

And that, my friends, is how you build the Xi Gundam. And before we wrap up, I have some thoughts on the build.

First, I’d say that, despite its size and the apparent level of detail, the build overall isn’t that different than most modern High Grades. It still uses only a partial inner frame, and it still relies on color correcting stickers where needed.

Furthermore, all of its individual body parts and components are roughly similar in complexity to the equivalent components on other HG’s. It’s just that there are more components to assemble than usual. The chest is a great example. It’s made of multiple (simple) sections, but when you fasten them all together it results in something that looks greater than the sum of its parts.

(this of course is in contrast to Master Grades and Real Grades, which often have super fine details or mechanisms which are sometimes made out of many tiny parts, and which can be tricky to assemble. There’s nothing really like that here)

All of this is to say that there’s no need to be intimidated by this build. Even if you have just a few HG builds under your belt, you have everything you need to know to tackle this.

I’m also really impressed with the overall engineering. This model doesn’t require all that much in the way of color correction (though when it does, it can be admittedly tricky). Nor does it have all that much in the way of seamlines. This proves to me that Bandai really does have the ability to eliminate some of the biggest pain points of building High Grades.

It’s just that, sometimes they just … don’t. And that really sucks when you know what the company is capable of when they want to be.

But let’s not get sidetracked. The point is that this is a well engineered build, and a shining example of the very best that the HG line can provide. I can’t wait to show it to you next time.