Gunpla Build - Master Grade Gundam 3.0 (Body Pt 2)

I think it’s time to finish this build off.

Feet

Assembly is fairly straightforward. You have three different sections - one for the heel, one for the middle of the foot, and one for the toe.

But it gets a bit more complicated after that. First, you have to choose how you want the ankle joint covers to look. Do you go with the traditional, screw-shaped covers? Or the ones with the magnetic coating?

I personally prefer the screw shaped design, but the instruction manual for this kit dedicates over two pages of content just on talking about magnetic coating. Bandai seems so proud of its inclusion that I felt obligated to use them.

(Also, I don’t have any other Grandaddy Gundams with the magnetic coating gimmick, so I figured I’d also use them for the sake of variety)

Next we have the decals. There are quite a few of them, on almost every single surface - including a few that wrap around the ankle joint covers.

Getting those on was easier said than done; indeed, there are similar decals for wrapping around the knee and elbow joint covers, and after this I decided not to use them. They don’t really add much to the overall look of the model.

Still, when all is said and done, it’s a nice looking foot, with about as much articulation as I’ve ever seen.

Legs

It’s ironic - the outer armor of this model is so intricate and detailed, but the inner frame? Not so much.

I mean it has some, and it still has all the usual mechanical complexity of a Master Grade, with all the slidey bits you’d expect to see. It just doesn’t have quite the level of surface detail that I’ve seen on other MG’s and RGs.

Personally, I don’t really mind, as I only ever paint those details in when I know for sure they’ll be exposed during a knee or elbow bend. But I’ve been on the block long enough to know that they matter quite a bit to other folks, so bear that in mind.

Anyway, onto assembly. We start with this weird hook thing (seen on the right):

Which actually slots in at the front like so:

Just make sure everything lines up before attaching the parts for the upper leg.

Now, I ended up doing something here that I don’t think I’ve ever done before with a Master Grade - after assembly, I topcoated the inner frame. I did this partly to give it a nice, uniform, fully topcoated look, but also because I’ve heard that the joints on this model are a bit finnicky, and I thought that maybe introducing some paint would add some much needed tightness and friction. We’ll have to wait and see.

Here they are fully assembled and decal’ed:

A few observations. First, those gold stickers are … not looking great. They share the same problem as the ones on the Real Grade, which is that they don’t stick on very well (I had to use a tiny bit of glue on a few of them), and the copper finish easily scratches off if you aren’t careful.

There’s one other additional problem, which is that they don’t tamp down very well. There’s supposed to be all sorts of surface detail that you should be able to see underneath, but since the stickers don’t stick very well, they don’t form an effective seal around the plastic.

From a distance I think they still look good enough, but I’m half tempted to take them off and use some copper paint and/or marker.

My second observation is that the hip joints are a bit wonky. The part that connects into the leg is extremely shallow; you really have to push down and make sure it locks into place, otherwise the leg is almost certainly going to fall off.

Arms

These are a pain in the ass to assemble, and unfortunately I accidentally deleted all of my good work-in-progress photos to explain why.

Thankfully, I found another blog that has a nice dissasembly photo which I am going to use below. Credit to the “Art and Musings of a Minature Hobbyist” blog by FourEyedMonster for doing what I failed to.

Okay, so here’s the deal. You have this little assembly, where this bit is completely loose. Nothing is securing it, and it will fall out if you hold it the wrong way:

Then you have this little assembly, in which this little bit is also completely loose:

Then you have this thing here that frames the elbow joint:

It’s a grey part, but as you can see, some of it is supposed to be copper in color. The kit comes with stickers to help, but they’re … not great. Some of them are very long and thin, and don’t adhere very well.

Another problem is that there aren’t enough of them. You can cover the front of the part, as well as the outer walls, but not the inner walls. As you can see, FourEyedMonster chose to just paint them, while I used a mix of the decals and some paint.

Anyway, you have to take those two loose assemblies, and (loosely) fit them into the grey/copper enclosure. Then, while they’re all just barely staying in place, you’re supposed to secure them by attaching these frame parts:

Here’s what it’s supposed to look like:

You can see that those two little loose bits are still mostly loose. They won’t fully stay in place until they are completely enclosed.

It’s not the worst thing I’ve had to assemble, but it also wasn’t what I’d call pleasant.

What’s amazing though is that once it’s all secured, everything fits tight and snug.

At least until you start attaching the armor …

As it turns out, the wrist is built on a hinge, which allows for some degree of articulation:

The only thing holding it in place are those two white armor plates that enclose it. If those plates don’t fit snug enough - or if you yanked on the wrist somehow - the wrist joint is probably going to pop out.

It’s a cool idea, but the implementation leaves me wanting.

A few more observations. First, those two armor plates on the wrist are slightly different from one another:

Make sure you put them in the right place; it is all too easy to accidentally put the same style of plate on a single arm, making them look asymmetrical (ask me how I know)

Second, be careful with the decals. The arms have pink lines that wrap around each wrist, and you’ll want to be sure to try and line them up as closely as possible.

One more thing. This model has those special Master Grade hands where each finger is individually articulated:

I had a hell of a time with these when I built the Master Grade Origin version of Gramps, as the fingers kept falling off (PS - since then I actually lost a finger!)

This time, however, they’ve been okay. The fingers are a little stiff, but I’ll take that over them being loose. Hopefully they’ll continue to hold up during poses.

Shoulders

These are parts separated to all hell, which was a real problem for the Real Grade version. The parts are so small, and the connections so shallow, that the different armor bits like to fall off all the time (unless you glue them in place).

The jury is still out on whether that will be a problem with this kit, but so far everything seems to be staying in place.

Interestingly, this model comes with a few different marking decals for you to choose from. These right here are the “default” ones:

But I actually put these on the back of the shoulders, as I chose to use the alternate ones on the front:

I just love that Pegasus logo for White Base. You don’t see it very often, so I liked the idea of putting it front and center.

A few notes about the assembly. If you look at the shoulders from the top, you’ll discover there is even more parts separation:

What’s notable about some of these parts is that if you don’t fasten them in the correct order, they won’t actually snap on. They seem to rely on each other, almost like the stones in an arched bridge:

Finished!

And with that, the Master Grade 3.0 is complete.

As you can tell by the dates on all these build posts, this one took me a while. That seems to be a common pattern for Master Grades in general, but this one took even longer than usual on account of how many decals it has.

That’s not a problem, it’s just that my view on Master Grades has … evolved.

There are so many builders online that think that not only do MG’s look better than the rest, but that they’re easier too.

That’s not been my experience. I agree they have the potential to look better, but I find that they take just as much as, if not more effort than other grades. Sometimes that’s because of decals and panel lining (like on this kit), but in other cases they require just as much color correction (or even seam line removal!) as High Grades (including a few MG’s on my backlog that I started but haven’t finished). And since they’re so much bigger than HG’s, all that work tends to take more time.

In short, I like the final result of all the MG’s I’ve built, but they require a lot of time and patience, and the right mindframe to prepare for what usually ends up being a lot of repetitive, painstaking work.

But hey, that makes sense right? They’re Master Grades, not Maximum-Returns-For-Minimal-Work Grades.

But I’m rambling now. I’ll see you next post to look at how the 3.0 ultimately turned out.