There’s not much to say about the runners here. It’s a perfectly cromulent pile of parts for a Real Grade:
As is now tradition, the kit comes with a tiny little runner with some prebuilt inner framing, just so that they can still brag about it on the box. In this case, it looks like it’s used in the arms.
Now here is a comparison of the original sticker sheet with the waterslides:
The Delphi waterslides have a few extra markings that aren’t on the original sticker sheet, including a few for the wings. Meanwhile, as usual, the sticker sheet has a few metallic/foil stickers that you simply can’t replicate with waterslides (and as usual, I’ll be using those wherever they go)
Beam Sabers
Both God and Shining Gundam have peculiar looking beam sabers. They’re long rectangular sticks rather than the usual lightsaber-esque tubes:
They’re also the rare mobile suits that have curved blades (since their beam sabers are explicitly meant to resemble katanas)
Halo Effect
This thing looks cool and all, but it’s a pain to assemble. There’s a clear framing piece with three layers of clips. Each ring slots into its respective clips, but they’re not that easy to get them in there (though once you do, they seem to stay in place)
And voila:
Core Lander
It’s fun to compare this to the Core Lander designs from the High Grade G Gundam models. The latter group tend to be simple, lumpy little things with decals for their windshields:
Which, honestly, is perfectly fine, since the overwhelming majority of people are going to see the back of it when it’s plugged into the mobile fighter.
But Real Grades tend to go hard even when they don’t need to, so this Core Lander has a visible cockpit, a working, transparent hatch, and quite a lot of surface detail:
And that’s to say nothing of the crazy wings and copious amount of decals:
But even without the wings, this thing would still look quite a bit fancier than its brethren:
Feet
Right off the bat, we’re encountering some pretty stunning articulation. The ankle can freely pivot side to side, and we get an extra point of articulation in the toe.
Legs
The first striking thing here is that the hip joint is this heavy duty thing that locks into place with a keyhole-style lock:
There’s a similar thing going on with some of the armor, where it slides in and then down:
I’m guessing that this is all in the name of extra stability, and if that’s the case then I’m not going to complain.
And then we get to the matter of these little yellow bits inside of the frame (in the photo below, one of them is embedded inside that white part):
When you finish assembling the leg, you might wonder what the point is - because they aren’t visible! The secret is that the rear armor can open up to reveal them:
I didn’t take any WIP photos of the ankle guards, but I love that they’re made of color separated plastic, rather than a black decal. It adds so much extra depth and detail.
Here are the legs completed:
Check out the crazy knee bend:
Lower Torso
Again - if this were a simpler kit, we’d be getting a black sticker here. But the black plastic looks so much better:
There’s even some great detail on the inside:
I love how the front skirts look like fangs:
And I love how the little metallic stickers on the back reflect the light:
You’ll notice the markings on the beam saber holsters. These are the only place where I didn’t use waterslides, as the wasterslides immediately tore apart.
One more thing before we move on: look at the mount point where the upper torso plugs in, and how far forward it can bend:
Upper Torso
It’s so fun seeing how built up this thing gets even before adding all of the armor, the gatling guns, etc:
The chest has the little gem hidden inside the chest that appears during the God Finger, and you can choose between a couple different versions of the King of Hearts logo that goes inside (including a “regular one” and a metallic one):
Here’s something you don’t see everyday: there’s a decal right in front of the neck:
Is it necessary? Nope. Is it awesome anyway? Absolutely.
If you look closely on the finished piece, you’ll notice a couple of those tiny metallic stickers that they often use on Real Grades:
And in the back, you’ll see the gaping hole where the Core Lander plugs in:
Arms
Here it is folks, the moment everyone I’ve been waiting for. This is where we finally encounter the obligatory “tiny bit of prebuilt Advanced MS Joint that Bandai still insists on tossing in just so they can still brag about it on the packaging”
In this case, the Advanced MS Joint is used to make the core of the elbow joint:
Though it’s not going to look like that. You need to bend it and contort it until it looks like this:
The joints also come with some cool hands where the fingers go straight out:
Now we get to the a segment that I refer to as “This F*cking Piece”:
That little grey part doesn’t plug into anything or lock into place. It simply rests in a gap in the white shoulder armor:
Even the manual understands how weird it is.
The main problem with this assembly is that it will stay in place once the shoulder armor is complete, but until then, that part is liable to fall out. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had to wrangle, but it certainly wasn’t fun.
Elsewhere on the shoulder, we have some gold stickers we have to apply to the inner frame, underneath the white armor:
It’s a bit tricky to open up the hatch to reveal these gold vents; I finally found a spot where I can easily jam in a cuticle stick (or tweezers) and pop it open.
Last but not least, we have the gauntlets:
Those yellow claws are extremely sharp (ask me how I know)
Once assembled, the gauntlet is on a hinge that I find a bit tough to move back and forth:
You’ll know that you have it right for performing the God Finger when the gauntlet sticks out further than the hand.
Speaking of hands, we get a ton:
And just like the High Grade G Gundam kits, these hands are smaller than usual for a 1⁄144 scale kit (as the G mobile suits themselves are a bit smaller)
Head
This is the only part of the body without any decals. But it doesn’t really need them, as it packs a ton of detail in anyway.
Side note - there are plenty of mobile suits with a double V-Fin, but I really like the way it’s done here. It gives off such a regal vibe.
Finished
And with that, the God Gundam is complete.
Now, here’s the deal. This is a model that demands lots and lots of photos. In addition to just trying out a ton of action poses, I need to recreate scenes from the show with the help of the other Shuffle Alliance models, as well as take some fun shots alongside it’s “sibling”.
All of that is going to take me a while, and so I don’t know when exactly I’ll get around to finishing it all. So this is going to be the stopping point for the God Gundam for now, and I’ll get back to it some time in the near future.