I jumped into this build so quickly that I forgot to take photos of the runners and the boxart. Of course it was easy enough to go back and fix the latter, but not so much the former, so you’ll have to settle with the layout as seen in the instructions:
My takeaway here is that the special parts for the legs and the backpack are scattered across the different runners, which makes me wonder whether or not this based on an existing HG Zaku, or if this is a brand new mold.
The Gunpla Wiki doesn’t say anything about this being a parts variant of an existing kit, and they’re usually pretty good about documenting that kind of stuff, so it probably is a new mold. And I think that might actually make financial sense. Between this, the Shin Matsunaga version, and the Johnny Ridden version, they made three retail kits out of this single design, which is probably enough to justify the cost of new molds.
But I’m rambling now. The much more interesting thing about this model is its coloring. We’ve got a lot to talk about there.
Let’s start with the “true” color scheme of this Gunpla, the way it’s supposed to look when it’s finished. Based on the boxart and the lineart, You’d safely assume that the main body is either black, or an extremely dark purple.
But that’s not actually the case, at least not for this High Grade version. Instead, the main body is supposed to be a very dark navy blue. And it’s not just me saying it, Sports Illustrated is saying it the color guide is saying it:
If only I had a nickel for every time a mobile suit was as different color than I thought it was …
Anyway, to be clear, the model does have some actual black parts, including the feet, the knee armor, and some of the skirt armor.
But that brings us to the next interesting thing about this kit. None of the black parts are molded in black. Instead, for some weird reason, they’re all a medium grey:
If it were a really dark grey I’d understand, but this isn’t anywhere close to black. It’s a level of color inaccuracy that I would not at all expect from a High Grade from 2013.
And this isn’t even the only example of such color inaccuracy. The Heat Hawk is supposed to be purple, but instead it’s molded in the same dark blue as the main body, despite the fact that there are other parts molded in purple!!
Now what about all the white? Remember that the legs and backpack have a lot of white stripes and banding. How is that handled?
Believe it or not, surprisingly well. There’s actually some white plastic in the box, as well as some white stickers for color correction:
So the parts I thought would be super color inaccurate are not, and parts that I never thought I had to worry about are a problem. Nothing about the coloring of this model makes any sense to me.
*Sigh* … let’s move on. I’m not going to do a full build post this time, instead only covering the bits that are new or interesting.
Marking Stickers
This thing comes with a ton of markings.
And if you follow the manual, you’ll end up using quite a lot of them:
It’s still not quite as many as the GM Night Seeker II, but it’s still way more than usual. I’m seeing the beginnings of a pattern here; If a mobile suit shows up on screen, then the High Grade is likely to be screen accurate (which, in most cases, means little to no markings). But if it’s something from Mobile Suit Variations or the like, the designers have a larger degree of freedom, leading to kits like this and the Night Seeker that have almost Real Grade levels of markings.
Heat Hawk
The Heat Hawk isn’t new perse, but what’s interesting about it is that the plastic is the same dark blue as the body, but the manual shows it in a bright purple, with a yellow blade. I thought that looked cool, so I went ahead and painted it that way:
I then showed my work to a Gunpla Discord I’m a part of, and they suggested I give it a gloss coat. I’ve never done that before with a Heat Hawk, so I figured I ought to give it a shot. I don’t know if I like it better than a regular matte coat, but it was an interesting experiment.
Weapon Holster
This kit comes with a weapon holster. It’s a single piece of plastic that slides onto the shoulder shield, and has slots for all three of the main Zaku weapons:
I’ve never seen this before on any of the other Zakus I’ve built, which is weird. Methinks that maybe they included it here to help plus the kit up a bit and convince you to buy yet another Zaku.
I’ll say this: it’s a clever idea, but I don’t like the way it looks when equipped on the model. It doesn’t look sufficiently compact or practical.
Commander Fins
Like a lot of Zaku kits, this one gives you the choice between having a normal head, or one with a commander antenna. But it actually goes further than that, as it has two different styles of antenna to choose from:
The one on the left is the standard kind, while the one on the right is new to me. Guess which one I chose?
Broken Tool
I dropped and broke my Raser file during this build:
I was not at all happy about this, but it did give me an excuse to go to the shop and buy the bigger version, to see how that compared.
Let’s say this: the Raser website says that the smaller version (the one I broke) is best for 1⁄144 scale kits, and the bigger one is better for Master Grades and Perfect Grades. At first I thought this was just a polite way for them to say “one is for beginners, and one is for pros”, but no, they were absolutely correct:
As you can see, the bigger one isn’t that much bigger in terms of surface area. It’s mainly just a different shape (which explains why the difference in cost at the hobby store was only a few dollars). I can see the wider shape being more useful for the larger parts of a Master Grade model, whereas the skinnier, longer shape of my original file is better for High Grades.
Or to put it another way, this replacement feels a bit like a downgrade. But I’m not going to go out and get yet another one, so I’ll just make due.
Legs
We now get to the first truly unique part of this build, the (lower) legs. They have something of a core inner frame, which is then surrounded by armor:
The seamlines run down the sides of the leg, rather than down the front, which is super nice. I had a ton of trouble truly removing the seamlines on this very dark plastic, so having them on the sides makes them far less visible.
Now we get to the color correction. Here is the leg straight out of the box:
That’s not too bad! Almost all of the white sections are made out of white plastic. Most of the painting is going to involve grey and black (and red for all the little thrusters)
And here it is all done up:
The hardest part by far was the white trim around that box on the front, while everything else was fairly reasonable.
This is an interesting take on the traditional Zaku leg. It has the same basic shape, but swaps out the gentle curves for a more boxy look, with lots of accoutrements. If I were feeling mean I’d say that it looks like it has HVAC equipment strapped to it, but I actually think it looks cool.
Backpack
This is where all those white color correcting stickers are used, which, you know, fair enough. Since most people aren’t looking at the backside of a Gunpla, it’s the area where Bandai tends to take the most shortcuts. But considering that that means they could have easily left it color inaccurate, the stickers are a welcome touch.
And I tried using them too, and at first they seemed okay. But then they started to peel away from the plastic, especially around the corners. If it were any other color than white, I might have taken them off and painted it instead, but out of sheer laziness I left them be.
There are only a few spots that need white paint, which I tried my best to highlight in the photo below:
And then there are the inside of all the thrusters, which all have to be painted red (and black). This was quite tricky given the small space in which to work.
The Rest of the Build
I’m not going to say that the rest of the build was exactly the same as any other Zaku model. Most of it was, but there is at least one area in which it’s not, and not in a good way either. But I’ll go into more detail about that during the photoshoot. See you then.