Gunpla Build - Master Grade Gundam Unit 04 (Build)

Depending on who you ask and where you look, this thing is either a “glorified High Grade” that’s bad even by the standards of old MG’s, or a hidden retro gem. Having now built it, I’m leaning toward the latter myself.

I ask for your forgiveness in advance, because I’m about to get a little mean.

The main problem that most detractors have with this kit is the fact that it does not have a full inner frame, despite the fact that MG’s even a few years older (like the MG Ground Type and the EZ-8) both do. They see it as little more than a “glorified High Grade”.

The problem that I have with this line of thinking is that many builders have an extremely hardline stance on inner frames, one that is at once intense and often vaguely defined. And knowing what I know from decades of being online, it’s hard to tell if it’s based in anything sincere, or if it is simply a form of purity test and/or social signaling.

The thing about the very oldest Master Grades is that their inner frames aren’t much to speak of. They aren’t visually interesting, nor mechanically complex. They might provide some degree of structural integrity, but my experience over the years with High Grades suggests that for this, a partial inner frame is usually good enough (and that’s exactly what we get here with Unit 04).

If the argument is “I like nice, modern inner frames. They’re fun to build and nice to look at, and I’m sad when I don’t have one”, then sure, that’s a fair argument. But if it’s simply “this sucks cuz no inner frame”, I’m at a point where I’m more likely to assume you’re just saying things just to say them.

Painting and Detailing

If I'm going to rant, I might as well go all the way. While the model doesn't have a full inner frame, it does have a bunch of hidden surface detail that looks like inner framing: and the armor that covers it is easy to pop off. This means that you can, if you want to, paint these details, pop off some of the armor, and have a cool "in hangar" scene where it looks like it's being taken apart for maintenance:

Of course, this requires you to actually want to try and paint in these details, and more and more I'm realizing just how few builders are actually interested in doing that. Like, at all.

Throughout the life of this blog I've always tried to be the champion of newbies and out-of-the-box builders, and I still largely feel that way toward them. But those folks are usually not the ones complaining loudly online about the quality of any given straight build. Those complainers tend to want everything perfect out of the box simply because they can't be arsed to, well, actually engage in scale modeling and to things like paint, sand, or otherwise detail.

I'm at a point in my life where I can't be bothered to feel bad for these folks. If you've been building for a while - especially if you're building lots of Master Grades - and you haven't at least tried to expand your skillset even a tiny bit, then what are you even doing?

Here’s a different way of looking at the model. The inner frame is good enough to keep it sturdy, and the overall color separation on this thing is still extremely good despite its age. There are things it does that no ¹⁄₁₄₄ scale model could even dream of pulling off, so the notion that it’s a “glorified High Grade” is straight nonsense.

Is it old? Yes. Does it require a certain amount of elbow grease to get it to look truly phenomenal? Yes (though that’s still true even of newer MG’s). But I think it’s all worth it. What you end up getting is more than just a Grandaddy Gundam in a different color scheme. There’s a level of visual complexity here that really makes Unit 04 stand out as something really cool.

Stickers and Decals

I usually have pretty good luck with dry-rub decals, but not this time. I used all my typical tools and techniques, but most of them ended up being ruined. Not sure if I did something wrong, or if the markings were affected by age, temperature, etc (I’ve heard that these can affect how well they work).

What’s important is that, with so many of them destroyed, I ended up having to print some custom waterslides myself. I’ve done this before in the past, but this time was a little different. For one, this time I wanted to make decals out of very tiny text, and I learned very quickly that tiny text on an inkjet printer often comes out fuzzy.

This forced me to learn a bit about how to use Inkscape, so that I could turn the tiny text into vector images.

This helped quite a bit, and with enough trial and error I managed to get what I wanted (or at least something close enough):

*The plan was to put these on the chest, but it turns out that it's really hard to get text that's both tiny and very lightly colored, so instead I went with grey and put them on the ankles*

The other challenge was that I wanted to print the circular horse logo of the Thoroughbred to put on the shield. But since that logo is yellow and black, I had to paint the surface of the shield with some white paint so that the yellow ink on the decal shone through properly (you might remember that I ran into this exact same problem with the Tallgeese II).

Again, it took a lot of trial and error, but I got it … mostly. I ended up cutting some jagged marks into the perimeter of the decal.

*It actually looked kind of OK here, but in my attempts to make it even better, instead I made it even worse*

Ultimately I had to cover up the edges with a bunch of weathering compound. It’s not ideal, as no other part of the build looks weathered, but it’s all I could do (I mean, I could have reprinted the decal, but this was my fourth try).

Let’s go over some other highlights of the build.

Shield

The shield has the same gimmick as the Gundam Mk II, where the top is on a track so it can slide down and hide behind the bottom half. I have no interest in using this gimmick, but I appreciate its inclusion:

Skirt Armor

There’s a bit of hidden inner framing that’s underneath the skirt armor:

I painted it up and it looks fantastic.

Chest

Those tiny orange rectangles at the top are all made of plastic:

Also, I didn’t take a photo of it, but the way in which the chest vents are assembled is unique compared to most Gundams, which matches up with what some of the flavor text hinted at.

*These are some waterslide decals I scrounged up from the spares I have lying around. I added a bunch of them, while tryinh not to go too overboard*

Legs

This was my best attempt to paint some of that inner frame surface detail that’s molded into the plastic:

And here you can see that I made a waterslide decal of Luce’s personal logo to put on the knee:

*Not sure why his personal logo says 'ZD'*

Backpack

The backpack also has a bunch of hidden surface detail, and an armor cover that is easily removeable so you can see it. Again, I painted this all up as best I could.

Mega Beam Launcher

This thing has so much going on. Every time I thought I was done, I found something else to add. So many older Master Grades really do have High Grade-esque weapons, where they’re drab grey until you paint them. But with this thing they went all out.

Finished

This was a really fun build for me. I really went to town on it, adding more and more love and effort, and I’m quite pleased with the final result.