Bandai

I don’t really have anything new to say about this kit that I didn’t already cover when I built the Unicorn ver TWC Lighting Model a few years back. The Banshee version is the same, save for the design differences and a LED setup that’s yellow instead of red. 

For the longest time I’ve wanted a 1/350 scale Space Battleship Yamato from Bandai. For those who hadn’t heard of it before, think Perfect Grade quality gimmicks to the max of 2007 model technology - lights, sounds, and best of all, motorized turrets. I remember seeing one in a local hobby shop many years ago, back before Bluefin became the de facto US distributor for Bandai, and on sale for what must have been a crazy cheap price. These days they regularly go for over $700 - which is a key reason I never got one.

That is until recently, when friend and fellow r/Gundam mod, Jaguar let me know about an online listing for a used kit out of Japan. It was still a bit pricey, and there was no guarantee that it still functioned, but from the photos it looked like everything was there. Apparently it was built back in 2007 then promptly put back in the box and forgotten for over a decade.

Look at me, I finished something from my backlog!

Here's a clever and dynamic opening paragraph that gets you interested in reading what I have to say about this build instead of skipping to the photos.

After my MG Deep Striker got put together I wanted to mix things up and go for something that could be played with just a tadddd more. Where the Striker is a static kit, very little movement, zero poses, the MG Cat is a world apart. I’ll get into it a bit more in a second but wow, is this kit an absolute joy to play with.

For those who are unfamiliar, the N3K-0 Cat, specifically the first numbered varient, was originally designed by Kunio Okawara as a late-season upgrade for Char in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Unfortunately Sunrise insisted that the use of Char’s iconic red colouring did not work with the design, feeling that it would negatively affect merchandize sales. Together with Tomino, Okawara developed a purplish colour as an alternative. Again Sunrise rejected the colour scheme. Rather than work in another colour, Okawara substituted a yet unfinished design, the MSN-02 Zeong. Due to the rushed production Okawara would not add legs to the Zeong until after production and the Cat would be lost in obscurity until its release as a MSV design. Since then it’s become wildly popular and the subject of many memes and running jokes, especially in Japan. Hell, it just recently got a lot of attention by franchise fans petitioning for it to replace the Zeong in the upcoming Origin reboot of the original series. But I digress...

As a Unicorn aficionado I was pretty excited to hear about the 1/48 scale Mega Size Gundam Unicorn. My wallet not so much, because you just know there's going to be half a dozen variants Bandai can release now. Anyhow, just wanted to spend some time reviewing this kit 'cause honestly, as a straight build, it's sort of meh... but as a "beast of possibility" this kit has more going for it than any previous Unicorn release. PS. this kit is only Destroy mode, you cannot transform into Unicorn mode. 

If you've built a Mega Size model before, or read my review of the 1/48 scale Mega Size Gundam RX-78-2 (holy shit that was 7 years ago), you know what to expect from this kit...

Back in 2014 I swapped out the pyschoframes of a MG Unicorn Gundam and a MG Phenex Gundam. While I had intended to paint them, they unfortunately got set aside as different projects popped up. Now, over two years later, I've picked up the project again, starting with Hell.

Over the past few years I've seen a couple folks share images of their Laserdisc Zeta Gundam Memorial Boxset and I eventually picked up a set for myself. Laserdisc? Well, apparently it has all the original openings and endings in great quality without some of the issues on the US DVD release. Don't ask me, I have no plans of picking up a Laserdisc player to find out. I got them for the really cool artwork and, to me, collector value. They ended up being away more impressive than I originally thought so I figured I'd snap a bunch of photos and share 'em for anyone interested.