Kit Review

Straight build

Size comparison with a cigarette pack.

Upper body and head/whiskers(?) close-up shots

HG Gundam Nadleeh - Rear view. On my built kit, the red soft-plastic head parts had some warping and wouldn't return to their

Rear view. On my built kit, the red soft-plastic head parts had some warping and wouldn't return to their original shape.
Might have to soak them in warm water to get them back..

Arms and legs.

Nadleeh's weapons.

Weapons exclusive to the HG Nadleeh that aren't included in the 1/100 Bache/Nadleeh kit.

Unusually for a 1/144 kit, the back of the shield is separately molded.

Articulation. Solid, decent articulation.

Shoulder range of motion. Also decent..

HG Gundam Nadleeh - Action pose. The feet are small so the ground contact isn't great, but the joints are super solid so bala

Action pose.
The feet are small so the ground contact isn't great, but the joints are super solid so balancing is easy.

You can also attach a large beam saber to the front of Nadleeh's GN beam rifle.

A pretty cool kneeling beam saber action pose

Action using Action Base 2

Thrusting action

With the large beam saber attached to the beam rifle, the overall length gets pretty long.

HG Gundam Nadleeh - Dual-blade charging action pose (1/3)

Dual-blade charging action pose

A pose of just having shed the outer armor...

HG Gundam Nadleeh - Recreating the GN Cannon action pose from the show. The GN Cannon is not included in this kit — it's borr

Recreating the GN Cannon action pose from the show.
The GN Cannon is not included in this kit — it's borrowed from the HG Bache.

Recreating the GN Cannon all-directions rapid-fire pose from the show.

The key point of this pose is the demure leg stance.. :-)

Comparison with the 1/100 Nadleeh included as the inner frame of the 1/100 Bache.

The HG has a big advantage in that it includes weapons unique to Nadleeh.

HG Gundam Nadleeh - Comparison with the HG Bache. Maybe the armor removal gimmick was too tricky to pull off at this smaller

Comparison with the HG Bache.
Maybe the armor removal gimmick was too tricky to pull off at this smaller scale, because they ended up releasing it as a separate kit.

A shot with the protagonist's HG Exia.
They share a similar sense of volume and design concept.

Gundam Nadleeh, which serves as the inner body of Gundam Bache, has been released as a separate kit from the HG Bache. At 1/100 scale the armor removal gimmick was perfectly reproduced, but at 1/144 HG scale the engineering must have been a bit too tricky, so Bache and Nadleeh ended up coming out separately. Sure, the 1/200 HCM Pro did manage to include the removal gimmick, so it's hard to argue why 1/144 couldn't — but I'd guess that if they had tried to implement the armor removal gimmick, the kit's durability probably would have taken a hit.

Anyway, the separately released HG Nadleeh is not just a variant — it's a fully standalone kit in its own right. The overall quality feel is very similar to the HG Exia, and the relatively small feet do put it at a slight disadvantage for stability, but the incredibly solid joint strength makes posing a breeze. The articulation isn't exceptional either, but again, those sturdy joints make it easy to hold poses ^_^; From a reviewer's standpoint, it's a comfortable and enjoyable kit to work with, I must say... (Personally I love octopus dishes, but an octopus kit? No thanks-)

One big selling point of the HG Nadleeh is that it uniquely includes weapons exclusive to Gundam Nadleeh that weren't even in the 1/100 kit. On top of that, the red whiskers (-_-) are made from very soft flexible plastic, which seems to allow for slightly more natural poses compared to the 1/100 — but the downside is that they're so soft they appear to have warped a bit on the runner. Like old soft vinyl figures, it seems you need to apply heat to reshape them back. In my case, one side of the back of the head is sticking out and just won't come back down... It's ended up looking like a bedhead that just rolled out of bed and bolted out the door ;;;

The overall feel of the kit is very clean and satisfying to build, giving you great value for the price. Maybe it's because it was piloted by Tieria, an androgynous character, but there's something almost feminine about it — it's a kit that gives off a "cute and pretty" vibe. The red whiskers were shocking when the design was first revealed, but the more you look at them, the more you start to think they actually give it a unique personality.

In conclusion, this is a solid, exemplary HG that's fun to build without any stress, and it's an above-average kit that you don't need to worry about quality-wise. :-)

HG Gundam Nadleeh | 2008. 4 | ¥1,200

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.