Kit Review

Straight build
+ light panel lining

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Upper body with really solid color separation.

Head.
The head antennae are made of clear material.

Arms

The back section is pretty impressive too.

This thing walks around with 6 beam sabers stuck on it..

Shield

Legs

Both the front and rear skirts can be individually articulated by cutting them apart, but..

HG Beginning Gundam - After actually cutting and assembling them, the rear skirt is fine but the front skirt is way too loose

After actually cutting and assembling them,
the rear skirt is fine but the front skirt is way too loose..
I'd recommend not splitting them if you can help it -.-;

Weapons

The beam saber slipped over the fingers comes as a single solid clear part, so it looks a bit rough..

Inside of the shield

Articulation is pretty good.

The shoulders have good forward/backward movement too..

HG Beginning Gundam - The ankle forward/backward articulation is insanely good;; I think this might be the first kit I've see

The ankle forward/backward articulation is insanely good;;
I think this might be the first kit I've seen where the ankle bends this far forward..

On the other hand, the side-to-side range isn't all that wide.

It pulls off poses naturally that even most MGs would struggle with.

Firing pose

HG Beginning Gundam - Triple beam saber action (1/3)

Triple beam saber action

HG Beginning Gundam - Aerial flight action (1/3)

Aerial flight action

HG Beginning Gundam - Beam saber action (1/3)

Beam saber action

Triple beam saber action

HG Beginning Gundam - Triple beam saber charge action (1/4)

HG Beginning Gundam - Triple beam saber charge action (2/4)

Triple beam saber charge action

HG Beginning Gundam - Triple beam saber action 3 (1/3)

Triple beam saber action 3

Together with the HGUC First Gundam.

Straight build

The Beginning Gundam, which appears in "Model Suit Gunpla Builders," a new Gundam-related TV series, has been released as an HG. It's not exactly a traditional sci-fi Gundam anime — it's more like Plamo Kyoshiro or Keroro, where Gundam plastic models are just the subject matter — but since the original Gunpla designs that appear in it actually get made into real kits, you could probably get away with calling it a Gundam anime.

The Beginning Gundam's design initially looked pretty childish, but sure enough, as expected, the kit turned out really well. I mean, it's not exactly a heavyweight in terms of pedigree, so at least the quality needs to be good enough to grab people's attention. Since it's not a proper mainline HG, I wasn't even going to bother with panel lining.. but the kit came out well enough that I went ahead and did some light panel lining.

There are a lot of kits that look rough from the original design but somehow look awesome once they're made into a kit, and Beginning Gundam is one of them. First off, the color separation is incredibly detailed — almost hard to believe for an HG — and the articulation and joint strength are excellent thanks to the updated poly-caps. The ankle forward/backward range in particular is something we've never seen before. If HG 00 gave us a crazy side-to-side ankle, HG Beginning gives us a crazy forward/backward ankle. Combine the two and you'd have an incredible ankle.. ^^;

Thanks to the exceptional ankle articulation, action poses on the ground look great, and you can pull off some pretty dynamic poses on a stand too. Joint strength is more than solid — like most recent HGs, it's actually a little stiff if anything, to the point where you might wish it were just a touch smoother. But of course, that's a hundred times better than having it be loose.

Anyway, I went into this with zero expectations but it gave me a surprisingly satisfying build. The look of all those beam sabers crammed on everywhere is unique, and the somewhat childish blue/red/yellow color scheme is actually prettier than you'd expect. I don't know how to put it, but building this one definitely gave me that "this is fun!" feeling.

Since the anime Gunpla Builders is, as the title suggests, primarily about "building Gunpla" (though it seems like the real core is actually simulated battles using Gunpla..), the HG Beginning Gundam seems to have been designed with the building experience in mind, and the result is a success. In a word, it faithfully delivers the fun of the assembly process itself, which means it syncs up really well with the concept of the show. It's a fun Gunpla I'd recommend to anyone who's gotten a bit bored with building the same old kits :-)

HG Beginning Gundam | 2010.9 | ¥1,600

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.