Kit Review

Straight build + Stickers

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - On the dedicated acrylic stand (1/3)

On the dedicated acrylic stand

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - Main body from various angles (1/6)

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - Main body from various angles (2/6)

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - Main body from various angles (3/6)

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - Main body from various angles (4/6)

Main body from various angles

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - Detail shots (1/5)

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - Detail shots (2/5)

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - Detail shots (3/5)

Detail shots

Weapons loadout

The shield handle can be attached at three different height positions.

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - The plastic frame. Due to the foot design, the frame alone can't stand up

The plastic frame.
Due to the foot design, the frame alone can't stand upright.

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - How the plastic frame and metal parts fit together on each section. I del

How the plastic frame and metal parts fit together on each section.
I deliberately flipped the parts over to show the inside.

Mold detail inside the skirt

The thick, hefty acrylic stand.

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - The legs are completely fixed, with only the arms and shoulders articulat

The legs are completely fixed, with only the arms and shoulders articulated, plus head and waist rotation.

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - Poses attempted for the heck of it (?). It's easier to just think of this

Poses attempted for the heck of it (?).
It's easier to just think of this kit as a display statue.

With the HGUC First Gundam Revive.

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - With the HG 30th Anniversary First Gundam. Just looking at the overall sh

With the HG 30th Anniversary First Gundam.
Just looking at the overall shape and panel lines, it's got a pretty similar look to the 30th Anniversary Gundam.

Club G Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam - With the HG RX-78-2 Gundam [Beyond Global]. Both are celebrating the 40th

With the HG RX-78-2 Gundam [Beyond Global].
Both are celebrating the 40th anniversary in their own way, but the styles are pretty different.

This kit is the Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam, released as a Club G (Premium Bandai) online exclusive. It's a special kit commemorating the 40th anniversary of Gunpla — the inner frame is plastic, but all the exterior armor parts are metal, which makes for a pretty unique setup. Befitting its high price tag, it comes packaged in multiple layers of premium packaging. (Info's box opening review for reference)

The plastic frame is less about mechanical detail and more of a skeletal structure designed to hold the metal parts in place, and it pulls that off effectively with a relatively small number of parts. Attaching the metal parts to the plastic frame goes surprisingly smoothly — it feels a lot like building a regular Gunpla kit. The exterior design shares a similar panel line style to the 30th Anniversary HG Gundam, but with the rough texture and metallic feel that comes with the metal material. The abundance of panel lines gives it a surprisingly refined look for a metal kit, and the overall sculpt and sense of depth are really impressive.

That said, articulation is barely a consideration with this kit — the legs are completely fixed and won't budge at all. The shoulders and elbows move, and the neck and waist can rotate, but that's about it, so there aren't really any interesting poses you can pull off. This kit is really better thought of as a display statue rather than something you pose, and to that end it comes with a thick, solid acrylic stand.

The real highlight of this kit is that the metal parts are made using an actual combination of titanium (Ti), aluminum (Al), and yttria (Y₂O₃) — just like the in-universe Gundarium alloy spec. Maybe because titanium is such an ultra-lightweight metal, it does feel a little lighter than your typical super alloy toy. It's definitely heavier than regular plastic, but true to titanium's nature, it feels lighter than it looks. It could come across as an impressive technological achievement, but some people might be a little disappointed that it lacks that satisfying heft you'd expect from a metal product.

That said, the experience of actually building a lightweight metal kit made from real titanium alloy is genuinely unique. The problem, though, is that the enormous cost of materials and machining has pushed the price into jaw-dropping territory. As an engineer myself, I totally get how expensive this kind of alloy work is — especially titanium processing, which is normally reserved for aerospace applications — but even so, ¥220,000 is just too steep from a consumer standpoint. T_T

If it were around ¥20,000 — drop a zero off the price — I'd have pulled the trigger without much hesitation, but this was a price point that even a die-hard collector like me, who's been building and collecting Gunpla for decades, couldn't easily open my wallet for. The quality is great, the unique symbolic value is there too, but I can't help wishing they'd found a manufacturing process that brought the cost down a bit more. Either way, for better or worse, this is clearly one of the most landmark products in Gunpla history. :-)

Gundarium Alloy Model 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam | 2020.12 | ¥220,000

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.