Kit Review

Straight build + Stickers + Panel lining

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

HGUC Gundam AN-01 Tristan - Detail shots (1/4)

HGUC Gundam AN-01 Tristan - Detail shots (2/4)

Detail shots

Only one extra hand part is included — a rifle-specific hand.

You can remove the beam saber from the back and attach the beam effect part.

There's no action base hole either, which feels pretty out of place for a modern kit. -_-

Leftover parts

HGUC Gundam AN-01 Tristan - The limb articulation is surprisingly average. The front skirt in particular doesn't lift up at a

The limb articulation is surprisingly average.
The front skirt in particular doesn't lift up at all, which really limits the hip joint range of motion.

The shoulders also use a fixed pin joint — the kind you rarely see in recent kits.

Aerial action pose

HGUC Gundam AN-01 Tristan - Beam rifle firing pose (1/3)

Beam rifle firing pose

HGUC Gundam AN-01 Tristan - Beam saber action (1/3)

Beam saber action

Together with the HGUC Gundam NT-1.

Together with the HGUC First Gundam Revive version.

Straight build

The Gundam Tristan from the 2017 Gundam anime Twilight Axis has been released as an HGUC kit. The show has been generating buzz as a proper Universal Century story — something we haven't seen in a while — and also because it was directed by a Korean. It's a 6-part series, but the total runtime is only about 20 minutes, so it's a pretty short one.

Since the Gundam Tristan is based on the Gundam NT-1 in the lore, this kit comes out as a variation kit based on the 2004 HGUC Gundam NT-1. As a result, the quality level is squarely 2004-era, and it's been drawing complaints ever since it was released.

Looking at the finished appearance alone, it just looks like a somewhat plain HG kit — but the real issue isn't the looks, it's that the joint structure is way too old-school. The shoulder uses a fixed pin joint that has zero forward/backward or up/down movement, and the front skirt barely moves at all, severely limiting the hip joint range of motion. On top of that, there are seam lines on the thighs (haven't seen those in a while), and the crotch has no action base hole — it's genuinely hard to find even a single gram of "modern kit" feel in this thing.

Sure, you could argue it's unavoidable since it's based on a 2004 kit — but this is still supposed to be the main Gundam of a brand-new Universal Century anime, and it's hard to understand why they released it in such a half-baked state.

That said, stepping back a bit — the joint strength isn't bad, and the color separation and articulation are passable enough that you could call it a decent, run-of-the-mill HG-class kit. The problem is that slapping the HGUC title on it — the top tier of the HG lineup — and calling it the hero unit of a new anime feels pretty jarring given the quality. This is simply not the kind of kit you'd expect to see released in 2017, and it compares especially poorly to the previously released HGUC Barzam...

All in all, this kit seems destined to be talked about negatively for a long time. Unless you absolutely loved the Twilight Axis anime, I can't recommend it at all. Kit quality has been steadily improving across the board thanks to advances in technology, but I guess even Bandai pulls a blunder like this every now and then. :-)

HGUC Gundam AN-01 Tristan | 2017.6 | ¥1,500

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.