Kit Review

Straight build + Panel lining

Size comparison with a cigarette pack — the universal standard for scale reference.

HGUC GM Quel - Upper body front shot. The yellow V-shaped seal on the forehead just wouldn't stick properly, so it looks a bi

Upper body front shot. The yellow V-shaped seal on the forehead just wouldn't stick properly, so it looks a bit off;
The verniers on the backpack look awkwardly oversized.
The GM Quel was never supposed to have them that big... that's what you get when they just reuse the Hazel's verniers as-is. -_-;;

HGUC GM Quel - Lower body. The calves are super chunky since they're using the Hazel's parts... The clear parts molded in ora

Lower body. The calves are super chunky since they're using the Hazel's parts...
The clear parts molded in orange are a nice touch though, heh..

HGUC GM Quel - Like recent HGUC kits, the skirt is molded as one solid piece that you cut apart yourself to allow independent

Like recent HGUC kits, the skirt is molded as one solid piece that you cut apart yourself to allow independent movement.
Bandai's insistence on making the user do the cutting themselves is a bit puzzling...
I mean, they could just mold the parts separately to begin with. I guess the idea is to give builders a little taste of customization.
The four similar-looking square pieces that attach to the skirt are each designed with different peg sizes and lengths
so you can't accidentally swap them around and plug them in the wrong way.
Bandai has done this kind of thing before, but it's been hit-or-miss depending on the kit with no real consistency...
Kotobukiya kits lately have been really thorough about this — making sure similar parts can't be assembled in the wrong order —
so I wonder if Bandai picked up a thing or two from them.

4 hands total. Proportions are generally solid. (They're the Hazel's anyway...)

HGUC GM Quel - Arm articulation is great, but the chunky legs hold things back a bit... ^^; Just like the Hazel, the angle fo

Arm articulation is great, but the chunky legs hold things back a bit... ^^;
Just like the Hazel, the angle for gripping the rifle isn't great.
You can barely get it into position, and the hand parts tend to fall apart easily because of it, so I just glued them on;

Action po~se

The leg range of motion is too limited to pull off a kneeling pose...

A drawn-sword stance looks natural though.

Leftover seals. You can tell this kit is from the A.O.Z. line rather than the 0083 series.

HGUC GM Quel - Left: alongside the legendary HGUC Mk-II Titans. Right: alongside Hazel Unit 2, which could be considered the

Left: alongside the legendary HGUC Mk-II Titans.
Right: alongside Hazel Unit 2, which could be considered the GM Quel's predecessor.

HGUC GM Quel - Look closely and you'll see it's al~most identical to Hazel Unit 2. The differences are basically just the hea

Look closely and you'll see it's al~most identical to Hazel Unit 2.
The differences are basically just the head and backpack...
The photo on the right shows the Titans color Hazel series.

HGUC GM Quel - Alongside the MG GM Quel. The proportions are wildly different. The HGUC from the Hazel line has a narrow uppe

Alongside the MG GM Quel. The proportions are wildly different.
The HGUC from the Hazel line has a narrow upper body with beefy legs;;
The MG proportions feel more normal by comparison.

All in all, a small, clean, high-quality kit :-)

As soon as Hazel Unit 2 came out, a lot of people predicted an HGUC GM Quel would follow. And for good reason — the Hazel Unit 2's design is 90% identical to the GM Quel, so there's no way Bandai would pass up such an easy color variant. ^^; Sure enough, the kit itself reuses almost all of Hazel Unit 2's runners, with only a few parts like the head and backpack being different. It really is a kit that practically made itself.

Since the Hazel-line HGUCs generally have a high-quality feel to them, this GM Quel is likewise a small, sturdy, and clean high-quality kit. That said, the HGUC Hazel's proportions lean toward narrow shoulders and very beefy calves, and the GM Quel carries those proportions over exactly. As you can tell from the comparison with the MG GM Quel, it's quite a departure from the more traditional proportions. Some of you might find this bottom-heavy look a bit off-putting, but if you just set it on a shelf and look at it on its own, the proportions aren't actually that bad. It gives off a sense of stability with the weight centered low, if that makes sense... ^^;

There's nothing particularly standout about it, but it delivers solid quality across the board — a genuinely no-fuss kit. In the MG line, the GM Quel and GM Custom came out as part of the same variation family sharing parts, so it'll be interesting to see if the HGUC line follows suit :-)

HGUC GM Quel | 2007.1 | ¥1,200

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.