Kit Review

Straight build + Stickers

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Detail shots

Outer armor removed

Full-body frame shot.

HG Gundam Kimaris - Frame detail shots. The design is almost identical to Barbatos. (1/4)

HG Gundam Kimaris - Frame detail shots. The design is almost identical to Barbatos. (2/4)

Frame detail shots.
The design is almost identical to Barbatos.

The frame articulation is excellent overall.

HG Gundam Kimaris - "Gungnir," as the massive weapon is called, uses a peg on the handle that slots into the back-o

"Gungnir," as the massive weapon is called, uses a peg on the handle that slots into the back-of-hand parts,
giving it a surprisingly solid grip.

The combat knife can be folded in half and stored in the rear skirt.

The raised bumps on top of each shoulder can be pulled upward.

Inside, there's a shuriken-type weapon called the Slash Disc hidden away.

The thick leg armor opens front and back to expose the verniers.

Articulation is decent enough.

That slender waist I still can't quite get used to.

On the plus side, the forward/backward range of motion at the waist is pretty wide.

The ankle joints also bend quite a bit sideways, which does help a little when posing on flat ground.

HG Gundam Kimaris - Gungnir action (1/3)

Gungnir action

High-speed movement

HG Gundam Kimaris - Gungnir aerial action (1/3)

Gungnir aerial action

Combat knife action

HG Gundam Kimaris - Together with HG Gundam Barbatos. They share a large portion of the frame, but the overall look is comple

Together with HG Gundam Barbatos.
They share a large portion of the frame, but the overall look is completely different.

HG Gundam Kimaris - Together with HG Gundam Gusion. They both carry the Gundam name, but just looking at their appearances, t

Together with HG Gundam Gusion.
They both carry the Gundam name, but just looking at their appearances, the gap in status feels pretty extreme ;;

Gundam Kimaris, the third Gundam to appear in Iron-Blooded Orphans, has been released as an HG kit. It carries the Gundam name, but like Gusion, there's nothing in its appearance that screams "Gundam." Instead, the internal frame is built in an almost identical form to Gundam Barbatos.

If you look closely at the runners, there's a new shared frame runner labeled "IB0 Gundam Frame 2." And when you actually compare the frame parts in detail, they're about 90% identical in design to the HG Barbatos. So it's a bit puzzling why they didn't just reuse the HG Barbatos frame runner — which was already labeled "IB0 Gundam Frame 1" hinting at future reuse — and instead went ahead and made another new shared runner with a nearly identical layout. My guess is they're planning to reuse both slightly different versions of the shared frame runner across various upcoming kits. Hmm.

As you'd expect from sharing Barbatos's frame design, a full-body frame is included just like with HG Barbatos. The front of the legs, however, is shaped more like regular armor rather than an exposed frame. But since a large leg armor piece goes over that anyway, you could still call it an armor-shaped frame in the end.

The thick leg armor opens front and back to expose the verniers inside, letting you recreate a more dramatic high-speed aerial movement pose. On top of that, the weapon mounts on the shoulders open upward so you can pull out the Slash Discs stored inside, and the combat knife — which folds in half for use — can be stowed in the rear skirt.

Gundam Kimaris comes with a lance-type weapon called "Gungnir." It has good color separation and a nice sense of depth, making it a pretty sharp-looking weapon. Now, a long, heavy weapon like this usually raises concerns about grip strength — but the peg on the handle slots into the inside of the back-of-hand parts, giving it a rock-solid hold. That said, while the connection to the hand is great, the weapon is so heavy that the wrist joint can't hold up under the weight, which makes pulling off really dynamic poses a bit trickier than you'd hope. (For reference, "Gungnir" is the name of the spear wielded by Odin in Norse mythology.)

The overall build quality is clean, the articulation is decent, and the posing isn't bad either — but the shoulder armor attachment mechanism is a bit odd and tends to pop off easily. And once it does come off, it doesn't snap back on smoothly in one go, and getting the angle right is a pain too, so that's a bit of a frustrating point.

It's not a bad kit by any means, but it doesn't have that sharp, snappy feel that some of the standout earlier releases had. It's more of a smooth, no-frills kind of kit. The look is noble and aristocratic — like a silver spoon Gundam, unlike the dirt-poor vibe of Gundam Gusion — but it feels like the kind of kit whose sales will rise or fall depending on how much screen time it gets in the show. :-)

HG Gundam Kimaris | 2016.1 | ¥1,200

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.