Kit Review

Straight build + Stickers

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Detail shots

HG Gundam Vual - Left armor removed and frame shots. (1/3)

Left armor removed and frame shots.

A variety of weapons are included.

The inside of the shoulder shield has its color scheme nicely reproduced with stickers.

You can detach the backpack, rotate it 90 degrees, and plug it back in to set it upright at 90 degrees.

The mining hammer can be stored on the side skirt using a separate joint part.

Some parts from the HG Gundam Astaroth Origin are left over as leftover parts.

Articulation is pretty average.

HG Gundam Vual - Mining hammer action (1/3)

Mining hammer action

HG Gundam Vual - Aerial pose. The mining hammer is so big and heavy that it's hard to hold a pose.. (1/3)

Aerial pose.
The mining hammer is so big and heavy that it's hard to hold a pose..

Glaive action

Together with HG Gundam Bael.

Gundam Vual has been released as the 37th kit in the Iron-Blooded Orphans HG lineup. The name Vual, much like Gundam Bael, refers to the 47th-ranked demon in the hierarchy of Solomon's demons — quite a ways down compared to Bael at number one ^^; Also, the Japanese name is written as "Ubar," which causes some confusion over pronunciation, though Bandai Korea is officially selling it under the name "Vual."

Since Vual is originally a demon that takes the form of a black camel, this mobile suit carries a similarly heavy, dark color scheme. It uses Gundam Frame No. 4 as its base, and a good number of parts are recycled from the HG Gundam Astaroth Origin. Only about 40% of the parts are new, but the color scheme is so different that it somehow ends up looking like a completely new machine. The asymmetrical arms and legs in particular give it a personality all its own.

Weapons include a massive mining hammer and a glaive, along with a round shield and a spiked shoulder shield, making for a fairly generous weapons loadout. The mining hammer can be stored on the side skirt using a separate joint part, and there's also a special gimmick where the backpack can be rotated upright 90 degrees. Articulation feels slightly below other Iron-Blooded Orphans HG kits, but the large weapons do help pull off some pretty imposing poses.

The main issue with this kit is that the overall joint holding strength is poor, making it really hard to get and keep poses locked in — noticeably worse than other HG kits. The shoulders struggle to hold up the heavy weapons, the waist pops out easily, and the hip joints feel unstable too. It uses the same polycaps as other kits, so I'm not sure why posing feels this frustrating, but either way, this was one of those rare kits where the handling experience was genuinely bad.

Bottom line — unless you're a big fan of Gundam Vual from the source material, this isn't a kit I'd really recommend. It leaves a bit of a bad taste, feeling like Bandai has fallen into a rut of lazily padding out their lineup by recycling frames with minimal effort. :-)

HG Gundam Vual | 2017.4 | ¥1,400

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.