In the winter of 2014, a new PG finally arrived after four long years. There was a lot of speculation about whether it would be Nu Gundam or Unicorn Gundam, but in the end it was the Unicorn Gundam — arguably the hottest Gunpla item of the past few years — that got the PG treatment. For a detailed review of each section of the kit, check out the parts review, and here I'll be going over the overall review after a full build.
1. Highly polished gimmicks
The development concept for the PG Unicorn Gundam was apparently focused on perfectly reproducing the psycho-frame gimmick. Having actually built it, my impression is that Bandai and Katoki Hajime really went all-in on this one. It feels like the Unicorn transformation gimmick by genius mecha designer Katoki Hajime has finally been fully realized. The MG was also excellent in terms of gimmick quality, but the limitations of its size and internal space earned it a reputation for shaky durability and some of the worst articulation of any Gunpla kit.
At first, just looking at the parts on the runners, the parts layout felt like a scaled-up copy of the MG, which was a bit disappointing. But once I actually started building it, I was constantly amazed at how much more refined it was compared to the MG. The transformation process from Unicorn Mode to Destroy Mode is about 99% identical to the MG, but it feels more polished and natural somehow.
Above all, what really impressed me was how solidly everything locks in place after transforming to Destroy Mode. With the MG Unicorn, there were so many transformation points that would shift and collapse every time you touched it. The areas that gave me the most trouble were the exposed knee section and the crotch area. On the PG, after exposing the psycho-frame at the knee, the locking tabs click in firmly, so no matter how much you handle or pose the knee, it never comes undone. The crotch frame exposure is also much more secure than on the MG, and overall the transformation gimmicks lock in much more tightly across the board.
The solidity after transforming to Destroy Mode is on a completely different level from the MG — it feels so sturdy and stable that as someone who has built 8 MG Unicorn/Banshee kits, it was genuinely moving.. The fact that such a complex gimmick holds together this well is truly remarkable...
2. PG-worthy articulation
The MG Unicorn's knee joints (slightly improved in the theatrical version) were honestly some of the worst articulation of any Gunpla kit ever made. The intricate transformation gimmick made it somewhat understandable, but still..
The PG Unicorn tackles this with a creative knee joint structure, delivering extreme articulation where the arms and legs fold up completely in both Unicorn Mode and Destroy Mode. The linked knee frame in Destroy Mode is particularly impressive — given how complex the knee joint transformation is, maintaining articulation seemed like it would be nearly impossible. But the layered slide-gimmick frames work together in just the right way to make the impossible possible.
When I first started assembling the knee frame, I thought "why is this so complicated?" But after finishing it and moving everything around, you can really see all the thought and effort Bandai's development team put into it — which was pretty heartwarming. ^^ Thanks to that, even in the complex and elaborate Destroy Mode, you can pull off action poses with a leg raised high.
The hip joints also got a slightly different rotation gimmick compared to before — by rotating the hip joint 90 degrees forward and lowering it, you can raise the legs even higher. And the locking pin after the hip rotation does its job well, holding everything nice and firmly. The only downside, as with many other kits, is that the front skirt limits the range of motion, making it hard to raise the thigh past 90 degrees — which is a bit of a shame.
3. Solid Joint Strength
Even if you nail the transformation gimmick and articulation, it's all for nothing if the joints are loose. The MG Unicorn was so wobbly that I was pretty worried about the PG too — but thankfully, it came out with noticeably stronger and more stable joint strength than the MG.
On the PG Unicorn, double caps are used on all the major joints — ankles, knees, forearms, waist, shoulders, you name it. Part-by-Part ReviewAs I've introduced several times in the part-by-part review, both hard ABS POM caps and soft poly caps (PC) are used together. This gives the joints a feel that's both smooth and tight, which is just fantastic. It honestly feels like the most advanced joint-locking setup I've seen in any large-scale kit so far.
The ankle joints are probably the most critical part. The MG Unicorn had a bad habit of toppling forward or backward because of the ankles, and plenty of other PGs wobble around because the ankle joints can't handle the body weight. The PG Unicorn's ankle joints use no fewer than 4 poly caps and 2 POM caps, giving them rock-solid front-to-back stability. You can stand it on the ground without any anxiety whatsoever, and that sense of stability carries through to most of the other joints too — knees, forearms, waist, all of it.
The articulated fingers are carried over from the PG Strike, but the molds seem to have been improved — there's no issue with fingers popping off, and they grip the beam rifle, beam saber, bazooka, and beam Gatling gun just fine with no problems. The shield does sag slightly, probably due to its weight, but thankfully it won't fall off unless you knock it pretty hard.
So with all three boxes checked — a sturdy and refined transformation gimmick, excellent articulation, and stable joint strength — it really feels like they caught all three rabbits at once. I genuinely felt the emotion of finally witnessing the "perfect" Unicorn Gundam come to life.
4. PG-Exclusive Bonus — Unchained Mode
The PG Unicorn gets a bonus gimmick that wasn't in the MG: the recreation of Unchained Mode. On top of the hatch openings in Destroy Mode, additional hatches can be opened across various parts from head to toe, exposing the psycho-frame over an even wider area.
Personally, I've always dreamed of a full hatch-open on a big-scale kit, and the PG Unicorn's Unchained Mode feels like that dream coming true. You can check out the details in the review photos, but what's even more impressive is that despite so many hatches opening up, they all hold their positions really well.
The only slightly iffy part is the slide-open section at the tips of the shoulders — the hold there feels a little ambiguous. Everything else, once opened, stays put pretty reliably. Either way, if I had to sum up the look of Unchained Mode with all those dozens of hatches open in one line, it'd be this:
Big and beautiful.
5. PG-Level Detail? Not So Much
The biggest disappointment while building the PG Unicorn was the detail. I can totally understand that they poured everything into nailing the gimmicks — the results speak for themselves — but even so, having detail that's basically no different from the MG is honestly a little disappointing.
A PG is supposed to take advantage of its large scale to recreate all kinds of complex gimmicks — that's a given. But on top of that, it's always been a lineup where part of the fun is admiring the intricate mechanical detail packed into all that extra space.
But the PG Unicorn feels almost too much like a straight-up enlarged copy of the MG, with all that extra space going completely to waste — to the point where it actually feels kind of bare. The weapons are especially bad. Looking at the shield, I genuinely wonder why they had to leave such a huge surface so empty and plain. -_-;;;
The frame at least has noticeably more internal gimmicks than the MG, so it does feel slightly more intricate there. But the exterior? Well... just looking at photos, it's honestly hard to tell whether you're looking at a PG or an MG — that's how little differentiation there is.
Of course, in person the sheer bulk is absolutely massive and it commands a completely different presence from the MG — but from photos alone, I doubt most people could easily tell them apart. I get it to some extent, but the question of whether the surface detail really had to be kept this close to MG level still lingers.
6. Gripes
I already covered the detail issue in section 5, but here are some other things that left me wanting more.
Despite the double-cap joint system used throughout, there are blind spots in the joint strength— they do exist. -_-
The shoulder joints are the prime example. Standing still, there's no problem — but once you put a weapon in its hands, they start to struggle. Trying to get a pose where the beam rifle is raised straight out front is really difficult. The shoulder joint space is tighter than other areas because of the transformation gimmick, so it just can't hold on well enough. Not just the beam rifle — even the beam Gatling + shield combo makes a front-firing pose look basically impossible. -_-
In short, you raise the arm with a weapon and it just slowly slides right back down. Looking at the cramped, complex shoulder joint structure, you can understand why — but it's still hard to ignore how weak the shoulders feel compared to how solid everything else is. The left arm that holds the shield has the same problem; the shield's weight makes it tough to raise or hold the arm up high.
The shoulders basically just want to stay at attention.
The ankle joints, while very solid front-to-back, feel a little loose side-to-side. It's not really a problem when the kit is just standing there, but if you handle it directly, the difference in feel between the front-back and side-to-side movement is noticeable and a bit off-putting. The side-to-side range of motion on the ankles is also a bit limited, so even with good hip and knee articulation, ground poses are somewhat restricted due to ground clearance issues — which is also a minor gripe.
You can use the included dedicated stand for aerial poses, but the stand isn't very tall, so you can't really lift it up high. As a result, when you try to go for really dynamic poses, the ground tends to get in the way.
The stand does connect solidly to the back of the upper body, but the real problem when posing it in the air is the waist joint. Once the body is airborne, the lower half is so heavy that the waist tends to just pull straight out and drop down. T_T
Then again, if the waist can't hold up even when lifted high, there probably wasn't much point in making the stand taller in the first place.
7. Overall Verdict
Whatever else you might say, the PG Unicorn is a kit with a very clear concept. It cleanly gave up on detail and went all-in on gimmick perfection. In that regard, I'd say the gimmicks alone are the best of any kit ever made. The joints move smoothly yet hold firmly, and the carefully designed multi-layered frame strikes a great balance between transformation gimmick and articulation — making this a kit that delivers a truly outstanding feel in hand. The stability in Destroy Mode in particular is worlds apart from the MG.
That said, the sparse detail is going to be divisive, so if you're the type who thinks "a PG has to have precise, intricate detail!" this might be a disappointing kit for you. And while there are a few joints that feel about 2% short of perfect, the remaining 98% — the transformation gimmicks and joints — are impressively solid and satisfying, which makes those shortcomings pretty forgivable.
The PG Unicorn's secret weapon is really the LED lighting unit, which was sold separately for ¥12,000 and is covered in a separate review — but separate from that, the fact that the PG Unicorn was designed from the ground up with the LED unit in mind is another impressive point. It's already packed with gimmicks to achieve perfect articulation and transformation, but on top of that, holes and spaces for routing the LED unit throughout the entire body are thoughtfully built in — which is yet another thing that leaves you amazed.
To sum it up, the PG Unicorn feels like the definitive version of Unicorn Gundamthat this reviewer always dreamed of. It seems like they set out to address every frustration with the MG — the gimmicks, stability, articulation, joint strength — all of it, in one go with the PG. And I'd say the results of that effort are quite successful.
When this kit launched in December 2014, it caused quite a stir due to an unprecedented stock shortage. It'll sort itself out with time, but it just goes to show how much anticipation and popularity this kit had riding on it. (I had a hard time getting my hands on one too. -_-;;)
Either way, it was great to see a new PG release when the line seemed like it might die out due to a lack of new subjects and ballooning development costs — and even more so because they managed to pull off the Unicorn Gundam, long considered the ultimate gimmick kit, at such a high level of quality. A very welcome PG Unicorn indeed. :-)
PG Unicorn Gundam | 2014.12 | ¥22,000
AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.
