Kit Review

Straight build + partial paint

Size comparison with a cigarette pack

Detail shots

HG Freedom Gundam - I painted the outer sections of the wings black. It would've been nice if they at least included stickers

I painted the outer sections of the wings black.
It would've been nice if they at least included stickers for those areas... As it is, they're just left as plain blue,
making the wings look pretty bare — you really feel like you need to do at least some partial painting.

Articulation is a decent 90 degrees at the joints.

HG Freedom Gundam - The rail cannons on the sides extend and fold back just like in the show, but there are no handles includ

The rail cannons on the sides extend and fold back just like in the show,
but there are no handles included.

Wing articulation

HG Freedom Gundam - Rail cannon and plasma beam cannon simultaneous firing pose — no handles on the rail cannons, so the hand

Rail cannon and plasma beam cannon simultaneous firing pose
No handles on the rail cannons, so the hands just kind of float awkwardly in mid-air (^^;;).

HG Freedom Gundam - Wings spread, firing pose. (1/3)

Wings spread, firing pose.

Two-handed firing pose

Includes the hand-and-beam-saber-in-one parts that were popular in HGUC kits.

Beam saber action pose

Together with the HG Aile Strike Gundam.

Together with the 1/100 Freedom Gundam.

The Freedom Gundam takes over as the main protagonist's mobile suit from the Strike in SEED — and this time it's in HG scale.

The wings on its back are really the defining feature of the Freedom Gundam, but the black sections of the wings aren't color-separated, which makes the color scheme look noticeably bare. The 1/100 version at least came with black stickers for those parts, but the HG doesn't even include those — so I ended up doing some partial painting on just the wing sections in flat black.

The wing deployment, plasma beam cannon articulation, and side rail cannon extension gimmicks are all cleanly reproduced, so you can pull off Freedom's signature full-salvo firing pose pretty well. The one downside is that due to size constraints, there are no handles on the side rail cannons, so the hands end up in a bit of an awkward position when the rail cannons are deployed ^^;

The sheer presence of those wings fully spread out in deployment mode is still awesome, but since the scale is small the wings are smaller too, so it does feel a bit compact by comparison ^^ On the flip side, probably because of the smaller size, the kit has no trouble holding a standing pose even with those big wings on its back. In that respect, it's definitely got an advantage over larger kits like the 1/100.

One thing — the yellow head antenna are meant to be done with stickers, and they look pretty out of place, plus they don't stick well and keep peeling up, which is a real nuisance. I get that they're too small to color-separate, but the sticker quality is just terrible~
Anyway, between the missing black wing stickers and the overall color reproduction issues, this kit has quite a few frustrating points on that front.

One more thing — the hand+beam saber one-piece parts that were a common inclusion in HGUC kits are also included with the HG Freedom Gundam. You don't really see them in other SEED HG kits, so it seems like Freedom is getting some special treatment ^^ Even without color separation, these one-piece beam sabers have great proportions, so they're a pretty nice bonus.

Solid gimmick reproduction despite the small size, plus joint strength that handles those big wings without any trouble thanks to the compact scale — those are the biggest selling points of the HG Freedom. There are some disappointments on the color separation front, but Freedom is just a cool mobile suit no matter what grade it comes in. :-)

HG Freedom Gundam | 2003. 6 | ¥1,500

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.