Your Bag

The HG 00 Gundam from Fall 2008 is an historic High Grade that deserves special recognition for standardizing engineering that we now take for granted and expect at a bare minimum, all while packing lots of fantastic articulation in a very inexpensive package. The only sin it commits is not having the misc. clear parts molded in screen-accurate colors, requiring clear paints to tint them, but Bandai wasn't doing colored clear parts in 2008 anyway and certainly not at a ¥1,000 MSRP. The finished build strongly resembles the 00 Gundam's TV series artwork and has leggy proportions. The GN Sword II's readily switch from sword mode to rifle mode without any parts swapping. The moving parts on the GN Sword II's are styrene plastic and encounter a lot of plastic-on-plastic friction, so they can wear out if played with too much, but are just fine if left alone. Color accuracy out of the box leaves a bit to be desired. The GN Condensers across the body are plain clear plastic and need to be painted to be screen accurate. There's a lot of missing grey across the body that represents exposed bits of inner frame, and the blade antennae has no seam line or division to indicate when the yellow parts begin and the white parts end so you either have to mask it off, eyeball it, or scribe your own lines there. If you want it to be accurate to the animation, it is a project kit, but it's pretty handsome on its own out of the box. It's easy to recommend at lower price points and is commonly reissued! One of the best designs in the franchise, and a true forerunner of everything we enjoy today!

The HGBF Star Build Strike is an excellent High Grade kit sporting the same fresh Strike Gundam base mold as the previous HGBF Build Strike Full Package and the later HGCE Aile Strike. The proportions are excellent, the value of the included parts in the box is great given the MSRP, and the base mold is compatible with all Striker Weapon System backpacks all the way back to 2002. A prior review expresses some distaste for color-correcting stickers, but very few are actually needed and this kit doesn't really need any more or less painting for show accuracy than other HGs released around the same time. Looks fine with ink, looks better with some paint touch-up. Posing potential is very high, and this mold introduced a new elbow joint build in 2013 that is still used as an engineering basis for 2020's HGs. All in all, this is a great kit!

This version is Katoki's redesign of Sandrock from the beginning of the events of the TV series. When Sandrock is eventually refit for space use, that's when it would shift to Katoki's indigo-colored version that appeared in the OVA.