So today we’re doing something a little different. I just got my RG Unicorn in the mail, and I thought since the kit is brand-spankin’ new and there aren’t all that many reviews of it out there yet, I’d snap it together and write this. It’s not every day I get to actually write about something that hasn’t already been out for half a decade, ahem.

I was lucky enough to snag one of the last of these “Premium Boxes”. I’m really not sure why I cared enough to buy both this and the regular version. Other than the artwork on the front, the only difference is this:

The box contents are exactly the same. Given my well-documented soft spot for Unicorn mode, I kind of wanted the premium version, but it’s really not that big of a deal if you missed it, unless you’re the completist collector type, in which case, have fun with the scalpers on eBay.

Here’s what’s in the box. It’s a surprisingly manageable number of sprues, but as you can see, there’s a ton of parts per sprue. For some reason, four of the sprues have a number 1 next to their letter, but there’s no number 2. I wonder if this means we’ll get 2s of these sprues with future variants like the Banshee that’s inevitably coming (and it better not be a frickin’ P-Bandai release, either.)

Here’s a look at the B sprue, which I’m guessing everyone has seen by now. It really does consist of clear red and opaque grey plastic, although, as you can see in the previous picture, most of the psychoframe parts are on their own sprue.

Also this.

Yep, nearly everything in the instructions is translated to English. I’m not 100% sure, but I think Bandai started this with the High Resolution Barbatos, and apparently it’s now happening with the RGs as well. The translations are good, and while I never felt like I needed them, they’re nice to have as they do further clarify certain things, and I’d always wondered what exactly all that text said. It’s also cool to see Bandai finally acknowledging that they’re actually selling to an international market.

Unsurprisingly, the build starts with the feet and then you work your way up. The feet are only marginally more complex than what you’d expect – there’s your inner frame part from the B sprue plus a bunch of armor, and that’s it. For some reason, the instructions don’t have you attach the two armor plates on the side that rotate for the transformation yet. This is kind of a running theme with this build – everything works fine, but the order you do it in is sometimes a bit odd. Case in point:

The next thing you build after the feet is one leg, or most of it anyway, and then you build the ankle to go with it.

At this point it really kind of struck me how similar to the MG so much of this kit is. Look at the assembly for that floating armor piece that goes on top of the foot here – it’s almost exactly the same.

Next you put it all together and start on the second leg. Here’s a shot of the completed leg with all the parts for the other one next to it, to give you an idea of just how complex this thing is.

If you’ve built a Unicorn before, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the legs are by far the most involved part of this kit. I didn’t clock myself, but I think it took me close to an hour to get one leg assembled, and they do literally everything the legs on the MG do, except, well… better.

Note the knee bend of nearly 180 degrees, for example. And speaking of the knees, the way the transformation in this version works is that there’s a mechanism that causes that infamous psychoframe piece to move outward when you pull the flap with the thruster away from the calf. It’s still a bit difficult to do and the knee armor still doesn’t properly attach to it (plus it has a tendency to pop off), but it’s infinitely better than the screaming nightmare of frustration that is the MG’s legs. All that, and they bend farther as well.

Note also the panel lines on the sides of the lower legs mimicking the opening panels for unchained mode on the PG version.

Obviously the waist section is next. Look at all these parts. Since all of the skirts transform individually, you’ll be working on this for a while.

Perhaps my favorite part about this section is the way the front skirts transform. Even on the PG Unicorn these are a problem; the moving panel is on a hinge and keeps popping off. The way it’s done here, it’s nearly impossible for this panel to detach itself. You do have to pry at it a bit to get it out, but it never comes off.

The side skirts, conversely, are a bit of a problem. They’re really tight, and I’ve had them pop off when I tried to transform them.

Far more importantly, though, I finally managed to take a legs and skirts picture where the top isn’t out of focus. Are unicorns supposed to be good luck or something?

Uh, moving along, we’ve got the torso, and here’s where I kind of figured out how this kit is different from previous RGs and what makes it work.

It’s actually more obvious in the legs, but here’s where I noticed it – the Unicorn’s inner frame isn’t so much plugged together out of the parts on the B sprue as a sizeable portion of it is actually built during assembly. They did something similar previously with the Sinanju, but of course on that kit it was a way to recycle the Mk-II frame. Here it’s a necessary part of the design because so many things have to move for the transformation. You’ll also notice the contents of the box are quite heavy when you first pick them up – there’s several sprues of ABS plastic here. Hopefully that means we’ll see the use of that material more frequently again in the future.

Anyway, as you can see, you put together some of the torso first, then you attach the inner frame of the arms, and then the rest of the torso basically in modules. When it’s all done, it transforms with an ease that’s almost irritating if you’ve built previous versions of the Unicorn. The shoulder vulcans pop up like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and you can’t help but wonder why this was ever a problem on other kits.

The arm assembly is similarly modular. First you build the wrist sections and the beam tonfa holders separately. I’m very happy to report that the parts with those triangular flaps on the sides of the beam tonfa holders stay in place very securely. Owners of the MG kit know why I’m pointing this out.

Next you attach a bunch of small armor parts here and there and then the two larger assemblies shown above. And you’re done.

The transformation of the arms isn’t particularly problematic on the MG and PG Unicorns either, but Bandai’s designers still managed to add a small twist here.

The part at the bottom of the beam tonfa actually functions as a locking mechanism that you fold out, then transform everything, then snap back in place. This way, the arms don’t collapse into Unicorn mode every time you pose them. Works beautifully.

Speaking of the arms and everything that’s great about them, here’s a shot of all the hands you get with this kit.

Open, closed and weapon holding for the left and right, all fixed pose. If you’re a fan of the RG articulated hands, you’re probably not happy about this, but me, I think this is what should come with every damn Gunpla kit. The articulated hands are ugly, and they don’t frickin’ work. I really, really hope this is a sign of things to come.

Anyway, up next is the shoulder armor. If you’re like me, you might have noticed in pictures of this kit that the shoulders look a bit too bulky, especially in Unicorn mode. That’s because all of this crap is in there.

Not only is it a lot of parts, it’s also really difficult and fiddly to put together. This was actually the only part of the build that gave me trouble. The tradeoff, though, is yet another section that transforms extremely well. You just open up the top, rotate the vent on the side and move the top back down. Done.

And what does that get us? Yep, another headless Hessian.

The head isn’t as complicated as you’d think. Clearly they decided it just wasn’t going to be possible to have it “transform” so much as be disassembled and put back together, which is pretty much how the transformation works.

The kit comes with foil stickers for both sets of eyes and the cameras. As you can see, the cameras are molded in clear green, so there really wasn’t any need for those stickers, but I did use the one for the eye slit in Unicorn mode to make it pop more. Plus obviously the one for Destroy mode.

Note also that the transforming horn works quite well in this version. You usually have to wiggle the halves around a bit to get them in place, but there’s hardly any visible gap. Hard to say if that’ll still work with the foil stickers for the gold side on there – I didn’t use them here as I’ll probably paint these parts. I do think I’ll be using the transforming horn, though. It works fine. Which is, of course, pretty amazing.

No proper slits on the face mask in Destroy mode, though. That’s a pretty disappointing omission.

And here’s your Beast of Possibility sans backpack. You see that gap on the horn? Yeah, me neither.

From what I remember, the backpack is basically the same as on the MG. The big difference being that you can actually transform it without the beam saber handles popping off. It should be pretty obvious from these pictures that that comes at a cost, though – the proportions are very different as the handles and the parts they’re mounted on are much, much bigger compared to the backpack than on the larger scale versions of the suit.

And here we are, about to heave the customary “now for the accessories” sigh.

Here’s what you get, aside from the aforementioned hand options. No surprises, of course – there’s the shield, the magnum, the bazooka and a (very strong) action base adapter. I’m also convinced at this point that the whole thing where the Unicorns almost all come with four sabers and only two effect parts is some sort of in-joke at Bandai because whaddayaknow, they did it again. Also, no spare ammo clips for the weapons, though you can mount the ones they do come with on the rear skirts.

The weapons, as you can see, are basically scaled-down versions of their MG counterparts. There are very few alterations, like the fact that the ammo clip for the magnum isn’t made up of individual shells, but for the most part, they’re the same.

What really frustrates me about this is the fact that for some reason, all these parts come on the same sprue and are molded in the same color. Color separation is a big part of what sets the RG line apart from others, but for some reason, they decided to make these weapons just solid lumps of grey even though they’re made up of enough parts to allow for something more interesting.

Sure, you can paint all that, but this is an RG kit, it’s not supposed to need painting.

The shield is basically the same as the MG shield. Lots of parts underneath. I’m not a big fan of the way it attaches to the arm, though, it ends up being too far away from it. You also can’t attach it to the back for some unfathomable reason.

Well, and that’s it. I’m not doing a full-blown photoshoot just yet because I still need to sticker this kit and I’m thinking I’ll make an exception and actually panel line it as well – I never do this with RGs because I think they look cluttered as it is, but I think this one could use it. Anyway, as you can see, the kit can actually do a full split and it can almost pull off the Seed pose, though the feet won’t quite move enough.

So does this kit live up to the hype? For the most part. When it was first announced, everyone basically expected it to be the ultimate RealGrenade, and instead it’s now the sturdiest, most poseable and most easily transformable kit of the Unicorn in existence. And it’s a really fun build too, at least if you like ’em complex – it took me something like 7-8 hours to put it together, but just because there’s so many parts. Except for the shoulder armor, it’s not difficult or frustrating at all, just time consuming.

But is it perfect? No. Sorry. No, it’s not. First of all, it still has parts that pop off when you transform it, especially around the knees. Secondly, while poseability is certainly fine, a lot the joints are too tight for their own good. I’m terrified I’ll break something everytime I move the arms, and it makes posing the kit kind of a chore.

And thirdly, I really think the transformation comes at something of a cost to the kit’s appearance. The proportions are clearly off because they had to cram so much into such a small-scale kit – everything feels too bulky, especially the shoulders and the lower halves of the arms. This is especially odd because the legs are actually more or less accurate, and you’d think that would be the hardest part to get right.

The bottom line is, though, that this certainly is a step up in engineering for Gunpla, and I’m as amazed as anyone that Bandai pulled it off. This really wasn’t supposed to work. So if you’re a fan of the Unicorn Gundam, I’m afraid I have to tell you you’ll need this one as well, along with what I have to assume is several others that you already have. It’s a really special kit, and you kind of have to build it to believe it.