So here’s the deal with me and the RG Mk-II, okay. I fucking love this kit. I literally jumped online to order the Titans version within an hour of finishing the A.E.U.G. because I had so much fun that I wanted to do it again. And aside from it being an extremely fun build, the end result not only looks fantastic, but it’s also really sturdy and ridiculously poseable. It’s just an all-around near perfect kit. Definitely my favorite RG that I’ve built and also among my favorite Gunpla kits in general.

The only thing I’m not crazy about is the stickers, but more on that later. Let’s do that thing where we discuss the build first.

The number of parts is about what you’d expect – not as crazy complex as the Sinanju, but slightly more than the RX 78-2, though that’s mostly because of the accessories.

One peculiarity of this kit is the cloth tubing for the legs and the backpack. There’s a length of hose made out of cloth that’s kind of like a shoelace, which… isn’t as stupid as it sounds in theory. Along with it you get some coated wire that goes inside of the cloth hose and helps it hold its shape.

The instructions tell you how much of the hose and wire to cut off for the various sections where it’s used, though you don’t have to be super fussy about this – I ended up with well over a centimeter left of both, so my advice would be err on the side of cutting it a little longer rather than shorter because if it’s too short it can pop out and you have enough to add half a millimeter here or there.

I’m not crazy about this – it looks okay, but I prefer coil springs for this sort of thing, and the cloth hose tends to get frayed really quickly if it takes you more than one attempt to get it where it’s supposed to go. All of that ended up hidden away inside the parts, but it was kind of annoying and one of the few parts of the build that are a bit fiddly.

Unlike the other RGs that I’m aware of, you then build the entire inner frame first. This is done with the usual limbs that come pre-molded on the B sprue plus regular grey plastic parts, as seen above for the legs.

For some reason, the sphere for the panoramic cockpit is red on this one. It’s a bit difficult to tell what you’re looking at here, but there’s a fully detailed cockpit seat in there, as with all the RG kits, and also as with all of them, there’s no seated pilot figure, but only a standing one. This will never not be odd to me.

When the inner frame’s all built up it’s very solid and ridiculously poseable, of course. I snapped the picture of it doing its best Jean-Claude Van Damme impression thinking this probably wouldn’t be possible anymore when the armor’s on, but surprisingly enough, it actually still works with the completed kit.

One thing about the inner frame that I just couldn’t stop giggling about is how the chest looks like a face with a shocked expression. Here’s a little draw-over to show you what I mean. You can now never un-see this. You’re welcome.

I know, I’m a monster. Anyway, after you finish Shockeyface the Anorexic Cephalopod, you just slap the armor on it from the bottom up, starting with the feet and legs. As you’d expect, the leg armor doesn’t restrict movement at all and the knees actually bend about 180 degrees. I’m starting to think I can stop taking this picture of every RG I build.

Up next is the waist, which is quite an involved build, as you can see. The side skirts consist of two pieces each and are actually already assembled here because I decided that I wanted to show just how many parts there are for the skirts after I’d already snapped those together. Each individual skirt has a dark grey inner part, so they look really nice, and more importantly, the way they attach to the inner frame makes it almost impossible for them to randomly pop off while you’re posing the legs.

The skirts go on like so. Actually there are two parts missing for those grills on the front here, one of several dumb mistakes I made during this build that are now documented on the internets for all eternity. Shockeyface was clearly shocked by what I’d done and I didn’t even realize why he was flailing his arms around when I took this picture.

Unsurprisingly, what follows the skirts is the chest. Nothing too unusual going on here. There’s an opening mechanism for the cockpit, of course, and mobility stays pretty good even with the armor on.

Up next are the shoulders and the arms, all of which don’t really consist of more parts than absolutely necessary, and then you’ve got yourself another Headless Hessian. I do love that bulky shoulder armor.

I actually took the following picture of the head because it’s just a regular part of my build documentation and because I wanted to show that there’s no sticker for the forehead camera. Since the clear piece sits inside a white shell, it actually pops very nicely without a sticker or any painting.

What you’ll notice, though, is that the head halves don’t seem to fit together very well. That unsightly gap between the camera and the v-fin isn’t supposed to be there. I later pried the head apart again to see if there was a nub getting in the way, but it turned out that I had, ahem, put the armor on the cameras on backwards. And I’m totally showing you this because I like to embarrass mys… I mean, so you won’t make the same mistake. Yeah, that’s it.

Finally, we have the backpack. More shoelace tubing here, as you can see, and those thrusters are the one thing on this kit that just. Will. Not. Stay. Attached. They’re mounted on tiny little balljoints, and the moment you put them on you can tell from the complete absence of resistance or a clicking noise that the only thing holding them in place is your belief in miracles.

I should probably just glue these thrusters on – there’s really no need for them to be “poseable” anyway.

Another minor issue I have with the backpack is that it looks ugly without the beam sabers on, like they forgot to add detail to those areas. I do like that there’s a little slot there for the peg, though, so you can put the actual beam sabers on there that also fit into the hands and not dummies like on the RX 78-2. I took a second picture with the beam sabers and some other accessories to show how much better it looks with the sabers in there.

Now before I move on to the accessories and the posing pictures, a word about the stickers. If you’re like me and you like to use a lot of stickers on your RGs, you’ll want to do this during assembly and not when the kit’s finished. There are a lot of sections to it that are difficult to take apart after the fact, and holding the entire kit while you’re trying to get stickers on it that are barely a square millimeter in size is a massive pain. And there’s a lot of small stickers. Obnoxiously small ones. Like I said above, that’s my only real serious complaint with this kit.

The RX 78-2 also has a lot of stickers, but they’re all shaped to very clearly fit on certain areas of the kit, so they’re not difficult at all to apply. In fact, I think I was talking on Skype the entire time I was slapping the decals on that one – that should tell you how easy it was.

With the Mk-II, though, I almost went insane. Some of these things seriously feel like they’re the size of a slightly oversized grain of sand. And the foil stickers damage way too easily, to boot. It’s just puzzling. They clearly had this dialed in with the first kit in the line, but it’s like then they forgot what works and what doesn’t – the Sinanju, you might remember, has questionable stickers as well.

There’s some really nice ones here too that enhance the shapes and the detail, and you’ll notice I actually used a lot of the foil stickers for once, but there’s also like 50 tiny ones that you’ll just want to murder someone for. Unless, you know, you’re not like me and you’re fine with just not putting them on.

Anyway, enough about that, let’s talk accessories. Here’s what you get.

There’s the collapsible shield, the vulcan pod for the head, the beam rifle with four ammo clips (and a camera that folds down and never stays up), the bazooka, also with a spare ammo clip, two beam sabers with effect parts, two closed fists, two articulated hands, a trigger finger hand for the rifle and a fixed-pose open hand. Plus the customary standing pilot figure and an action base adapter that works really, really well.

The spare ammo fits on the side skirts and the shield, and the bazooka attaches to the rear armor, making this a Gundam that can actually carry all of its accessories, which I always appreciate. I’d also like to stress the fact that the hand options are done right here. I know I’ve probably said this too many times at this point, but I don’t like the articulated hands, and it’s really nice to have these fixed-pose ones included. Although the closed fists still look weird.

Where this kit really shines for me, though, is when it comes to posing, whether it’s on its own two feet or on an action base. It actually stands up really well, but as you can see, I had way too much fun with the action base, ahem. And “fun” is really the operative word when it comes to this kit’s poseability. The only two minor issues I had were the aforementioned thrusters and the fact that, as usual, the articulated hands don’t hold the sabers particularly well. Other than that, you can just yank this thing’s limbs around and nothing ever falls off. Taking these pics was an absolute joy.

And most importantly, unlike the RG Freedom, which actually is a suit from Gundam SEED, the Mk-II can do the SEED pose and look good doin’ it. This shit matters, folks.

I know I’m just repeating what people have been saying for five years, but of course this kit is highly recommended. It’s fun to build, it looks great, and it just… works. If you can deal with the fussy decal sheet and the fact that maybe the thrusters could be more firmly attached, you’ve got yourself a piece of Gunpla perfection here.

This kit also accomplished what the RG RX 78-2 did for me in that it’s made me completely fall in love with the Mk-II Gundam. As I’m writing this, I’ve already bought and built the HG Revive version, and I have the MG and the PG versions on the way. In fact, I think the Mk-II may be my favorite Gundam now, and I’m very much afraid you’ll have to endure me gushing about it again when I post reviews of those other 3 kits. Probably no review of the Titans version, though, that’d really be kind of silly.