Upcoming April madness

HELLO! We are back!

In today’s 159th edition of Let’s Talk Gunpla segment, we will finally talk about all the awesome retail announcements that were FINALLY made recently! Some of the retail announcements are on things that we’ve seen through the recent reveal. But some of the announcements are kits that we are just seeing for the first time today!

But since there are alot of kits here for us to talk bout, we shall again do the usual. This means we will split the retail announcement segment into two parts, the one that we are doing this week we shall cover 3 from the retail announcements that we are most excited for and the rest we shall cover them on the upcoming Let’s Talk Gunpla segment next week!

So without further ado let us get into it, shall we?

HG 1/144 Gundam-GP-Rasetuten (HGBD: R)

Release Date: 2020/04

Estimated price: JPY 2,380* (MYR RM 88.86* / USD $ 21.72* / EUR € 19.58*)

*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation

Out of all the kits from the original Gundam Build Divers series that haven’t seen the light of day, this was the one from our observation is the one that fans of the series have been waiting quite a while for. We are sure that fans of this would be jumping with joy to finally see their fav MS finally seeing the light of day as a proper Gunpla release.

However, it does seem to us that Bandai is just content with just giving the fans the Gundam-GP-Rasetsu just that. It as well seems to us that they are as well planning to give the fans not just the GP-Rasetsu but as well the upgraded version, the HGBD: R Gundam-GP-Rasetuten and some more airtime in the 2nd season of the Gundam Build Divers: ReRise 2nd season.

This comes as a surprise for us to see this apparently makes a return in the 2nd season for the Gundam Build Diver: ReRise series. Though to be really frank, we are even more surprised to see a Gundam Build series as a whole gets a second season. This is something that we do admit is making us quite curious to see what is this supposedly ‘for kids’ series is all about, since there is alot of chatter online about its very surprising, unexpected ending.

But what we here find to be quite surprising here as a Gunpla Builder, is on how much we all here like the design of this. Yes, eventhough we do like how it looked, we aren’t that interested in it. But after seeing the promotional materials…well we do admit that we are slowly starting to be a fan of this re-design.

Because eventhough the HGBD: R GP-Rasetuten inherits many of the same traits that was seen on the HGUC GP-02 kit (the kit that the design of the GP-Rasetuten is based on), however from our close observation here, there are of alot of changes that was made here that does turn this into a worthwhile purchase.

The changes that was made to the GP02 to convert it into the GP-Rasetuten version, can be seen on the head unit, backpack unit, some sections of the leg unit and its red color scheme. Admittedly most of the changes made here do look quite impressive, however, from the looks of it doesn’t seem to us that they did anything major to the joints that was inherited from its predecessor, which does indicate to us that Bandai may not yet have any plans to do an HG Ver.2.0 revision for this line up just yet.

Regardless even with that said there is something that we are quite bothered with some elements of the HGBD: R GP-Rasetuten’s handheld weapons. No we are not talking about the badass sword…but this.

“The bazooka revolver”

So you might be wondering, what’s wrong with the Bazooka revolver of the HGBD: R GP-Rasetuten? Well, the problem lies when we saw that and wondered why the barrel of the gun is covered? Seeing it like that does kill our interest in wanting to field those guns and make the kit stick to the badass swords instead if we ever get this kit in the coming months. Which is something of a first for us here, since we all are here mostly prefer to pose our kits mostly in the guns only configurations.

Obviously, we are quite excited about this one, however, this is not the only one kit in the 1144 scale that we are excited about, because we are as well are looking forward to this…

HG 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam (Gundam the Origins Ver.) (HG Gundam the Origins)

Release Date: 2020/04

Estimated price: JPY 1,955* (MYR RM 72.99* / USD $ 17.84* / EUR € 16.08*)

*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation

After the reveal made on this bad boy, we all here were really looking forward to seeing and as well learning more of this bad boy right here. We thought that Bandai would take a while to release the information for this since they might not want to put all the awesomeness in one basket. But since we are going to be getting it in April, it does make sense that we are seeing the release announcement for the HG Gramps Origins to be made now.

So you might be wondering, what do we all think of the kit now after learning more of what we will be getting here with this HG Origins kit?

Well, after seeing more and as well as learning more about it, we do admit that we are now getting even more excited to get this HG Origins Gramps. Why? Well from the looks of it, Bandai really went all out for this one. Yes, admittedly it might not inherit many of the awesome genes from the Grandpa G40, however, we can see that Bandai compensate it by making this one of the best looking Grandpa HG variants that we have seen to date! They really went all out on the details, which made the kit looked like it was supposed to be made into an RG.

What’s more, it is as well looked quite clear to us here as well that Bandai as well gave the HG Origins Gramps alot of customizable parts which does enable you guys to turn it into different variants of the same HG Origins Gramps. But not content with just giving us that it does as well look like Bandai was as well given it some very interesting gimmicks on the feet unit that we are really interested in seeing how this would translate into the real world.

This is really one of the most exciting announcements that we’ve seen….well that is up until we all took a closer look at the next one here…

RG 1/144 ZGMF-X56S/α Force Impulse Gundam (RG)

Release Date: 2020/04

Estimated price: JPY 2,550* (MYR RM 95.21* / USD $ 23.28* / EUR € 20.98*)

*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation

Yes, the RG Force Impulse. The one that still manages to retain all of our attention still even after we saw the reveal and discussed it last week.

However, after learning more about it, we do admit that we are now all squarely have sat our foot well into the hype train now. Because from the looks of it, they are as well will be getting that ‘modern RG treatment’ here. So yes we are definitely will be getting another RG kit that would be as detailed or better when compared to its MG counterpart.

Although we do admit that the insane detail of the kit is not the only thing that we are excited for when talking about the RG Force impulse. Because from what we can see here, RG Force impulse is as well look to retain many of the same gimmicks that we have seen with other 1/144 Force Impulse iterations. Where the RG Force Impulse as well could detach itself and transform itself into its iconic 3 separate flying modules. Although it is quite interesting to see this RG Force Impulse feature being remade into the RG form, however, it is still quite unclear to us how all of this would translate into the real world. Which we hope we would be able to learn more of when the kit is released into the wild in this coming April.

However, there is one thing that we feel that has been made quite clear to us, ever since we all here saw the reveal and the official announcement of this kit. That this is without a doubt is going to be a looker. One that would definitely win the hearts of all builders, regardless if you are a fan of the series or not.

You might be wondering why we could come into that crazy conclusion? Well, that is because even though we here might have different opinions on the anime and some elements of the MS Designs in general, but we all here find ourselves in agreement on the badass look of the RG Impulse. It even manages to convert some of us here into the idea of getting this as their first SEED Destiny kit.

Now, all it is left for us to do is wait for the kit and its inevitable P-Bandai variants announcements to come out as well.

Because of course, we would get the other Impulse variants as P-Bandai.

With that concludes today’s 159th edition of our Let’s Talk Gunpla segment! What do you think of all of these Retail release announcements? Are you looking forward to all of these Retail releases? A damn good start of the year for us gunpla builders, it does seem like we would have alot of really badass kits coming our way in these couple of months!

We just hope that financially we would be able to survive all these continuous onslaughts to our wallets through this hard gunpla release time and hopefully we would be able to get all these awesome 2020 gunplas!

Anyways, we will be back again with more Let’s Talk Gunpla segment next week on Wednesday and Friday! Kimi as well will be back again this Monday with a new Unboxing or a Review or a WIP blog post. So do look forward to that!

Please do leave a like and comment if you enjoy this post from us here in the blog or you can as well do so through our R/ Gundam Subreddit posts and thorough FB or Instagram! Your support really means the world to all of us here in the blog and we as well sincerely hope that you all continue to support us along the way of this gunpla journey that we are all on. As well feel free to give us some feedback and comment if you think there are areas in the post that we can work on, to further improve our blog posts in the future!

We hope by sharing our love and passion for gunplas here, it’ll inspire you to pick up the hobby or reignite your love for gunpla!

Anyways, we shall see all of you again on Friday, and we hope that you all have an awesome day and week ahead! Oh as well please do have an awesome Gunpla building time there as well and until next time!

Ciao!