Sometimes when you’re in the deeper throes of a painted build, it’s nice to take a break from the serious modeling work and just snap something together. I bought this kit during the HLJ holiday sale and for some reason it jumped the backlog queue in my mind. I think I was just a little sick from all them samey looking Gundam robots. This one certainly looks different.

Now in case you don’t know this, the Gusion/Gusion Rebake kit contains parts for one complete inner frame and all the parts to either deck that frame out as the Gusion or the Gusion Rebake from Iron Blooded Orphans. Now I haven’t seen that show yet, so I don’t really know what all this is about, but I guess the Gusion somehow gets changed to the Rebake version, and that’s Bandai’s excuse to package the two as one kit.

That doesn’t really even make sense in theory – every single version of the Barbatos has been released as a separate kit, and those look almost the same to anyone like me who hasn’t seen the show. In practice, it means that you’re paying a whopping 5000 yen, more than some MG kits, for a no-grade 1/100 kit in a big box full of extra parts you can’t use. Because even if you don’t paint the kit, you’re likely just going to build one version and display it that way. It just doesn’t make any sense – this should’ve been two kits.

But I really wanted the 1/100 Gusion, and when HLJ had this kit on sale for 60% of the price, that put it in the range of the other IBO 1/100 kits, so I finally got one. And since I certainly always wondered how this thing goes together, given how different the two versions look, I figured I’d write up this build review in case anyone else has been wondering.

The first thing you put together is the inner frame. It looks the same as all the other IBO frames, but that’s not a bad thing – this is a really well engineered frame. It’s super-poseable, stands up really well because of the large feet, and it manages to look very detailed despite being relatively simple in terms of construction. It doesn’t have a mechanism for sliding thigh and arm armor, and you only get fixed-pose open and holding hands, but otherwise, it’s basically an MG frame.

The instructions then have you build the Rebake first because it’s built on the complete frame, unlike the Gusion itself.

First up is the chest armor. Very simple stuff, leaving a lot of frame exposed, which is good. Those torso pistons deserve to be seen.

Up next is the head. There’s a chin piece here that I forgot to add, which I didn’t notice until long after I’d dismantled the Rebake and put the kit together in its Gusion form. I guess we’ll never get to see it with its head assembled correctly. Sigh. You’re also meant to wrap stickers around the fins on the center armor piece so that they’re in their correct color. I think it’s really weird that this is necessary here – the fins are considerably larger than the little white pieces that go on the cheeks, so why are those molded separately, but not the fins? Of course this is easy enough to paint, but it’s still an odd choice.

Next are the arms and the shoulders. Nothing particularly interesting here, but also no stickers, so that’s good.

Up next are the legs and feet. There are two stickers here, but other than that, the leg armor’s nice – as you can see in the second picture, poseability stays decent enough with the armor on, although the knees don’t bend 180 degrees anymore. The more important part, though, is that the feet lose none of their articulation, thanks to that little hinge pictured in the middle that the white armor piece sits on.

Next are the skirts, including that massive back skirt which is probably my least favorite aspect of the Rebake’s design. It has its uses – it doubles as a shield and you can store all of the suit’s weapons on it. I just don’t like the way it looks, it’s too bulky compared to the rest of the suit, and the fact that it’s obviously meant to look like it’s a repurposed version of the Gusion’s back armor doesn’t help.

The backpack is pretty involved, as you’d expect, because of those arms that tuck into the big bulbous booster packs. This gimmick works surprisingly well, and the backpack is also obviously the suit’s most striking visual feature.

And then you add the weapons and you’re done. I realized long before I got this far that I actually like the Rebake version quite a bit and really didn’t want to have to dismantle it to build the Gusion. I guess we can add that to the list of reasons why this kit is a dumb idea.

Anyway, the conversion to the Gusion starts by stripping everything off the inner frame, including the head and half the legs. All you keep is this.

And then you unplug the arms and legs as well because they’re not attached directly to the torso frame when the kit is built as the Gusion. That explains how a suit that is basically twice the width can supposedly be built on the same frame. Because it really isn’t.

Assembly then continues with the torso. You build this massive Y-shaped contraption to mount the arms and shoulders on first plus an extension for the pelvis, then slap the armor on. It’s all hollow, so it’s not very heavy and the frame’s waist joint can support it fine.

Next is the head. The eyesockets aren’t molded in the correct color, so you’re supposed to use stickers for them, but since I’m still going to paint this kit, I didn’t do that, of course, plus it doesn’t really seem necessary – the head looks fine this way.

The arms and legs consist of a fair number of parts, but that’s just because there are thrusters everywhere on this suit, and they’re all molded separately for some nice color separation. Mechanically, there’s nothing interesting going on here, and the armor basically kills the frame’s poseability. The shoulder pads, especially, as nice as they look, practically trap the arms completely.

It’s hardly surprising, though, that a kit this bulky isn’t particularly poseable. You can get it to hold the hammer up with one hand if you try hard enough, but it’s leaning against the armor and would drop down if you so much as touched it here. And the pose in the instructions where the suit’s holding the hammer with both hands is impossible to do, I’m afraid. The handle’s too short – I’m thinking I might try to mod it using the pole from the Rebake halberd, but we’ll see. For now this has basically re-entered my backlog because I have no idea how I’m going to paint it, I just wanted to see it all snapped up, really.

So, should you get this kit? I’m not sure I’d recommend it. I thought it was a fun build for sure, and both the Gusion and the Gusion Rebake look really cool. But I’m really glad I didn’t pay full price for this, and it’s not just because of the pile of Rebake parts I now don’t know what to do with.

While the kit has a full inner frame in both versions, there’s a reason Bandai isn’t marketing this as Master Grade – it feels like an overgrown HG in many ways. A lot of sections are just one big part that could have been broken up into smaller pieces to make something more interesting, the Rebake especially has a lot of stickers to make up for the lack of color separation, and the Gusion, while solid, is less poseable than some HGs I’ve built. And yet you’re expected to fork over the price of a MG kit for it.

I guess what I’m saying is it’s a nice kit, I’m glad I have it, it was fun to build and I’ll certainly enjoy painting it, but don’t pay 5000 yen for this thing.