My first entry for the Gundam Eclipse Summer Wars 2012 will be this guy, the HG 1/144 Gundam Age-2 Normal. As usual the first step when building a model kit will be snapping it together to more easily see where are the problem areas that I will have to work on, and get a better feel for the model.

Compared to the RG RX 78-2 that I have been working on, this guy is way simpler, with a lot fewer parts, but even with that, it looks good, has a quite superb range of motion and feels solid, I’ve had no problem at all posing him. Also as most of the HG kits the parts are almost all moulded in its proper colour and many of the seam-lines are well placed.

That said there are a few spots that will need some fixing with the help of my good friends, masking tape, glue, sandpaper and friends.

Lets take a closer look.

The front being the most visible section of the model needs special attention, and there a few issues here:

Head sensor lenses, eyes and AGE crest needs to be painted with the proper colours

The inner section of the chest vents needs to be painted black or similarly dark colour

The V-fin and wing binders needs to be sharpened

Seams fixed for the gun and wing binders

The list doesn’t seem very big but painting the head will be troublesome because of the microscopic size of the details. Everything else is pretty standard for your regular HG kit.

The back doesn’t reveal any nasty surprise with only the seams of the forearms needing some fixing.

Now, before transforming this guy let’s see how he handles some poses.

It doesn’t matter if you want to pose him in the ground or aerial, he can tackle both easily, and those big binders at the shoulders don’t really restrict much since they move all over the place.

Lets see how he handles the strider mode.

Yep there is the biggest problem with this guy, the inner portion of the shoulder. Not only there is a big ugly seam going through there, but that section should be the colour of the inner frame and instead it’s white. Bandai does provide stickers to cover that up but I have no intention of using those.

Other than that the transformation is simple and works quite well with only minimal part swapping involved. Looks somewhat cool as well.

Well done Bandai.

And off he goes to be dismantled, so that later he can be reborn better than ever.