The first 2018 review!

Hello and welcome back! I do hope you all had a good start for the year, with all the announcements made earlier of the week it does seem like we are gearing ourselves to go on a very hectic (and broke) year ahead. Also, it does seem like we are going to have a pretty awesome year of gunpla releases ahead of us and I’m really looking forward to more Gunpla releases this year, and possibly more awesome Gundam Anime series as well!

Am actually excited about a new Gunpla Build fighters anime that is going to be announced next month. I really wonder if its going to introduce some new awesome cast or will they be continuing the arc of the Try Fighters cast? Whatever it is coming, I just hope it’ll be a good one.

Oh, silly me, I ramble too much on the opening here and forget to introduce myself, Hello guys, Kimi here and I’m back with my FIRST 2018 review of the MG 1/100 RGM GM Sniper Custom. Picking off where I left off last week with the Unboxing. Today we are here to discover if The MG 1/100 RGM-79SC GM Sniper Custom is as good as the last few MG kits I’ve made last year. Though admittedly the unboxing for this kit by far has been the most mediocre out of all kits I’ve unboxed, built and reviewed in 2017 but I wonder if building this kit change my thoughts (and views) of this kit and start my gunpla building the year right? Let’s find out with the review.

But as ever before we get into it, let’s first talk about this GM’s lore and history.

The history and development of the RGM-79SC GM Sniper Custom

Model name : RGM-79SC

Classification : Mass Production Custom Sniper Mobile Suit

Weapon systems : Beam Saber, BR-M79L-3 Sniper Beam Rifle, BR-M-79C-1 Beam Spray Gun, Folding beam Handgun, BLASH HB-L-03/N-STD Hyper Bazooka, Twin Beam Gun, RGM S-SH-WF/S-00109 Shield

Height : 18.5m

Armour Material : Titanium-based alloy

Powerplant : Minovsky Ultracompact Fusion Reactor (1390kw total output)

Total Thrust : 68000 kg

Effective Sensor Radius : 7300 m

Crew : 1

Oh, the GM Sniper, the name might fool you into believing that this MS is developed to only be a long-range support unit and as well you might as well think that this MS is a lightly armored, armed and tailored only to a specific role. Then you might be one of those Zeon pilots that would not survive an encounter with this MS because this MS is nothing of a sort.

The reason being for this is that the RGM-79SC GM Sniper Custom is one of the many High-Performance MS variants that were made by the EFSF for its best of the best pilots. Based off the Mass Production RGM-79 GM, the RGM-79SC is an MS that had many improvements made. The improvement made on this variant that is evident on this variant is on a different backpack unit, they as well added and upgraded the Rocket thrusters and Verniers. Not to mention as well the armor on this MS is reinforced to enable it to take more punishments as compared to its Mass-Production variant. Another notable improvement made is on its head unit is given a “visor” to help protect its sensitive sensors, as well it had cooling vents installed in the torso units and on the leg units.

In terms of weapons, this is where you’d start to see the “Sniper” part comes in, it is given a BR-M79L-3 Sniper Beam Rifle (to some units there were issued with the BOWA BR-S-85-L3 Sniper Rifles) for long range engagements. AS well this is equipped with weapons made for close range engagements like the BR-M-79C-1 Beam Spray Gun, the Folding Beam Handgun, the Twin Beam Gun and the boxed beam saber. The RGM-79SC as well is given the BLASH HB-L-03/N Hyper Bazooka as well to counter heavily armored MS or ships. Oh, they also gave the GM Sniper Custom a shield as well.

24 units of the RGM-79SC were built in Luna II and there were more initially planned to be produced for the battlefield, unfortunately, due to its high production cost, less than 50 of these awesome machines were made. This made the RGM-79SC a rare beast in the battlefield but as rare as it is it was one of the MS’s that contributed to the success of the operation to take A Baoa Qu during the One Year War. Due to its success in the battlefield, the Federation tries to make an another less expensive mass production variant, the RGM-79SP GM Sniper II in which turned out to be a very good successor to the RGM-79SC GM Sniper Custom.

With that ends our history lesson, and now let’s get into the review!

The Review

I don’t know if you guys notice but I fucking love the Ver.2.0 One Year War period MG kits. I could honestly say that there aren’t an MG Ver.2.0 kits that has disappointed me so far. So, when I saw this kit announced I was really excited for this and already I assumed that the GM Sniper Custom would be mainly based on the MG GM Ver.2.0 but no. This kit is, you’ll find that to be more of a hybrid in between the MG GM Ver.2.0 and MG GM Sniper II.

Well, They only part that they take from the MG GM Sniper II that you will see is when you start working on the torso unit anyway, I was surprised to see that it works well with the old design of the GM and the minor changes does make a big difference in making this more appealing then the GM Sniper II. In fact, I do think this is by far the best looking inner frame if you compare this to the GM Sniper II, I was genuinely impressed when i saw how good this looked. Even the outer frame on the torso unit was impressive.

Overall the rest was as brilliant to build since the rest of the parts is mostly based on the MG GM Ver.2.0 and not to mention all of them have an excellent outer frame look as well (a huge plus here). As well I had tons of awesome fun building the leg unit for this kit. It is by far the best out of all the parts to build and the look of the inner frame is just so sexy. As well the outer frame does look damn good when its completed, it does have a simple and handsome (not to mention sexy) look to it. Though I did state on the start of the unboxing last week that I wasn’t a fan of this green color scheme here but I have to admit that it is starting to creep on into me and I’m starting to get use to all of them green.

For some of the pictures (shown below) that I’m sharing here you may notice that there is some missing part of the manipulator side, that is because actually while traversing around I did have some massive accident involving it and now I‘ve lost the left arm manipulator cover and I broke the antenna on the gm’s head (Yes, yes I know I fucked it up bad). But surprisingly that’s about the major thing that had happened to it. for everything else, it was fine and dandy, and I’m genuinely impressed by that. It is a tough one indeed.

Not to mention it does give me some space to think about doing some battle damaged GM Sniper Custom diorama built now. Hmm, maybe i should start planning and preparing for that.

The only issue I had with the kit is probably on building the weapons, for me everything just went downhill from here on wards. I was honestly expecting this to be as detailed as the rest of the kit. Its only true for the original MG GM Ver.2.0 weapons but when it comes down to its own original weapons it really sucked ass. I find it funny that the older MG GM Ver.2.0 beam spray was highly detailed and fun to just look and make, but when it comes down to its own original weapons it felt like I’m building a very old MG kit weapons set. Sorry, that wouldn’t a fair comparison here because even compared with the old MG weapons they had more to offer than this. If I were to compare I would say that building some of the MG GM Sniper weapons felt like building an HG weapons on an MG scale.

Without a doubt, the weapons look good, but it felt really out of place when you compare it to the older MG GM Ver.2.0 weapons. I have to be honest, I was really disappointed on how lacking these were. If they were to put more love to the weapons as how they did with the MUCH older MG GM Ver.2.0 this could’ve been my pick of one of the best 2017 kits, it’s just too bad that they decided not to put more effort into making the weapons as good as the rest.

Really a shame this is.

Overall, I do feel that this is a good kit and honestly, most of the time I don’t mind the MG kits had some very simple weapons, is just that the weapons that they include for the MG GM Sniper Custom really feels out of place when compared to the rest of the kit. Heck even when you compare those to the older beam spray (ver.2.0) they felt out of place. Trust me if you ever get to this kit you’d be wondering the same thing as I do when you start working on the weapons.

That’s why with a heavy heart I have to say that this is one of my least favorite MG OYW post Ver.2.0 kits to date, but it’s not to say this is a bad kit. It’s really just one that is held back by the inconsistent weapons designs and if you don’t mind that it’s really not an issue at all. Though I’m disappointed I don’t feel like it the worse thing ever. Its just feels so meh for me in the end, and I hate having that feeling when finishing a gunpla but we can’t have everything can we?

Though I hoped that this would mark a good start, having a meh start it’s not all bad either.

With that concludes my review of the MG 1/100 RGM-79SC GM Sniper Custom, what do you guys think of the overall review and of the kit? As well your own experience with the MG GM Sniper Custom, do you share my meh-ness over this MG kit? Do you agree on the points that we brought up for this kit? We do look forward to reading more on your comments and thoughts here! We will be back with more Let’s Talk Gunpla Segment on Wednesday! As well we will have a new Unboxing coming in this coming Sunday as well! So do look forward to that! 😀

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We hope by sharing our love for Gunpla would be able to make your day!

Anyways, we shall see you again next week, and we hope that you all have an awesome week and weekend ahead! Have an awesome Gunpla building time there as well and till next time!

Ciao!