The Real Grade Zeta is a marvel of BANDAI’s engineering having a complicated transformation while being a 1/144 sized model that also has an inner frame. But these features came at a price, being that the kit is very fragile. When this kit was first announced I jumped at the idea of having one but once the reviews came out I was starting to wonder if the MG 2.0 would suit me more. Numerous first look reviews of the kit resulted in breaks of one kind or another, and to this day I constantly hear stories of people breaking theirs. This instilled in me a fear of this kit, a fear I had to get over to actually enjoy it.

Considering I have heard the gamut of various breaks and the reasons for them I decided to take this build slowly and extremely carefully, reading the manual in English and not skipping any steps. Everything seemed fine except for some pieces not having a locking mechanism so they felt somewhat loose, but the real issue for me was the transformation.

The transformation took me a long time to do and was painstaking, it felt like I was doing some delicate surgery. When I was done I had to step away from the model as I was so annoyed by it. When I came back to it though somehow my short experience with the model made the transformation back a breeze. I realized that doing the transformation allowed me to understand the strength of the joints and plastic granting me the ability to get a bit more rough with the kit.

Since I was going to be doing a OOB color scheme I wanted to maintain the multiple shades of white but do it differently than the Mk II which ran into shading tonal issues. So instead I painted both using the same pre shade but from the final coat to the primer base coat they were different.

I wanted to emphasize the shades and detail on the kit and with a bunch of masking and fine spraying I think I accomplished it.