I don’t do a whole lot of HG kits, but this one I kind of had to buy, and I’ll tell you why. Ramble mode engage. Actually, wait, post-cold open picture first, then ramble mode engage.

Now, where was I? Oh, right. After I completed the PG Unicorn and couldn’t stop gushing about how much I loved it, it was pretty much clear that I’d have to get the PG Banshee as well. And I do have the kit, but it’s probably going to be a while until I get around to building it. Right now my plan is pretty much just to paint all the armor black and do whatever I think needs to be done to the rest, so it’ll probably take less time than the Unicorn as there’ll be no pre-shading, but it’s still a big undertaking and I’ll need to have some free time to do it. Plus the LED unit, which is an absolute must for me, is curiously hard to come by. Not to mention I’ve got a lot of other stuff I want to get to that doesn’t involve painting the exact same parts I already painted this spring.

But I really wanted a Banshee on my shelf. By default, I’d get the MG, but… this brings me to the next problem. I vastly prefer the Norn version to the regular Banshee, and much to my continued befuddlement, Bandai only ever made the MG Norn available as a limited P-Bandai release, so it’d be ridiculously expensive. I generally wouldn’t mind all that much since if you do a lot of painting, the price of the kit can be kind of a drop in the bucket compared to what you end up blowing on supplies, but to be perfectly honest, the MG Unicorn is my least favorite version of that suit that I’ve built because of its well-documented ricketiness and general fally-aparty-tude, so I’m… reluctant, let’s say, to pay some scalper an insane amount of money for a kit that’ll look nice, but that I know I won’t have much fun building.

Meanwhile, I actually quite enjoyed building my HGUC Unicorn, and it’s a very nice looking representation of the Unicorn Gundam. It’s not without issues – I have the Full Armor version, so it’s pretty much a brick, and the legs have a tendency to fall off. But overall, I actually prefer it to the Master Grade version, especially since the PG does everything the MG tried to do, except successfully and better. The HGUC doesn’t really do anything but look good, but it’s also relatively sturdy and actually a pretty complex build for an HGUC kit because there’s only so much you can simplify on a Unicorn in destroy mode.

And of course there’s a HGUC version of the Banshee Norn in destroy mode readily available, and since I also have an RG Sinanju, it makes a nice little display together with the aforementioned HGUC Unicorn, as seen here.

However, I have to say I’m a bit disappointed with this kit. Here’s what it looks like straight out of the box with no stickers except the eyes and the shoulder vulcans.

Now you have to realize, this is kind of a flattering picture. The gold pieces around the head look oddly ok here, but they’re a really terrible light orange in real life, and the lighting somehow makes the detail on the armor pop. In real life it appears much darker, and that basically makes all the detail disappear. On top of that, there are no marking stickers at all to break things up a bit.

It does come with an ass-ton of foil stickers for detail that isn’t molded in the proper colors, though.

The big ones go on the “mane” parts on the back and the rest are vents on the legs and skirts that are meant to be gold. I trust I’ve mentioned my abject hatred for these kinds of stickers enough times at this point that you can imagine I was overjoyed when I saw this. The fact that the mane, which is obviously the most striking visual feature of the Banshee Norn, actually gets most of its gold color by means of FUCKING STICKERS is… I dunno, guys, words fail me. All they needed was two extra pieces on the same sprue that has, y’know, the two mane parts that actually are molded in the same color as the collar and the v-fin. And about half of the vents that are meant to be gold are actually separate parts as it is, so they could’ve just split up those sprues and molded them in gold. It’s ridiculous.

This was supposed to be a simple build – I knew I’d have to paint the v-fin, collar and some of the mane because I didn’t like the color of the gold plastic, but other than that, I was going to leave it as is. Because I like complementary colors, I actually wanted to have a version of the Banshee in this blue color that all the Bandai kits come in. Instead, this became a three-night project.

First I did what I knew I’d have to do and painted the v-fin, the collar and the parts of the mane that are molded in “gold” with Tamiya’s Gold Leaf. You’ll notice I did actually use the detail sticker on the forehead; I also used the two on the shoulder vulcans because I just didn’t think I’d be able to match the specific blue of the armor, so it seemed pointless to try and paint these parts.

Notice also the violently embarrassing sprue nub on the left side of the v-fin that I literally didn’t notice until I edited these pictures. Sigh.

Up next was the rest of the mane, i.e. the parts that the big gold stickers are supposed to go on. I’m not entirely convinced it was necessary to mask of the back of these as the airbrush probably would’ve only hit the front, but I did it anyway. I also painted the orange stripes that represent psychoframe with a brush, which turned out to be really easy because the groove is nice and deep.

Sadly, I didn’t take the time to compare the kit to its larger scale counterparts and so I didn’t realize that the grooves on the inside mane parts are also meant to be psychoframe. In my defense, the kit doesn’t come with stickers for these, so there’s nothing in the box to tell you that they’re supposed to be orange.

Then came the leg and skirt vents. Obviously this was going to be the hardest part, and to be honest, all I was able to pull off was a “looks good from a distance” detail job. Up close, it’s kind of a mess.

And since I’d decided to toss most of the detail stickers, I also painted the cameras on the head and the beam magnum, but that’s barely noticeable.

Now, accessories. The kit comes with the big-ass Armed Armor DE, of course, and the beam magnum with the rotating grenade launcher and an effect part that I never use because it looks dumb. You also get a spare ammo clip and grenade launcher, this round part to swap out if you want to use the effect part on the launcher, attachment pieces to mount the Armed Armor DE on the arm or on the back, and a trigger finger hand.

There are also no less than four beam saber handles (the other two are stored in the arms and I couldn’t be bothered prying them out for the photo, you get the idea), but in another galling omission among many for this kit, there are no, as in zero, as in count ’em, none, blade effect parts. The funniest thing about this is that the instructions actually show you how to use them, but they don’t exist.

Poseability is okay, but nothing to write home about. It does stand up very well even with the Armed Armor DE attached to its arm, and it can hold up the beam magnum just fine despite the added weight. I just really don’t like these open “holding fist” hands, especially since they don’t actually hold anything – the beam saber handles fall right through them, and the secondary handle on the beam magnum won’t fit unless you shave off the bottom.

Looking at it now, I kind of wonder if I should’ve painted the psychoframe silver on the inside to make it pop more, but other than that, like I said above, the HGUC Unicorn in general really is a beauty, and this version is no exception. It’s probably also worth mentioning that I had zero problems with parts falling off while I was posing the kit for these shots.

Do I recommend this kit? Not unless you’re willing to paint it. The stickers are a joke, and the gold plastic looks terrible. I’m happy with what mine looks like now, save for the mistakes I noticed when I took the pictures and the fact that I still think I should probably go back and paint the gun, but OOB it’s seriously flawed.

Those issues aside, though, it’s a solid kit with great detail, so if you’re willing to go the extra mile to make it shine, by all means, pick one up. Especially if you already have the Unicorn to go with it – otherwise I’d get that one first.