Yep, we’re doing another Real Grade kit. I’m sort of on vacation, so I have to dig up something I wrote up a while ago and saved for a rainy day. I actually built this one the day after I completed the Death Stinger. Sort of… I dunno, to cure my hangover? Anyway, after the love-fest that my experience with the RG RX 78-2 turned out to be, I figured it only made sense that I add a Zaku to my collection (because I did indeed have neither, and that’s no way to live), but I have to say I’m not a big fan of this one.

But let’s look at the build first. Here’s a shot of the sprues.

Being an early RG kit, the Zaku is relatively simple. You get the B sprue with the inner frame, three sprues of dark parts, plus four different shades of red and… I dunno, salmon pink or something, I guess. Like the RX 78-2 before it, the design of the Zaku relies heavily on adding color separation to create a more detailed impression, but it doesn’t work all that well here.

Shockingly enough, the build starts with the feet. Since the inner frame is the same as the RX 78-2, they’re also articulated in two points, as you can see, but you don’t get a whole lot of movement out of them.

The build then continues upward with the legs, as you’d expect. There’s a good amount of detail on these – each leg has five boosters attached to the inner frame that show through gaps in the armor. These boosters are insanely small, but they’re attached firmly, so there’s no issue with potentially losing them.

Articulation is excellent – the knee and upper thigh armor move to allow the leg to bend almost 180 degrees despite being covered in very bulky armor.

Up next is the waist, and then you can put it all together. More on the assembly of the various hoses later, but the ones for the legs here are round plastic parts threaded onto coil springs so as to be flexible enough to allow the legs to bend, and it works perfectly.

The side and rear skirts attach fairly well, but the front ones are on these tiny balljoints, and they pop off a lot when you’re posing the kit. That’s something I’ve kind of come to expect with Gunpla kits, though – I can’t think of too many where the skirts aren’t one of the most fragile sections. What I don’t expect is that the skirts are exactly the right length to get caught on the moving upper thigh armor when you’re trying to pose the legs. That’s just crappy engineering, and I’m afraid it’s very much the case here.

Next are the arms, which of course bend all the way up, and the shield and that silly looking Bowser armor piece, both of which are attached to the shoulder by means of a very simple hinge that consists of four ABS parts. One of the advantages of small scale models is that this sort of simple solution works just fine and dandy. Because it’s simple, it’s sturdy, and the shield moves every which way you want it to, so it does its job.

Then comes the torso. I’m really not sure why you build the arms first, there are other models where you can’t finish the torso before you attach the arm, but that isn’t the case here. Anyway, it looks really simple from the outside, but it’s actually super complicated somehow. Among other things, that’s because of the opening cockpit hatch on its left; as usual with RG kits, there’s a fully detailed pilot seat in there, but no seated pilot figure. You do get a Char Aznable miniature, of course, but it’s standing up.

Now about those hoses. When you first look at the sprue with all those hose parts, you pretty much break into a cold sweat, unless you’re some sort of sociopath who actually enjoys this sort of thing. Turns out, though, that Bandai at least tried to make this somewhat bearable.

What you do is, you thread the inner piece that holds the hose together through the rings, then either just break them off the sprue or cut them loose with a knife. I can’t read the instructions, obviously, but while it looks like you’re meant to just break them off the sprue (they connect in a way that allows this pretty easily), I’d still recommend using a knife. You end up with nubs that you’ll have to trim either way, but you can actually avoid some of them if you use a knife. For the torso and the head hoses, once you’ve threaded everything on the inner piece, you cut off the long straight part – that’s just there to catch the rings, so to speak. It’s all still pretty fiddly, but it certainly does save a lot of time.

And here’s the Zaku sans head. No separate backpack assembly, so the head is all that’s left. I also have no idea why that one elbow is facing the wrong way in this picture, by the way. I think it was past midnight at this point, so, um, yeah.

Now the head… ugh. The head exemplifies why this kit is a disappointment to me. I’ve always thought Zakus looked more silly than threatening, but I’ve also always liked the sort of retro sci-fi space Nazi look they’re clearly meant to evoke with the crude armor and the head vaguely resembling a gas mask, so there’s potential here. I was never too enamored with the RX 78-2 either, but the RG with its sharp, rich detail completely changed my mind. This kit, not so much.

I’m sorry, but it’s a fucking upside down soup bowl stacked on top of a bunch of plumbing supplies. Where’s all the detail? There’s a few panel lines, and that’s it. I know this is anime accurate, but that doesn’t really matter if it looks like crap.

And the worst thing, clearly, is that sticker on the mono-eye. It’s even worse in real life, if you can believe it – it basically looks like a holepuncher clipping fell in there because it’s so dull and paper-like. I’m not exaggerating, it’s terrible. So much so that I broke my “no painting on RGs” rule the following day, pulled the head apart and painted the mono-eye (which is molded in clear plastic, mercifully, so it’s salvageable) silver on the inside and clear red on the outside. I know it’s supposed to be purple, and actually the flat purple circle here is exactly what it looks like in the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime, but, well, refer to “looks like crap” above.

Here’s the result on the finished kit. As you can see, this didn’t work too well either. It’s preferable to the sticker, at least in my opinion, but of course now the problem is that it’s too dark and practically disappears. Sigh.

Anyway, to wrap up the build review, here he is all did up straight out of the box (including the aforementioned mono-eye sticker), sans decals and weapons. My camera somehow thought the legs were what needed to be in focus and I didn’t notice because it was late, ahem.

You don’t get a lot of accessories with this kit, but what’s there is solid. There’s the machine gun with that tommy gun style ammo pack, the bazooka, the Heat Hawk axe, two closed fist and two articulated hands, plus an action base connector (not pictured) and a clip to mount the Heat Hawk on the side or rear skirts. Detail’s good, but I kinda wish there were a few more colors to break things up a little; the RX 78-2’s weapons look a lot more interesting. They do fit on the kit much better, though – aside from the stock on the machine gun getting in the way, everything works really well, especially the way the handles fit into the articulated hand, which is the only serious problem with the RX 78-2. The only thing that doesn’t work is mounting the bazooka on the rear skirt. It’s supposed to clip on top of a part that folds out, but it doesn’t stay attached at all.

Also, the closed fists not only look weird, they also don’t match the articulated hands at all, so mixing and matching them to have a weapon in one hand and the other making a fist isn’t really an option. You’re pretty much stuck using the articulated hands at all times.

Like all Real Grades, the Zaku comes with a ton of stickers. Well north of 100, and I used most of them, except, as usual, the (shitty, shitty, no I won’t stop saying it, they’re shitty) foil stickers for the inner frame and some that were so tiny that I really found them impossible to apply. Like one quarter of a square millimeter and you get two that are close together and supposed to be lining up symmetrically? Nope.

Poseability is okay, I guess. You can get some fun poses with the various weapons, as you can see – though with hindsight, I don’t know why I took so many pictures with the bazooka. Except for the aforementioned problems with the front skirts, the kit is nice and sturdy for a Real Grade. I also like that little mechanism that makes the mono-eye move when you turn the head, but it’s hard to demonstrate here, especially with the aforementioned effect of my painting.

Overall, my verdict would be a resounding “meh.” Maybe I’m biased – like I said above, I’ve never been a fan of the Zakus. I pretty clearly remember the first time I was looking up Gunpla kits online, probably around ’99 or 2000, not knowing anything at all about the series, and thinking, you know, there’s some cool robots here, but these Zakus and Goofs or whatever they’re called, they look silly. And while I’ve now learned a thing or two about the Gundam universe and changed my mind about a lot of things, that really hasn’t changed. Zakus look silly. And this one’s pink. So it’s a silly robot in a silly color. I’m well aware that they tried to be faithful to the anime here, but if they updated the look of the RX 78-2 numerous times since then, why not the Zaku as well? I dunno, guys. I guess this is one problem with all things Gundam that I’ll always have.

Though of course now I have this idea bumping around in my head that I should get one of the MG Zakus and see if I can actually make it look good with some added detail and weathering.