It’s not every day I get hooked on by a marketing gimmick aimed at kids, but I’m glad I got suckered in when I finished watching a little obscure cartoon found on YouTube called Gundam Build Fighter. The series was not about a war waged between an Earth bound faction and a space bound faction. It was about Gunpla, yes, the actual model kits. Specifically, it was about Gunpla battling. Characters, usually kids, build their own custom MSs out of Gunpla kits and then duel them out on specially made Plavski particle projectors that animates the kits and creates various battlefields. It was as blatant as advertising can get! And it was awesome as well as brilliant! After the series, I wanted nothing more than to pick up my first kits. As a reminder, I was 30 at the time. Along with the HG Grimoire, the HG Star Build Strike Gundam (SBS) was the other Mobile Suit (MS) kit I bought on that day.

The SBS was built by series protagonist Iori Sei, as the final form of his custom Gunpla, the Build Strike. The Build Strike itself is based on Gundam SEED’s Strike Gundam, which will be reviewed at a later date. Though built by Iori Sei, it was mainly piloted by his friend Reiji. The base model of the MS was used throughout the series until it was upgraded to the Build Strike Full Package and the finally, the SBS.

Mobile Suit Design

Based on the Strike Gundam, major differences between the two MSs are the head/V-fin design, shoulders and side skirt armour. The kit is actually composed of two components, the Build Strike itself and the Universal Booster backpack. When the Universal booster is attached on the back, it can bring up its boosters to act as bean cannons. The Universal Booster can also be displayed by itself using the stand that’s included in the kit. Being the main Gunpla of the series, the SBS is adorned with the traditional colours of the Gundam, red, blue, yellow and white.This includes red on the abdomen, shoulders, waist and feet. Blue is mainly used in the upper chest, crotch, knees and forearms. The rest of the MS is coloured in white with gray being used in the internal parts and yellow bits showing on the shoulder. The Universal Booster is in white with colour details provided with stickers and clear pink parts through out is hull. Two clear pink parts are also provided for both of the legs on the SBS. The kit comes with a large amount of stickers as well. Other than the regular eyes and head cameras, the stickers provides the yellow and black on the shoulders, the blue highlights on the forearms and knees as well as the red trim on the side skirt armour. Lastly, the Universal Booster also utilizes red stickers for its fins, black foil stickers on the side of the craft and three amber foil stickers for its cockpit. With the exception of the sticker usage, the kit itself boasts a very good colour separation using plastic parts. The kit can look very good even without the stickers applied, though the same cannot be said about the Universal booster since the cockpit will look drab with out them.

Build Process

While not a difficult kit to complete, it is suggested that the builder have a good set of tools and one or two builds under their belt before attempting this kit. The plastic can be pretty hard on most of the armour parts so nub removal can be tricky. there are also a number of very small part that require a degree of manual dexterity to handle without losing or breaking them.

That being said, this kit is pretty impressive. It almost has an entire inner frame that supports its outer armour shell. Internal parts including knees and elbows use softer plastics than the outer armoured shell.

Sticker application is standard except for the black shoulder trim, where folding around the lower edge of the shoulder is required.

Panel lining can be applied throughout the body and Universal Booster

All in all, the build is fairly straight forward with attention needed on the smaller pieces . When its put together, the SBS is one solid kit with no parts that seems to be too heavy for the joints to hold up.

Articulation

While the HG Grimoire gets a pretty decent grade for body movements, the SBS blows it out of the water. Though not without limitations, the SBS can pull off very impressive poses thanks to its elbow and knee double joins.

Starting off with the head, it can do a full 360 degrees rotation, but this is limited when adding on the Universal Booster since the part that go on the shoulder will collide with the head when it’s rotating. Due to having a double ball joint, the head also tilt in all direction and move forward and back. Again, the Universal Booster’s shoulder part will restrict is movements.

Arms can bend all the way in with the hands almost able to touch the shoulders. It can also hyper extend a bit due to the construction of the elbow joint not fully restricting a backwards bend. There is a bicep joint allowing the arm to rotate independent of the shoulder, which are themselves connected to the torso using a ball joint that can swing forward to provide an extended reach for the arms stretching to its opposite side.

The upper body can manage a full 360 degrees rotation with the side skirt armour providing some obstruction. A stomach crunch can be achieve to some degree due to a ball join attaching the upper torso to the lower torso section. Moving down, the front skirt armour can be flipped up with the flaps being able to move independently after a separation cut to the initial single piece. The side skirt armour can be rotated and provide limited upwards flip. The back skirt armour is molded into one piece and thus do not move at all.

The legs are attach to a bar that runs across the crotch section, enabling one leg to pivot upwards while the other downwards. The hips can rotate. A full side split can be achieve by the legs but due to the limited movement of the side skirt armour, this is restricted to a slightly greater than 90 degrees split. However, because the front skirt armour offers no resistance to articulation, the legs can be brought up all the way to make a high kick pose possible. Even with the immovable back skirt armour, the legs can be separated enough to do an almost split, angling at slightly less than 180 degrees. The knees provide a full bend with its double joints. The feet also provide a wide range of motion from going tipy toes to almost being parallel to the legs we tipped upwards. A 45 degrees tilting can also be made with the feet. Lastly, the ankle armour are attacked via ball joint allowing it to flow with the movement of the feet. As for the Universal Booster, aside from the movements needed to transform from a space craft to a backpack, the beam cannon are attached to the main hull via ball joints that uses a peg on the ball to lock them in for flight mode. Once detached from the peg, the cannons can swing vertically in a large arc before colliding with the arms of the SBS and can move in a much smaller arc horizontally, with excess movement detaching the cannons.

The SBS sets a standard on how a kit can move. Excellent articulation all around with very few areas of restriction, the kit will have no trouble posing most positions a builder can think of.

Accessories

Being a MS that’s capable of both close and long range combat, the kit comes with a beam rifle, a nifty shield, two beam sabers, a much welcomed stand and lastly, the Plavski wings. The beam rifle is composed of three pieces of plastic molded in grey plastic. Once assembled, it can be configured to two different modes though it needs to be partially reassembled, which can be a pain since the connections can be pretty stiff to separate.

The shield of the kit is an interesting one. Where as shields in other kits are made of one or two pieces with a connector to the arm, the SBS’s shield is made of four layers of plastic with a variety of colours and an attachment on the end. Despite the good use of colours, white sticker are provided to cover up most of the red layer, I personally did not put them on. The shield’s top layer can be of two options, opened and closed, portraying the shield opening up to adsorb beam attacks. lastly, the attachment on the bottom of the shield can be folded and be attached to the side of the beam rifle.

Beam sabers are standard fare attaching on to clear pink pieces to portray the beam emitting effect. Both beam sabers can be attached on either side of the wait armour.

As in the show, the SBS can be powered up and emit Plavski wings coming out of some parts of the body. These are represented as clear blue plastic wings. While most of the wings are a single clear piece, the main wings are three pieces on each side that’s connected by ball joints. The wings attachment requires the removal six clear pink pieces in total and the location of the wing attachments can be left to the builder’s personal preferences. The removed clear pink pieces or the wings themselves can be attached to the stand provided.

Personal Modifications

I have to come clean now, the Gunpla you see is not the one I build back in late 2015. It was built in the fall of 2016. After building Gunpla for almost a year, my skills have improved somewhat, added on to the fact that I also gave away the first SBS as a going away gift, I decided it was the perfect time and the perfect excuse to repurchase the kit and have a fresh go at it with some added features. Instead of the stickers for the fins of the Universal Booster and the side skirt armour, I’ve painted them red. I’ve also applied numerous dry transfers, that were left over from other kits, on to various sections of the MS. This gives the MS a more complex look.

Final Verdict

While the HG Grimoire was a good starter kit, the Star Build Striker sets the standard on what a Gundam kit can do with its articulation. It spices up a traditional Gundam design but doesn’t stray too far to make it unrecognizable, sticking with the familiar shape and colours. The added Universal Booster provides some additional value to the kit, allowing it be be poses separately from the base MS, and this MS can pose! The SBS can pull off most, if not all, of the action poses you can think up and solid enough to be able to held them with out limbs and pars fall off the kit. All this packaged goodness also comes at a reasonable price as well, with the latest Amazon.ca listing at about $24, shipping and tax included. So, unless you despise the design of the SBS, hate the show or think life in general sucks and everyone should be miserable, there should no reason why you should not pick this up. It’s good value on the dollar, very well articulated and a generally a very solid kit whether you want to play with it or just leave it in a pose.

TL;DR

Pro:

Great articulation on most of the body.

Very solid and sturdy kit.

Good Colour separation.

Comes with lots of accessories.

Well priced.

Good amount of panel lining.

Cons:

Contains small pieces, which may hinder beginners.

Some stickers are hard to apply.

The side skirt armour can limit some leg articulation.