Okay, so here’s what happened, right. If you follow Gunpla, you probably saw the big HGBD announcement, and one of those kits is the Grimoire Red Beret. So I looked at that, looked up the original HG Grimoire, decided I liked that better anyway, and here we are. Now I did go looking for reviews before I bought the kit, and it struck me that there’s almost nothing out there. Given that this is a really nice kit for an HG, I think it definitely deserves a bit more attention than that, so I decided to write up a full build review before I take it apart for painting again. You know, at some point in the next decade when I get around to it. Anyway…

Behold ye the arts of the boxens. I’m sorry, but I really like this box, and since nobody seems to have this kit, I thought it would be worth showing.

And here’s what’s inside. I’d say this is pretty simple even for an HG, especially considering the kit isn’t even that old. The simplicity does come at a cost, though – this kit has a lot of visible seam lines, especially on the arms. Very few detail stickers, though, most of it is molded in the correct colors.

By the way, if you’re wondering about the newspaper, I tried a different setup for this review, mostly because I got this awesome new LED lamp with a magnifying glass in it, and I must say I’m rather happy with the result. And the lamp. Man, I love this lamp.

The head, tied for my favorite thing about this suit with the fact that the torso is basically a sphere, consists of a whopping four parts and a pink foil sticker that goes underneath the clear parts to make them pop. This works really well, as you can see.

As you’d expect, the torso is basically two half spheres plus some bits and pieces on top. That shiny pink stripe is a sticker. Looks okay, but it’ll no doubt start peeling sooner or later, and I’ll definitely be painting this with my usual clear over silver somehow.

The waist section is a bit more involved because there’s more moving parts. Of course the pink stripes here are also stickers, and for some weird reason, so are the vents on the rear skirt, but not the ones on the front.

I took this picture becuase it really just baffles me. The rear skirt is one solid piece that you have to slap the stickers on, and for the front skirts, these round parts with the tan vents are molded separately. I really don’t understand why they couldn’t just mold four of these.

The elbows are… sort of double jointed. As you can see here, there’s an off-center polycap in the lower arm, but all it does is to allow the elbow a tiny bit more clearance so that it can at least move 90 degrees despite the bulky armor.

Next are the legs, which as per the laws of Gunpla have the most parts. They also look really cool, except for that round vent on the kneecap, which is another sticker. Not exactly the most poseable, but everything works well enough. The way the ankle armor clicks into the leg with that one ball joint is kind of odd. Don’t think I’ve ever seen this before, but then I don’t build too many HGs.

And finally, we have the backpack, which consists of a whopping three parts, and then you have all the sections done and ready to be plugged together.

But hark! Accessories.

It’s not much, but it’s better than you think, as you’ll see in the pose pics below. The kit comes with a gun that’s just two halves sandwiched together and a sticker for the camera, an extra open hand, a shield with an adapter (the shield is literally just one solid part) and a little Rambo knife.

You also get these two beam… rope… things. I don’t know what these are, and as much as I’m always happy when the weapons on a Gunpla kit are something a bit out of the ordinary, they’re kind of silly and I don’t know why you get two of them.

I really like the gun, though – I really wish more kits came with pistols and SMGs instead of the same old beam rifles.

As you’d expect based on the kit’s simplicity, it poses okay, but you’re not going to get it to do any kind of crazy contortions. I don’t see why you’d want to, though – having a beefy suit like this do gymnastics would just look silly anyway.

For some reason the weapons just look really good with this kit – I especially like the pose in that last picture with the wrist bent upwards, but even the knife looks cool. It’s also really sturdy and stands up pretty well – I had a lot of fun doing this little workbench photoshoot, and I can’t wait to paint this thing and really make it shine.

So in case you haven’t guessed by now, yes, I absolutely do recommend this kit. It looks good just out of the box, and painting it should be a ton of fun because it’s nice and simple. I also just love how unusual it looks – there’s enough samey-looking Gundams and Zakus out there, and we could use more weird ones like the Grimoire. Which is why I immediately preordered the HGBD version after I built this one.