Thursday, March 1, 2012

AG 1/144 Gundam AGE-1 Normal Part 2

So few parts, so many colors

A look at the assembly of AG 1/144 Gundam AGE-1 Normal after the introduction of this kit in the previous posting. ^^


Together with the "Gage-ing" chip part and two beam daggers, this kit has a grand total of 32 parts. FG 1/144 Gundam Exia with 51 parts would seem rather High Grade-like as compared to this kit I think. XD Just 32 parts to complete a 1/144 scale Gundam kit, with various components separated into different colors some more. ^^

A look at how the assembly is accomplished for this kit: ^^




All the major colors of the body unit can be accurately shown. Very nice. ^^


The yellow parts on the rear skirt armor will have to be painted. Part separation treatment for the yellow parts are only available on the front side since that part is going to be used by Titus and Spallow forms of Gundam AGE-1 as well.


Armor part "extended" from the forearm that slide all the way to the hand unit to form the latter's armor is a very unique design in my opinion. ^^


Awesome part design for the head. ^^ The red portion of the face and chin which came as a separated part for such a small kit certainly adds plenty of bonus points to it. ^^


The parting split between the frontal and rear helmet parts is angled nicely to compliment the headgear/V-Fin to eliminate the most obvious seam line on top of the head.

A look at the straight-assembled kit:








Closeups on the details:









For such a simple kit with so few parts, the assembly is tremendously fun and enjoyable. ^^ The part design is really creative and effective to realize most of the Gundam's color scheme, especially the body unit. I actually dismantled it after completing it the first time just for the fun of having to assemble it again, ^^ which was no hassle at all given how the pins and connectors were already chipped off (shown in the last part of the previous posting).

It's amazing to see how different areas of the the parts are hidden/exposed when they are put together to reveal their colors at different spots on the completed model. Multiple parts stacking between the collars, chest vents and yellow parts of the skirt armor makes them look like separated yellow parts instead of a single frame. The same can be said about the gray "A" crest and waist and the seemingly separated red portion of the waist and skirt armor. It's enjoyable to see how all the parts come together so smoothly, yet effectively creating all the areas with different colors. ^^

The head has a very refreshing design as well, despite its simplicity. The sunken area around the eyes which are shadowed by the headgear and red face part appears black on the completed model, perfect to highlight the green eyes and red portion of the face. No foil sticker, no panel lining, all natural design. XD It's so simple yet effective at the same time, just like the body unit's color separation. ^^

Speaking of which, there's no sticker given at all, which also applies to all the other AG releases. That works fine with this kit since the color separation is already very well done. For a few other releases like Genoace Custom and Zedas however, one or two pieces of foil stickers are much welcomed I suppose. ^^; One doesn't call it a White Wolf's Genoace Custom if there's no seal of White Wolf on it right? ^^;

Anyway, it's a really fun kit to assemble. ^^ I certainly enjoyed it a lot. ^^ For the fun factor alone, this particular kit is worth recommending to people who are interested in building model kits. ^^

Still, this won't be the last part of my review on AG 1/144 Gundam AGE-1 Normal though. It's going to be taken apart for detailing, starting with the next posting. ^^

1 comment:

Chris said...

Even when it has less parts than FG Exia, I can see that it far excels Exia in colour seperation. Much much more. For this, it's a perfect 10/10.