Review HGUC Kshatriya

The Kshatriya is a mobile suit – following how I feel about Hajime Katoki’s designs of the latest U.C. suits – I completely LOVE! It’s designation of being a ‘Prototype Mobile Suit for New-type’ follows through completely in it’s blocky, rough around the edges design. The way some parts are over sized, and some parts look like they were ripped off of a Zaku II, was firstly off putting to me. But I grew to like it after, say, three minutes.

 

 

 

 

14 Runners total (a good deal are doubles), 1 runner of PolyCaps, and 1 sheet of VERY boring foil stickers (that I didn’t take a picture of, but you can probably guess what’s on it).

 

First Impressions

Like I said in the intro, I love this kit. The general details are amazing, and the kit stands fairly well as long as the binders are equidistant (more on that later).

This is also my best attempt at the Kshatriya’s closed binder pose. They kind of hung open a little bit, but I think it’s more of a point of view issue. That or I was a bit impatient… Meh.

In the Details

Still looks full without the binders! You’ll also notice the waist is on a peg and hole, not a ball joint (like a lot of HG kits). A smart move on Bandai’s part, as the binders would’ve more than made this kit lean back.

This is the action base attachment that they so kindly gave us with the kit. The fact that it’s not on a joint means that the Kit won’t flop over while on the stand, it also means the kit won’t be able to swivel forward and back. So having it in the air in an upright pose means you’d have to have the stand completely vertical. And if you’ve dealt with Action bases in the past, that’s not the best position for those to be in.

This model, sadly, comes with only one pair of hands. Open fists. Now I don’t mind open fists on smaller 1/144 scale kits. But something this big should have another set of hands, at least an open set of palms, for those maniacal grasping poses that make this kit look evil. To fix this problem, I grabbed my old MG Zaku II 2.0 and stole it’s hands (it’s broken anyway). The hands are similar in size, and the green is just a shade off (you can barely see it in the photo’s).

The arms have a ridiculous amount of movement (I find the second photo fairly disturbing), but it’s wasted on the Binders, their weight make it hard for the arm to bend forward or back. They honestly needed to be attached directly to the upper body, not the arm. You can also see (in the last photo) the little square peg sticking out from under the sleeve. That’s supposed to be the beam saber. So that means? YES! There’s absolutely no place to put them on the body. sigh…

 

The head has a little peg on the bottom (near the front) that lets you move the mono-eye. A pretty useless feature, since you can’t even see it 90% of the time. The vents on the back of the legs move in and out slightly, but this is more as to let the feet move back more than anything else.

The very first thing you notice about the binders when you look at them is that: There’s no seam line! Absolutely none! I love Bandai for doing that, as four nasty ass huge seam lines would make this kit un-buy-able. I also painted the inside of the binders from a dark gray to a light Gull Gray. I think it goes a lot better with the green.

Here you can see the inner workings of the support for the binders. It’s a genius (but small) network of interlocking joints to keep them from just flopping over. The main part where the binders attach even has a sliding lock!  You can also see the under side of the Funnels, which make it pretty hard to find (or make) a stand for (and definitely not 24 of them!).

Action!

Now here is where things start to get tricky. In order to get good poses out of this kit, you really need to juggle the wait distribution of the Binders really well. But if you do, you get pictures…

Like this! It’s here that I must start to apologize for the lighting. The kits just too big for my current set up (my bad), and as a result the light gets a little, horrible. You’ve been warned.

Here are those little… Extendo hook… Things. Not sure what they’re called, but they’re amazing. They can turn poses…

Like this…

To this! It just makes the Kshatriya look more outreaching and evil (as it should). I just looks cooler, okay?

The legs are kind of bulky, and so make it hard to get an actual knee thrusting pose (like it’s charging forward). The beam sabers although cool (and in a nice green), are fairly hard to pose with. As I said earlier, swinging the arms forward or back, without changing the Binder positions drastically, makes the arms useless. And it’s not always a guarantee (after redoing the binders, which can take a while) that the arms will stay upright.  And in order to properly pose with beam sabers (nothing less will do here!), one needs to move the arms a fair amount. That doesn’t mean they can’t look cool though!

Final Thoughts

So beautiful. So big!

Articulation: 7/10 fairly mediocre for a kit this big. It’s kind of bulky.

Aesthetics: 9/10 Perfectly done! The kit looks evil, as well as looking like a prototype mobile suit (see top of page).

Playablilty: 6/10 Posing this kit, for lack of a better word, is a bitch. It takes a good while of juggling multiple aspects of the model to get this into a pose.

Build-ability: 8/10 Surprisingly simple. Nothing’s needless or wasted (construction-wise). Everything you see, you can probably guess how it’s built. One thing to point out is that the PollyCaps are somewhat misplaced. none of the main joints (hips and shoulder joints, mainly) have PC’s in them. I don’t know whether to attribute this to the sloppiness of the shoulder joint at some points though…

Detail: 9/10 A lot of things are kind of bland. But there’s a good amount of things to draw the eyes, and plus points for the details on the chest and sleeves.

Overall: 7/10 I honestly love this Mobile suit. It looks great, and I have to say I have trouble finding mobile suits that look evil. I really do try my best to keep it off of an action base, as they really scare me, especially with something this big. One of my biggest complaints about this kit the fact that it only comes with one pair of hands. Something this big should have more than one crappy set of hands. I’m slightly disappointed that the funnels can’t really come out (no good stand, etc), but then I won’t be able to lose any of them. The stock price of 4,500 Yen (about 54.00 USD), is a bit steep, and you are almost solely paying for a big kit. But I think it’s worth the price, because this is one big Kit I’m happy to make room for!