Gunpla #32 - HGUC GM Ground Type Review

Finally got this guy on its release day (which is really a good thing if you stay in Japan). While the normal price on the box shows 1500 Yen, the kit was sold with much cheaper price at retail shops such as Yodobashi Camera or Biccamera. I only paid around 1200 Yen this time.

What a cool box art

Similar with the previous 08MS Team's kits, the box art was gorgeous, showing three GMs in the battle field, holding different machine gun, bazooka and net gun while Zakus flying in the background. The box also shows description, history and features of the kit in Japanese and ENGLISH. Nice!

Now let's do the unboxing. The box contains 8 runners in total, with 6 PS runners (they're rather soft plastics), 1 clear runner for beam saber and 1 polycaps runner. The others are a manual, foil sticker, transparent sticker (numbers only) and an enquete paper? I barely read Kanji, but I suppose the runners are completely new, not reused from previous kits.

Unfortunately, the net gun, which was shown with light grey color on the boxart and previous release images in fact, only has the the same color with bazooka, which is dark grey.

The building itself was simple and straightforward. There are lots of panel lines, so I suggest it's better to do panel lining for each part from the beginning. One of the most interesting things about this kit is the ball joint on the chest armor which provides articulation for the torso to move back and forth, as well as for side-to-side movement, which is quite similar with HG Gundam Revive. Another cool gimmick is the beam saber rack which is stored at the calves of the legs instead of on the backpack as typical feddies mobile suits.

The orange colors look nice with the blending of brownish white. Unfortunately, the white part of chest vents are stickers, but I suppose painting them is not so difficult. There are also tiny stickers for the chest, legs and calves which store the beam sabers. The backpack is assembled by two parts and unfortunately, there are no holes for custom parts (why Bandai, why ??).

    

The finished body looks really great. as well as the accessories which come with this kit. You'll get a machine gun, bazooka, net gun, two beam sabers, and an open left hand. There are no trigger hands needed because the weapons could just slide into the standard close hands, which means the GM could freely grab the weapons on the right or left hand. There's also nice part separation on the machine gun. Pretty cool and quite much for a HG kit with price less than 1.5k Yen.

 Anyway, how about the articulation?? It's amazing!! Just look at these pictures.

The joints are rock solid with wide range of movements. No wonder it could make many cool poses. In term of articulation, this guy probably in par with the Gundam Revive. It's really fun playing with it.

Some extra pictures.

So here's the verdict. This kit probably is the best GM ever released in 1/144 scale. It just excels in many aspects: great details, bunch of accessories, amazing articulation and cheap price. I couldn't say anything more. I truly recommend this kit, especially for the GM or HGUC fans.

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RGM-79[G] GM Ground Type

Pros:

• Great details with many panel lines and nice color scheme.
• Amazing articulation. Probably one of the best in HG line.
• Bunch of accessories for a relatively cheap kit.

Cons:

• Some parts still use sticker for color separation, especially the chest vents.
• No color separation for the net gun.
• No custom connectors on the backpack (for custom builder parts).