Gunpla #52 - RG Nu Gundam Review

Youtube review: https://youtu.be/GmIUivD0h70

Hi guys, it’s me again with another gunpla review, and today, I will talk about the most anticipated real grade kit of 2019, The Real Grade Nu Gundam from mobile suit gundam: Chars Counter Attack. As usual, before reviewing the kit, I would like to inform you that the original price of this kit is 4536 Yen (including the tax). I actually have started working on this kit since last week, but because of Obon Holiday in Japan, I became occupied with other things and got delayed on finishing the kit. By the way, another reason which made me so late making this review is because I spent too much time playing with the kit. Probably, this is the first time I had so much fun playing with an RG kit. I will show you why later. I will review the completed kit with the panel lines and decal stickers applied on it, then the articulation, gimmicks and options you have to play with it, and finally I will show you how to use effect parts for the fin funnels of the gundam.

So, here’s the completed Nu Gundam with panel lines and decal stickers applied on the kit. I think I don’t need to say much, because it’s just simply amazing, so detailed and totally eye candy. Everything looks right, the panel lines, the markings, everything. There are at least two tones of white for this kit. You can see slightly grayish white on the head, shoulders, front skirts, inner arms, and some parts of the legs. Similar with Real Grade Sazabi, this kit is not simply a scale-down MG Nu Gundam Ver Ka, because there are quite many things which differentiate this kit with its Master Grade counterparts. In term of proportion, I personally prefer this RG version compared to MG Nu ver Ka. The head is probably a little bit bigger, but I like better it than the MG version which has longer face. And the most important thing is, there are no psychoframe gimmicks on this kit like MG ver Ka . Some people may love it, and some probably hate it, but if you knew the story, the psychoframe for nu gundam exists around the cockpit only, so this RG version is actually the one which is more anime accurate compared to its MG counterpart.

The construction of this RG kit is a little bit similar with RG Sazabi. One thing I found very interesting about this kit however, is the role of Advanced MS Joint which is not used for the main body of the mobile suit, but rather for the fin funnels. The torso and limbs of Nu Gundam on the other hand, use inner frames quite similar with MG kit. So ... It kinda feels like building a MG kit in 1/144 scale. While building this kit, pay attention to the shoulder-torso joints and waist – leg joints, because they are quite difficult to connect. If you put too much pressure on the joints, it may end up with nasty stress marks on them. Also, be careful with the “v” insignia at the crotch, because it is really small and difficult to put on the place. Other than that, the assembly process of this kit is really enjoyable. Probably one of the best experience of I’ve ever had in gunpla building.

One thing which made many people skeptical when RG Nu Gundam was announced is the fin funnels. I guess everybody know how fragile the fin funnels connection on MG Nu Gundam ver Ka, however, such thing is not gonna happen again this time. While the connection itself looks a little bit similar, the difference in size and mass makes the fin funnels on RG Nu Gundam much more stable than its MG counterpart. So stable, they didn’t even fall apart when I shook the kit. In order to make the posing easier and more enjoyable, this kit introduced a new action base connection. Instead of connected to the crotch as normal RG kits usually do, the action base adapter is now connected to the backpack, and it could be attached to peg connector of action base. Since Nu Gundam has large funnels on its back, this new way of connection proven very useful to avoid them fall apart from the shocks while connecting the kit to the action base.       

Anyway, the thing that makes RG Nu Gundam stands out from another RG kits is the articulation. If you have built RG Sazabi before, you may notice that the kit had outstanding articulation despite its giant body. However, the joints and articulation gimmicks of Sazabi were pretty tight and a little bit difficult to pull out. While still inheriting the amazing articulation of Sazabi, RG Nu Gundam on the other hand, has much smoother and solid joints. It is really easy to move the head, arms, body and legs, without any worry you will break the plastics. The wrists of Nu Gundam also had extension gimmicks like Sazabi, but now, it’s much easier to pull out. The legs in particular, have sliding armor gimmicks, where the armors easily move while the leg bends. You can even lift the legs even further by modifying some joints on the waist section, which in my opinion is the most complicated gimmick of this kit. In order to do this, you need to apply a kind of locking-unlocking mechanism on some parts of the waist. Moving to the main body, the torso of this Nu Gundam incorporates an amazing articulation system which allows you to bend it forward, backward, left or even right so much easier than you can imagine. And the most important thing is, everything is so solid and nothing breaks or falls apart when you move any body parts of this kit.

Another incredible thing this kit inherits from the RG Sazabi is open hatch gimmicks. Some body parts like shoulders, cockpit, chest, front skirts and calves could be opened in certain degrees. Again, all these gimmicks are really simple and easy to pull out. Also, these gimmicks also give hints that Bandai may probably released add-on for Heavy Weapon System for this kit in the near future.

All this things make RG Nu Gundam really fun to play with. You can make so many cool poses without any worries of falling parts or fin funnels. Seriously, in terms of articulation and stability, there is no doubt that Nu Gundam is currently the king of RG line.

Similar with RG Sazabi, this kit comes with three sets of hands and one right trigger hand. It retains the beam rifle, shield, bazooka and two beam sabers with three beam effect parts, and of course there’s also a tiny figurine of Amuro Ray. The bazooka could easily be attached to the backpack with a special peg connector. This kit also comes with backpack parts to make the double fin funnels system, which is will be released as p-bandai next month. This is not covered in the manual, but you could actually make the light version of double fin funnels with the backpack part. And of course, if you have two RG Nu Gundams, you could make the actual double fin funnels without buying the p-bandai kit.

Anyway, despite all its greatness, there’s one downside of this kit: the shield. While the shield itself is beautiful and highly detailed, it has one major flaw. Instead of using peg connector, the shield just simply clips around the arm which is not very secure since a slight shock could make it falls off.

 The last thing I would like to talk is the effect parts for fin funnels. Bandai released figure-rise-jet effect on the same day as RG Nu Gundam, and they are perfectly compatible. These effect parts come in two sets of colors, yellow and blue, and each set could be use for three fin funnels. Remember, only three funnels, so if you want all six funnels flying, you should buy at least 2 sets of effect parts. This effect part has two kinds of connector, the “plus” shaped connectors which could be attached to Nu Gundam fin funnels, and “circle” shaped connectors which could be used for ... guess what ? Yes, for the funnels of RG Sazabi. Using these effect parts, you can recreate the battle scenes of these two iconic mobile suits from the anime. Believe me, it was so satisfying to play with these two kits together.

The verdict is, I have no doubt that the RG Nu Gundam by far, is the best RG kit ever released by Bandai. Certainly it is not a perfect kit, but in term of aesthetics, articulation, gimmicks and stability, this is truly an engineering marvel and one of the best experience I’ve ever had from gundam plastic model kit. No matter if you are a fan of Nu Gundam or not, I recommend you to have this kit, build it, pose it and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment.

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RX-93 Nu Gundam

Pros:

• Man ... Except the shield connection, everything was perfect

Cons:

• Shield connection was very unsecured, really easy to fall off

Gunpla #51 - P-Bandai RG Tallgeese III Review

Youtube review: https://youtu.be/jMT4p-5nKHY

Hello, guys. It’s me again with the gunpla review, and the kit which I would like to review this time will be: the premium bandai exclusive, real grade, tallgeese III from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Endless Waltz. Tallgeese III is one of the most anticipated pbandai real grade kits of 2019.  I bought this kit directly from premium bandai hobby site, with the price of 3024 Japanese yen (excluding tax), which is around 300 yen more expensive than pbandai Tallgeese II which was released earlier this year, for a good reason. Anyway, without further ado, let’s start with the review of the kit.

As you can see, this is the out-of-the-box look of Tallgeese III, with panel lines and all sticker markings applied on the kit. While maintaining most of basic frame and colors of the original Tallgeese Endless Waltz, you could clearly see some major differences between this kit and its retail brother. With bigger shoulders and slimmer head piece, Tallgeese III looks more robust, compared to Tallgeese I and II. Similar with previous Tallgeeses, this kit mostly has glossy body armors with some flat surfaces for the cockpit, shoulders, head, hips and backpack. It also has at least two shades of blue, which could be easily seen on the backpack thrusters.  In contrary with Tallgeese I and II which both have dark frames, the main body frame of Tallgeese III are primarily consists of white and creamy-color parts.

Anyway, the most striking features which make Tallgeese III looks so much different with its brother units obviously, are the weapons. Instead of a dober gun and round shield, this white mobile suit has a mega canon and shield which are much bigger than the original Tallgesee. The mega canon has nice details and color separation, and similar with the dober gun, it also connected to special articulated joints to Tallgese III right shoulder and it has extension gimmick to switch between compact mode and canon mode. The shield, on the other hand, while still retaining to host the beam sabers, also has another weapon in the form of heat rod. This weapon could be extended by part-swapping the spike at the end of the shield with fully retracted heat-rod parts. This rod extension was built along a wire cable, and has 7 segments which could be moved and curled easily. Unfortunately, the rod on this RG kit was shorter compared to the MG version.  Nevertheless, the addition of these two weapons truly makes Tallgeese III looks much more menacing and badass compared to Tallgeese I and II.

 Similar with Tallgeese EW, this kit came with standard clench hands, open hands, weapon holding hands and a special right hand to hold the beam saber. It also came with a small figure of Zech Marquise, and several left over parts from the original Tallgeese.

The articulation of this kit is basically same with previous Tallgeese. If you have built RG Tallgeese before, you may notice that the joints of torso and limbs are mostly tight and quite harder to move, hence making quite hard for posing. These tight joints however, make the kit so solid (and somewhat stiff enough) once you set it into a pose.  The backpack thrusters, beam canon and heat rod on the other hand, are quite easy to move and play with.

 As other RG kits, Tallgeese III came with sticker markings. While these kind of stickers are basically ugly and annoying, I should admit they looked good on this kit, basically because the white background color of the kit greatly conceal the plastic film of the stickers, making them look more natural except on some dark color surfaces.

And finally, the verdict about this kit.  In my opinion, this kit is one of the best RG kits of 2019, and if you are a fan of wing series, especially Tallgeese, you should pick this kit up. It looks so badass and compared to previously released P-Bandai Tallgeese II, this Tallgeese III is definitely a much better kit, with the better aesthetics, accessories and values considering the price difference between those two.

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OZ-00MS2B Tallgeese III

Pros:

• Great design with much more details than previously released RG Tallgeese EW/II
• More badass weapons and gimmicks
• Good stickers for an RG kit

Cons:

• Heat rod is shorter compared to MG version (or DM version)

Research Note #22 - Reading GCOM-C 250m-Res HDF5 Data with Fortran

There were not so many references about 'simple' ways to open and read HDF5 data file with Fortran as well as compiling the codes. I said 'simple', because there are actually manuals and tutorials about that purpose, however, most of them were too complicated and refer to other sub-references, thus blah .. blah ... it takes too much time, especially if you just simply want to open, read and compile a HDF dataset. Here, I posted a very basic way to access HDF5 data, using very minimal Fortran code. Before starting, here's the convention:

• I used Linux OS. 
• I used Fortran 90 for programming.
• HDF5 (ver 1.8.17) libraries has been already installed in my system as module.
• I used JAXA's GCOM-C NDVI Monthly statistics (Level-2 data) with 250m spatial resolution with Sinusoidal/EQA projection. This data contains 4800x4800 pixels. For exemplary purpose, I renamed it to "ndvi.h5".

So, the following is a very basic example of Fortran code to open and read HDF5 data:

PROGRAM HDF5test

   USE HDF5

   IMPLICIT NONE

   INTEGER :: hdferr, i, j

   INTEGER(HID_T) :: fileid, dset

   CHARACTER(LEN=7), PARAMETER :: filename = "ndvi.h5"

   CHARACTER(LEN=19), PARAMETER :: dataset = "Image_data/NDVI_AVE"

   INTEGER, PARAMETER :: xdim = 4800

   INTEGER, PARAMETER :: ydim = 4800

   INTEGER, DIMENSION(1:xdim, 1:ydim) :: ndvi_ave

   INTEGER(HSIZE_T), DIMENSION(1:2) :: dims = (/xdim, ydim/)

   

   CALL h5open_f(hdferr)

   CALL h5fopen_f(filename, H5F_ACC_RDONLY_F, fileid, hdferr)

   CALL h5dopen_f(fileid, dataset, dset, hdferr)

   CALL h5dread_f(dset, H5T_NATIVE_INTEGER, ndvi_ave, dims, hdferr)

    DO j = 1, ydim

      DO i = 1, xdim

         print *, ndvi_ave(i,j)

      ENDDO

   ENDDO

  CALL h5dclose_f(dset, hdferr)

  CALL h5fclose_f(fileid, hdferr)

  CALL h5close_f(hdferr)

END PROGRAM HDFtest

The most important lines are:

• CALL h5open_f(hdferr). This function initializes HDF5 library for Fortran uses. Returns 0 (to hdferr variable) if it's successful, and -1 if it's failed.
• CALL h5fopen_f(filename, H5F_ACC_RDONLY_F, fileid, hdferr). This function opens an existing HDF5 file. In this example, I just want to read it, hence H5F_ACC_RDONLY_F was used as argument. This function will return integers for file identifier and status to fileid and hdferr variables, respectively.
• CALL h5dopen_f(fileid, dataset, dset, hdferr). This function opens an existing dataset in the opened file. Take notice that it needs file identifier (from h5fopen_f), dataset name, dataset identifier and status (as previous functions).
• CALL h5dread_f(dset, H5T_NATIVE_INTEGER, ndvi_ave, dims, hdferr). This function reads raw data from dataset of the file, into a buffer. The buffer means a space in the computer memory, this could be a variable or array. Take notice that it need dataset identifier (from h5dopen_f), memory data type (Native integer), buffer, dimension (to store buffer dimension) and as always, status (hdferr).

To make it simple, the program will firstly initialize HDF5 library, opens an existing HDF5 datafile, opens a dataset from that file (a file could consist of many datasets), read the raw data from the dataset, put the data into an array buffer, then prints the contents of the buffer into the screen. Finally, it closes the dataset, closes the file and ultimately deactivates HDF5 library (flush and cleans the memory). That's all.

Another important thing is variable declaration. HID_T and HSIZE_T are parameters for predefined datatype used by HDF5 library. So, don't be confused with them (for details, just read: https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/fortran/index.html).

Finally, save and give the codes a name (for example: test.f90). To compile the code, just use this command on (bash) shell:

$ h5fc -o test.exe test.f90

It's just similar with a normal Fortran compiler command. If you don't specify a name for the output, a file named 'a.out' will be generated by the compiler.

Gunpla #50 - HGUC Gundam TR-1 [Hazel-Rah] Review

I was so busy with my study for the last one month, thus in order to save time, I decided to make a review of a combination of two HGUC kits instead of reviewing them individually (I will do it soon though). This time, the lucky kit is Gundam TR-1 [Hazel-Rah], or just call it Hazel-Rah. 

I'm pretty sure, many of you, in particular the AoZ fans, knew what it is. Hazel-Rah is actually not an official kit, but rather a combination between HGUC Gundam TR-1 Hazel Custom and HGUC Hrududu support fighter, which makes it officially an upgrade of HGUC Hazel-custom. These two kits were actually released by Bandai in the past: Hazel custom as retail released in 2005, followed by Hrududu as an add-on of Dengeki Hobby magazine in 2006. Since Bandai recently got license to AoZ designs, they started releasing many AoZ kits in the past one year. Hazel custom and Hrududu eventually received a re-make, and finally released as p-bandai last month. I won't talk much about each kit, but rather reviewing the end product of their combination.

So, Hazel-Rah is basically a Hazel custom equipped with Hrududu as its backpack, and got an extension for its beam rifle. It is quite similar with HG 00 Gundam combined with 0 Raiser (which was also reviewed in this blog). For making Hazel-Rah, you need a retail or p-bandai Hazel Custom and a p-bandai Hrududu. Yes, a retail OR p-bandai Hazel Custom. I said this because the manual actually states that it needs an unassembled p-bandai Hazel Custom while it actually could use a retail one as well, assembled or unassembled. Greedy Bandai!

If you have already constructed Hazel Custom, you could simply just remove the red cockpit piece from the kit and put the cockpit part of Hrududu on the chest section of Hazel Custom, then put the main body and wing section of Hrududu on Hazel Custom's backpack. Finally, just add the blade rifle sections to the Hazel Custom's beam rifle, and that's it.

While Hazel-Rah could actually stand on its own, I suggest you to use an action base because of the heavy backpack. Another issue is articulation. With such heavy add-ons, moving the body parts is becoming difficult, thus don't expect much for dynamic poses with this kit. If you have two Hrududu kits, you actually could make a second-form variant of Hazel-Rah. Furthermore, if you could kitbash it with Advanced Hazel's scope, subarms and feet to make Hazel-Rah Full Armor form. As a gimmick, the 'claw' on Hrududu's right wing could open, and you could put blade rifle or beam saber effect (I suppose) on it.

As verdict, Hazel-Rah is a great kit. If you have already had a Hrududu, you MUST combine it with Hazel Custom. While this giant lacks articulation because of its massive body, the presentation itself is really amazing. Just put it on your work desk, and you could feel really badass for whole day, believe me (lol). Finally, remember, aside from Hrududu (which is a p-bandai), you only need retail a Hazel custom to make it, not a p-bandai one. 

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RX-121-1+FF-X29A Gundam TR-1 [Hazel-Rah]

Pros:

• Beautiful (and badass) aesthetics

Cons:

• Limited articulation