BANDAI Hobby - Z Gundam - #10 Zeta Gundam RG Model Kit

Highly detailed and complicated build, but not too terrible other than some extremely tiny stickers (fake screwheads on the elbow joints about the side of a bolded period in a newspaper.) This is my first non HG or SD Gundam kit, and I adore the way it builds off an internal (largely pre assembled!) skeleton, it feels a lot sturdier than the hollow plastic kits and looks great. I had some trouble attaching the chest to the back, wound up breaking a couple tabs, but it was an easy fix.Tip: the flat part of the bar the chest transformation hinge has slots into the back panel, the actual joints are on the sides of the bar thanks to the skeleton system it uses. Reviews warned me to be careful with the arms, so I'll pass that on as well.Too bad the flight stand I ordered isn't showing up for like another month.

This kit, no doubt, in my collection of 25 or so Gundams in basically every grade but Perfect, is the coolest looking. It is, however, no doubt, the biggest pain in the butt. Not to mince words: the kit is so detailed it's ridiculous. The only thing you'll need paint for, is to panel line, and if you want to touch up blemished areas that were attached to the parts tree. And the 200 some decals give it that 'real' look, there's detail absolutely everywhere you look, it really rivals the Perfect Grade in that aspect, especially when price is considered. It has an incredibly detailed transformation (well, too detailed, I'll get to that), that goes about pretty much the way it did on the show, antenna coming together, head dropping into the body and all. It has a tiny cockpit, a tiny, white Kamille figure (good luck painting that one!), awesome shield, awesome beam rifle with two beams to attach to it a la the show, and two beam sabers. Every joint is quite articulate, down to the wings, which you can pose basically however you wish.However, this thing is just..so prone to falling apart. Side skirts fall off, due to attachments that are basically designed for it to fall off, like every other Gunpla. The upper body and head are all strong, as well as the legs will more than likely never come apart at the hips. The wings will fall off at either the ball joint side or the clip side at any sign of adversity. The center wing part will pop off if you try to move it around. The little heel parts of the feet tend to pop off, and the legs, due to their extreme articulation, don't hold everything up as well as they need to.The transformation is very difficult too. I don't recommend doing it often. It took me about 30 minutes to complete, and it wasn't even worth it, because the wings held together so loosely, and the final product feels even more fragile than the previous state. It is pretty cool looking, you can see a lot of grey 'real grade' type detail in the middle, and I really do love the way way the legs fold up at the knee, that's awesome stuff right there. But just take it pic of it and put it back to normal. And be very careful transforming it, bending it only at joints, and angles you know the joints are made to go, and not overextending anything. Just look around youtube to find some people breaking, or speaking of breaking the kit during transformation.Also, handle the kit very softly in general. While working with my kit, with the amount of pressure I'd apply assembling any other of my Gundpla, I actually broke a few parts, which took a lot of patience and cement, and super glue to fix. I was considerably blow away when I was panel lining the wings, in white, and when I was rubbing away some access a piece of the corner chipped off and into my hand. Also, if you play on keeping the legs, arms, etc. separated until you paint, only put the legs into the hip mounts once. I was taking them on and off, wanting to keep them off for painting, but wanting to see my progress as I went along, and I actually cracked the tiny little ring they attach into at the hip doing so too much.As far as who I would recommend this to, I would say, a huge Zeta fan, who is a veteran builder, aware of how delicate the kit has to be handled, but wanting the best Zeta kit under PG, would be the perfect candidate. You might want to stick to the HGUC if you've only built HG's thus far, though.

Yes. I have two of these. One in Mobile Suit mode and the other in Waverider mode. The Waverider is on one of the Bandai stands. Side by side, they look amazing together. This is a fragile unit. You have to be careful with it and take your time. But it has a ton of details and about 200 stickers. The transforming instructions are in Japanese and are terrible to follow. However, YouTube has many videos on how to do the transformation correctly.

I had been assembling Gundam since I was four yrs old. I had been building PG, MG, HG, or B-club resin kit. This is by far the worst Gundam product from Bandai. The red part in the head broke easily. The chest area can never align properly. The whole design is too weak for a 1/144 scale. If you want the Z-Gundam, go for the HGUC version.

This was the third real grade kit I put together after the Nu Gundam and Sazabi; and I really wanted enjoy the kit since the Zeta is my favorite UC gundam, but this kit has some issues that can't be ignored.Due to the transformation mechanism, this kit is not the most stable and will remain in its mobile suit configuration. In order to enable the transformation the torso of the mobile suit is pretty much empty and the chest hangs down over the head this makes the sides in the lower torso look somewhat weird and either the part where the head comes up doesn't come up far enough or the part that folds over to be the front of the chest doesn't come far enough out and/or down so the neck area looks a bit strange. The backpack is also a huge pain to get on properly. I'm a bit reluctant to place the kit into some poses due to how unsturdy it feels.Its still a Zeta Gundam and does look nice. It also comes with the Zeta's long rifle, its unique shield, two beam sabers with standard effects, and a longer beam saber effect that can also fit into the barrel of the rifle. It's a nice kit but I wouldn't recommend it unless you really like the Zeta Gundam, or you've built the other real grade kits and are looking for another 1/144 kit.

Gundam models in general look great from PG all the way down. I really like the technicality of building them because the pieces are just enough before assembly becomes tedious.About this model specifically, I like it because it is one of the few that can transform. The engineering involved in creating the parts to make it transform is absolutely brilliant. Just be careful with the arm and hip joints because it can cause a lot of stress to transform it, especially if it is the first time transforming it. I have already broken the shoulder joints that fold the arms in because I thought it could bend the other way when it didn't. Lucky someone on ebay sells parts and I was able to fix it. It would be wise to order two of these guys, one as is the picture and the other as the transformed version and keep it like that so that you don't have to transform it at all.