The Silent Room

Holidays are here, and that only means yet another bandwidth-consuming Gundam review! [Man, the blogosphere really oughta thank me for this.] Next in the line of my most wanted Gundams is the not-so-new 1/100 No-Grade MBF-P02 Astray Red Frame of the Gundam Seed Astray manga series. I can’t really tell you much of a story since I don’t read that particular manga, nor do I care. But the only reason I decided to get this dude is because he looks awfully hot. Unlike the newer 1/100 No-Grade kits from the GSD line [which costs about RM110], the Red Frame costs only RM95! So anyway, let’s get straight to the details!

Kit Construction
As with most No-Grade 1/100′s, the Red Frame is relatively easy to build. The only real problem is getting it to look good. There’s plenty of panel lines to be drawn in, and plenty of nooks and crannies that have their own colour marks not available on stickers. It also has plenty of contact surfaces that can come off quite easily, so some glue or plastic cement really helps. This is definitely not a kit for total newbies. You will need at least a bit of experience of assembling and colouring model kits before attempting the Red Frame, unless you want something that looks dull, boring and/or extremely messy shit [like mine].

It also contains quite a number of small parts that can easily go missing if you mishandle them. So a certain amount of precision, caution and patience is needed. If you’re hasty you might go crazy and weep over it.

Features
The first thing you would notice on the Red Frame is the tremendous amount of details. As I have mentioned, there’s so much panels lines to be drawn I spent 2/3 of the time building it just penning them in and colouring some of the parts. Take a look at some close-up shots.

I personally like how the reds and whites alternate and complement each other nicely. As you can see, there’s plenty of tiny bits and pieces, and they’re a pain to put together. However, as a result, a fucking beautiful sculpture. The body, especially, is a masterpiece. The amount of detail there alone is staggering.

Weapons

Red Frame sports the default weapon sets of most mobile suits in the C.E. Gundam universe i.e. a beam rifle and shield. Nothing special about the rifle, though. But the hand that holds the rifle is. Instead of the regular fist, it’s got an additional hand unit with an extended forefinger to be placed at the rifle’s trigger. Pretty damn sweet, I say.

The shield looks like a recoloured version of Strike‘s shield, LOL. But then again, the plot goes that Astrays are built upon stolen technology that can be found on Strike. Not too surprising imo. The mechanism on the shield is quite cool, too.

Different positions of the shiled grip. Neat stuff IMO.

The Red Frame also carries two beam sabers in it backpack. The ‘blades’ are standard issue transluscent pink plastic. However, the fists don’t grip it quite well so it’s quite loose and falls off easily when tilted, so nahhh…

Speaking of the backpack, I find it to be an interesting piece. You can shift its position to either lock it on the shoulders, or unlock it and rest it on the lower torso. I think a practical use would be to act as a counterbalance when leaning forward. Then again, it doesn’t carry much weight be fill up that position. Aside from a place to hold its boosters and beam sabers, it really isn’t anything special. Looks nice, though.

Here’s comes the highlight of the show, the one thing that sets the Red Frame apart from other Gundams; its Gerbera Straight Katana, a big shiny metallic sword that makes it look even more menacing than Sword Impulse with its two Excaliburs! Comes equipped with a sheath that locks at the left waist.

It’s an absolute beauty. The only gripe I have is when I got down to colouring it, LOL. It’s got plenty of features that require precise and clean colouring. Otherwise you get a plain white hilt in a plain white sheath. I tried colouring it, but it turns out quite messy, though. I was told only airbrushing produces top notch results. But hell if I care, it’s not like I’m joining a contest.

Mechanism
This has to be my favourite part of the review. The Red Frame is probably the most flexible model I have in my collection. Let’s start off with the arms. While keeping to traditional articulation, the arms are designed nicely where the elbow joints are locked. The upper arm has an additional block that allows the whole arm to swing out and rotate on it. It’s also attached to a special shoulder joint that plugs from the top of the torso instead of the sides. This allows the whole arm to swivel an additional 30 degrees or so.

This is the best best BESTESTESTEST part. My previous models have a fixed wrist that ends with a socket to plug in the ball-jointed hands. The Red Frame however takes an extra step further. To allow greater poseability with the sword, they built in an extra hinge at the wrists! For a No-Grade, I think that’s absolutely awesome.

On to the legs. This too, is a piece of wonder. It took me quite a while to build each leg, but the results amazed me greatly. Because it doesn’t have a skirting plate of any sort, it’s legs can easily swing back and forth to sweep an angle of over 135 degrees! However, the hip joints are plug-and-socket instead of ball-and-socket. This only means it comes off quite often while posing. However, it’s thighs attaches to the hips via an additional hip block, like the shoulders and allows for greater poseabilty than any model I have built [oh, please, I've only built 3 before this one, LOL]. The knees, like the elbows, are locked joints yet they allow for a full bend and lets you do a crouched leg pose.

Those circles you see? That’s where the joints are. Yes, bitch, SEVEN OF THEM! Did you see that? The feet, while attached to a standard ball-and-socket joint, has an extra ANKLE joint! This allows each foot to fully flex upward when you swing the legs back to do that crouching pose. My only complaint is that the feet can’t flex downward, so it really can’t put it’s best foot forward :p

As an added bonus, there yet ANOTHER extra joint. Just below the chest is a little hinge that lets the body do a slight ‘bow’ whenever you do any sword poses. It deserves a cookie for that one!

Conclusion
So there you have it. Overall I’d say it’s the most fun Gundam I’ve built, excluding the fact that the colouring turns out messy and shit. It’s not exactly noob-friendly, so I suggest newbies to get a hang of building Gundams by making some other kits first. For all it’s goods, it deserves a 9 out of 10, the only point missing is for the colouring difficulties and feet flaw.