The great people at HobbyLink Japan were kind enough to send me this amazing kit to build and share with you, the 1/48 Mega sized Gundam!
Of course first i have to say this thing is HUGE! As you can see in the comparison shot below with my 1/60 and 1/144 Zakus, this kit towers over even the perfect grade models and more than dwarfs any other scale at almost 15 inches tall! While i love the size and detail of this kit there is no inner framework or cockpit scheme like some other MG and PG kits which would have been great things to see. Put simply it is built like a very large HG kit with many of the limbs only consisting of two halved pieces, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing because they really did pack a lot of detail into the rest of this kit.
I also took the opportunity to add in some personal details like brass rod antennas for the beam sabers and the head, and also add a few panel holes with a pin vise that you can see in the pictures below. There is also a booklet included with the kit that offers a lot of great suggestions for leveling up the detail of the kit. For painting i decided to go with one of my favorite old school color schemes for the RX-78, the Gundam Real Type Color scheme.
With careful examination of the kit and some simple masking i was rather pleased with the result and there is a lot of potential with masking all the panel details throughout the kit. Building this was very straight forward and simple with great full color instructions and the addition of new symbols on the runners correlating to what portion of the body they belong to was a nice touch. They also include other gimmicks like small Gunpla pliers for removing larger parts from the runners. The eyes were also very clever using a clear yellow lens backed with a white piece to make them really stand out and i was very pleased with the joint system which looks great. Over all this kit was an incredibly fun build and is easily one of my new favorites. I hope you enjoy!
