Kimi The Builder

The gramps that I never seem to be able to get

Release Date: June 2010

Retail Price: NTD $ 1,500.00* (MYR RM201.97*/ USD $48.49*)

*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation

HELLO!

Kimi here and I’m back once again this week with a new Unboxing and First impressions episode! This week, we will be unboxing a pretty old MG kit and probably one of the last kits that were left in which I purchased earlier this year during my epic Taiwan trip. One that has actually been on my must-buy list for the longest of time and the one MG Ver.2.0 grandpa that I feel is the most complete/perfect version of the MG Ver.2.0 line of grandpas yet!

Though if I were, to be honest with all of you here, this isn’t really an uncommon kit, but I don’t know why, this particular MG has been one of those kits that every time I want to get it, it’s never available and when I’m broke af suddenly this kit would suddenly become available. This was one of the kits that I came across out of sheer luck, and when I saw it I knew that I should immediately get it there since I know I wouldn’t come across another chance like this again.

Yes, I realize when looking back at the price that I bought the MG FA Gundam with that the kit is quite expensive when compared to what I can get back home or at the ‘cheaper’ places. But at the time I was really convinced that there will be no way that I will come across this kit again. Plus, at the very least I finally have it here in my arms.

Tho there is another thing that I realized as I was looking at this kit and reminiscing about the Taiwan trip…that this MG kit was actually one of the very first kits that I got in Taiwan, but now it is the last kit that I’m doing the unboxing and first impressions of.

Funny eh?

Anyways back to the kit, I have to be honest that in this past few weeks I’ve been seeing a lot of pretty rad box arts from newly released HG’s and RG’s, but I really miss seeing the ‘always looked glorious’ looking MG box arts. So, you can imagine I was thoroughly enjoying my time staring at this particular MG Boxart.

Honestly, though, we have to admit that the MG FA Gundam does come with a glorious illustration. Illustrated by Tenjin Hidetaka, you really get the full awesome view of the FA Gundam on the front of the box…looking badass af as it stared down looking at the incoming confrontation against the infamous Johnny Ridden’s MS-06-R2! In the awesome backround here you get to see the EFSF Magellan Cruiser in action with other FA Gundams and f variant Zakus in battle.

Really as I am looking at this glorious box art, one cannot help to feel like wanting to frame the whole MG Ver.2.0 FA Gundam’s box cover and have it displayed in the home base. It was so good that even those that interested in the hobby was impressed by the level of awesomeness that was portrayed here.

As I move on to the actual unboxing this awesome MG kit, I was greeted with some familiar and some new unfamiliar runners. It should be said that to those that have some experience with the MG Ver.2.0 gramps, that there are a lot of parts here that are taken from the MG Ver.2.0 Gramps in which you will be quite familiar with. I’m quite impressed by the green and grey color scheme that was applied here, the colors on the parts are really good. However, I noticed at some of the runners with the green colored parts does have some quite questionable quality.

I’m not saying that the parts for this kit are molded badly in fact that the molds from what we can see here on the surface level anyways looked quite decent. But it’s like the parts looked like it had a very…cheap look to it.

Regardless of the unfortunate cheap look at the very least the details that could be seen on the parts still looked quite impressive and not to mention I can’t help to feel a bit nostalgic as I looked at some of the original Granpa parts. Why you may ask? Well, it has been 10 years since I built the Original Ver.2.0 grandpa, so yeah looking at this I really can’t help to reminisce on all of those awesome exciting times that I spent building the MG Ver.2.0 Grandpa.

To be real though, I’m expecting this to be much less the same experience I had with the Original MG Ver.2.0 Grandpa but with a bit more stuff to do obviously. haha.

Since this is a pretty old kit, obviously you will get a kit with an untranslated manual. One might expect to see a Manual that is rich in lore and content since this was a kit that was released during the old golden years of the MG kits, however, what we find here is a manual that is not the same Rich in lore content as the previous manuals from the other older MG kits that we’ve covered before. Instead, this MG kit had a manual that is more akin to what you would find with the more modern MG manuals. Regardless with that said, the lore section for this MG kit still does comes with awesome lore and info here. Not to mention, it was nice to see Bandai included the Granpa Evolution chart in the manual.

As I move on to the Instructional section of the manual, I have to say that the building instruction for this particular kit looked quite standard at the surface level at least. However since the text is mostly in Japanese, we aren’t sure how it would affect the overall experience building this, That I feel is only possible to double check as soon as I start working on this awesome kit.

Overall, I things do look quite good here, despite my earlier concern on how the green colored parts looked…I believe it might not look so bad as soon as I start work on them and have all of them worked up. Plus since it is based on one of my fav line of kits it might be looking like I would be embarking on another one fun adventure here 😀

Though I do want to take the time to apologize here for the delay of the RG Sazabi’s review. Yes, I admit that building it does take a lot longer than I expected and it was because of two reasons. One, it was because I had some family matters that was in need of attention and two, I was really finding the kit to be quite something. so I decided to not rush building it through. haha.

I do hope that the following week I could publish the review for the RG Sazabi without any delays and thanks again, to all of you for your patience!

Now back to building the awesome RG Sazabi!

With that ends the Unboxing and First Impressions of the MG 1/100 FA-78-1 Full Armour Gundam! To be honest, I was having a lot of awesome flashbacks when every time I stare at the familiar sections of the old Ver.2.0 MG Gramps here. Since that was the year that I was really getting into building the all the awesome cheap MG’s that I could get my hands on and as well this was one of those kits that really managed to put a HUGE smile on my face.

I am excited and yet looking forward to building this awesome plastic kit! Though, I do wonder if as soon as I start work on this…would my enjoyment of building this be effected after building so many AWESOME kits in this couple of weeks? Hmm, honestly am not sure but we shall see how it goes.

Anyways, we will be back again this week more Let’s Talk Gunpla Segment on the coming Wednesday and we will be back as well on the coming Sunday with the review for the RG 1/144 MSN-04 Sazabi (fo’ realz this time)! So, do look forward to that!

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Anyways, we shall see all of you again next week, and we hope that you all have an awesome week and weekend ahead! Have an awesome Gunpla building time there as well and until next time!

Ciao!