An interesting but upsetting batch of news this week
HELLO!
We are back again this week with our 92nd edition of our Let’s Talk Gunpla segment! This week we have more news from the P-Bandai front and my,. my, it looks like we have a lot of news to cover this week. From the looks of it seems like P-Bandai is going all out in releasing more HG Advance of Z kits this year and it looks like we are seeing a lot of the TR-1’s too.
But not all of it is Advance of Z kit, we are as well will be getting one SURPRISE MG entry from the ZZ Gundam which when we saw it….made us feel a bit…well let us not spoil it here, so without further ado let us get into it, shall we?
HG 1/144 RX-121-1 Gundam TR-1 [Hazel Custom] & extended parts for TR-6 (HGUC)
Release Date: 2019/05
Estimated price: JPY 1,620* (MYR RM 59.44* / USD $ 14.62*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
This is one kit that when we saw it, it took us a while to digest.
Why?
Well mainly because this is a P-Bandai release which the kit is actually is from an OLD retail release and the only new thing it comes bundled with is just an extended (or conversion) part. Which would enable the TR-1 [Hazel] to be able to combine parts from other existing HG Advance of Z kits (both the ones in the Retail side and the P-Bandai side) which would enable them to convert the HG TR-1 into the awesome RX-124 Gundam TR-6 [Gaplant II]. Aswell it was also mentioned that it would come with parts which well would help the conversion of the parts with one of the P-Bandai entries here with the TR-1.
Which does make this particular kit, a very essential kit to get if you are thinking of doing all those conversions. Plus, to support the ease of the possibility of being able to convert your TR-1’s into TR-6’s or whatever you have in mind both Bandai and P-Bandai re-printed/ re-released all their existing Advance of Z kits to make converting easier.
Though there isn’t much to say about the actual HG TR-1 itself since by now I’m sure some of you here already quite familiar with the HGUC TR-1 [Hazel]. However we are more interested in the expansion parts itself since, well its interesting to see old kits being used to turn into something completely new. I do feel like the addition of this expansion parts into this TR-1 is good for those that are not thinking of converting their existing HGUC TR-1’s into the TR-6 [Gaplant II]’s, since this kit comes already with another TR-1 [Hazel]
But honestly, it would be nice if they were to just release only the expansion set as well. Plus let us not to forget the fact that to those that have the required kits to make this happen what you’ll do with the other parts that are unused from the other kits then? Turn it into another Frankenstein kit? Though yes it would be better to just buy new kits to just make the TR-6 [Gaplant II] happen but then it would make that to be one of the most expensive kits to make since you have to buy 1 P-Bandai kit and another 2 retail kits to make it work. Which we do think is insane…
But that is not the best part yet, no.
When you consider that there is another kit Advance of Z kit that is set to release under the same circumstances as this….
Which is what we will be talking about next too….
HG 1/144 RX-121-2A Gundam TR-1 [Advanced Hazel] & extended parts for TR-6 (HGUC)
Release Date: 2019/06
Estimated price: JPY 1,836* (MYR RM 67.37* / USD $ 16.57*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
YES, the other kit retail kit that was P-Bandai-zed is the HGUC TR-1 [Advanced Hazel] and just like the TR-1 [Hazel] it is as well re-released with the extended (or conversion) parts as well.
Though just like the previously aforementioned TR-1 [Hazel] which we were quite glad to see re-released, the TR-1 [Advanced Hazel] as well is set to be re-released with the same extended parts. Hence it means that you can as well turn the TR-1 [Advanced Hazel] into a differently colored TR-6 [Gaplant II]. But just like what we have said with the TR-1 [Hazel], honestly, we don’t really understand the logic of the existence of this particular kit.
Because let’s be real here guys, they could’ve just released the TR-6 [Gaplant II] as a separate release by just using all the parts from the existing kits instead of having us to just convert our existing Advance of Z kits. It’ll make sense if it was something that was made recently, but it has been 14 years since the kit was released. It’s a bit too late to ask people to convert to their old kits not ain’t it?
Even if you are asking them to rebuy all of the kits mentioned, though it might not be all that expensive. But when you think about all the kits that you need to get to convert into the variant that you want, plus not to mention that you need to get 2 P-Bandai kits. We can’t begin to imagine how insanely expensive that would be. Plus can you imagine how much-unused parts that would be left over from doing that?
Although we do admit to one thing, in which, it is nice of them to think about giving the people the option to convert their beloved TR-1’s into something awesome but as we look at all the money, parts and plastic that would be used to make the TR-6 [Gaplant II], we wonder if all of that is worth it.
We honestly are quite baffled by the announcement of these two.
However not all is bad with the announcements of the Advance of Z kits, there is one (well two actually) announcement that we are pretty happy to be hearing about.
And that would be the announcement for….
HG 1/144 FX-X29A G-Parts (HGUC)
Release Date: 2019/05 (for the white version) 2019/06 (for the Titans color scheme version)
Estimated price: JPY 1,188* (MYR RM 43.59* / USD $ 10.72*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
We remember seeing this being an exclusive kit for the Dengeki Hobby Magazine back in 2006, which was one of the hardest things to get for us in Malaysia since:-
- We don’t really have a lot of book stores that actually carry this magazine here.
- There were only a small number of magazines that were sold here that actually has the G-parts in em.
So yeah, the Dengeki Hobby exclusive HGUC G-Part kit was a pretty hard to get, suffice to say only the lucky few were able to get this with their copy of the magazine. For the rest of us….well..tough luck. So imagine our surprise to finally see P-Bandai picking up the slack and give us something that we’ve been missing out for the HG Advance of Z releases, the G-Parts kit for the HG line up.
And you know what, both versions of the G-Parts look brilliant! Not to mention too that it as well helps to breathe in some new life on both of by now quite old HGUC TR-1 [HAZEL] and the TR-1 [Advance Hazel]. The G-Parts upgrade does make both of the kit looked really badass and not to mention the G-Parts itself looking pretty badass. But unlike the ‘extension’ parts that we just talked about just now, doing a conversion of your existing TR-1’s into the TR-1 [Hazel-Rah] is not really going to break banks or make people sell their kidneys.
Honestly, we are quite excited about this one. We are really looking forward to seeing more of it soon and possibly getting this awesome thing to do like a slight upgrade to our TR-1’s which would make it look more badass than before. Plus it’s good to see that the HG’s finally getting some proper G-Parts love instead of just only seeing it only somewhat widely available for MG’s.
Oh, speaking of MG’s…
MG 1/100 MS-09G Dowadge (MG)
Release Date: 2019/04
Estimated price: JPY 5,400* (MYR RM 198.14* / USD $ 48.72*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
When we all saw this for this first time, we all admit that we were all pretty mad.
Why wouldn’t this piss us off, just take a look at it?
Quite a looker isn’t? No? Well to us it is…
Seriously, we do think that whole thing looks pretty sweet because it is quite obvious that this kit gets a lot of new molds. Like for an instance, you get a sweet new the body unit, head unit, backpack unit, waist unit, leg unit, and the Dowadge even gets two sweet new weapons too. Even though it is obvious that this kit used a lot of existing parts from the existing MG DOM kit, however from what we are seeing here it is not to say that the kit doesn’t come with any improvements to differentiate it to the MG Dom.
In fact, it comes with A LOT of new upgrades to the old MG Dom frame… Like for an instance, they made an addition to the shoulder unit to increase the articulation of the arm unit, new joint system on the waist unit to increase the articulation on the leg unit, in which to improve the articulation on the leg unit and finally they even further improved both the leg units joint system to increase the articulation even more.
To be honest, from what we are seeing here it really looks like they did some pretty significant changes to the older MG Dom Frame to really make the new Dowadge really stand out from its older brother. But at the same time, one might look at this and wonder….
“why isn’t this being made as a retail release?”
That is what all of us here were asking while looking at this kit.
Because when we were looking at all of this, it is hard not to feel like this should’ve been a retail release due to the sheer overwhelming upgrades (and changes) that we are seeing here. Though we would admit we would understand that the reason might be because of the looks of the Dowadge its not really a look that might win hearts if we were, to be honest, even though we do adore the look but at the same time we know that it is a look that not everybody would like. As well as not to mention the fact that the MS itself didn’t really play a HUGE part in the ZZ anime itself might be the reason why we are not seeing this being made as a retail release.
But goddamn still it’s a damn shame that we are not seeing this being released in retail. We do feel like despite it being a risky release, it might be able to benefit from being a retail MG release. Since to be really frank we don’t really get a lot of new ZZ related MG release recently besides the ZZ ver.ka back in 2017.
Regardless, what we feel about the whole situation, we can’t deny the fact that when we look at this we do feel like getting this, it looks good (to us) and not to mention it has a lot of new stuff that come with it. We do think it’s a kit that is worth getting but we all know by now that this is not going to be one kit that is going to be a kit that is easy on the wallet….
Because we all know what a P-Bandai kit would cost us by now….probably an arm or a leg or worst-case scenario? Your kidneys.
With that ends our 92nd edition of our Let’s Talk Gunpla segment! What do you think of this week’s P-Bandai announcements? Is there any kit that you see here that is of interest? We admit that this week the announcements are not all that good, but it was filled with kits that we do find to be quite interesting.
Even though we do have some pretty strong feelings about some of the announcements but we can’t deny the appeal of all of the releases. Honestly regardless of what we feel, I fear our feelings of want will overwhelm our disappointment of the whole situation and we will still find ourselves buying all of these plastic premiums.
Oh well, at least we are not wasting money on drugs eh?
Anyways, we will be back again with more Let’s Talk Gunpla Segment on the next coming Wednesday and this Sunday KIMI will be back with an Unboxing and first Impression post! 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!
Kimi The Builder 