Kimi The Builder

A delayed RG Crossbone work forced me to do an unboxing instead

Despite what is written through the opening title, I do admit that it has been quite a while since I unboxed an MG kit. Well, more specifically a P-Bandai MG kit.

Love em or hate em, one can’t deny that P-Bandai has released some of the most badass looking kits throughout the years and as well some the most sought after kits in the gunpla community. However, since P-Bandai only manufactures a small number of kits that are released under its umbrella it does make some of their kit releases to be…well quite hard to get and even if you are lucky enough to stumble on one, the price for the said kit might be jacked up so much so that you would be deterred from ever getting it.

But there is some subset of you here which really don’t mind spending your hard-earned cash to get some of that rare P-Bandai kits. But as we all know, not all P-Bandai kits are created equally and without some research done you might end up with a shitty expensive kit.

So that is why I try my best to find some these rare P-Bandai kits to do a First Impressions / Unboxing and review, to see if the kit itself worth spending all your hard-earned money on, and thankfully today we would be doing one on that rare P-Bandai kit, the MG 1/100 MS-09R Rick Dom Dozle Zabi’s Custom unit.

I want to start by disclosing that this kit isn’t mine, in fact, this is actually something that was given and commissioned by one of my work colleagues to work on. This kit was something that was gifted to him, but he really has no experience, nor the time to really sit down and work on this kit. Plus, after knowing that he owned one of the rarest gunpla kits it kind of made him feel less confident that he would be able to do a good job in putting this together. So, that is why he decided to instead to let me have a run at it.

Which I was more than happy to do since this kit is a pretty rare kit one that I don’t think I would have enough money to get and since I haven’t built an MG Rick Dom so it is nice to finally get to work on one of the variants. Well, more precisely it was nice to be able to work on one of its P-Bandai MG Variants.

Looking at this rare MG kit one would be wondering how much did he get this kit for and how rare exactly is this kit?

Well since this is a gift, he really has no clue on how much this kit was bought for. So I took it to my self to go around to see how much this 2015 P-Bandai kit is going for in the market now.

and holy fuck this kit is really frakking expensive now. From the time I spent scouring through the interwebs, I found out that there are some online stores which are currently selling this kit at USD $157.00 (MYR RM 646.68) which is more than its original asking price of 5,400 yen (RM 204.67 / $ 49.69 USD).

Which is quite insane, but looking at how hard is it to find the kit on the interwebs and on the retail stores. I can understand why the kit was selling at that price to come by. During my search, I could only find one online seller that actually sells the kit and he was selling it at that insane price for an unassembled version of this and as for the big retailers? Well…its even worse, because of none of them actually carries this.

So unless if you are willing to fork out alot of cash into getting one, there is really no way that you can get this rare MG kit for cheap nowadays. But after going through that process, it does make me wonder if this MG kit is really worth the current ‘flipper insane asking price’ that I see on the interwebs lately?

Well, that is why I’m here to find out. We will go through section by section to see what is inside and I’ll give you my honest first impression on it.

So let us start with by taking a look at this P-Bandai MG kit packaging.

Typical as many of the P-Bandai’s that we’ve unboxed so far for this blog (with the exception of the HG Gundam Revive 21st century version of course), the packaging for this MG MS-09R Rick Dom Dozle Zabi version has that typical unicolor scheme and they as well used the completed version kit as the model for this kits boxart.

In which I do admit looks quite alright here. Although this might be not one of the most epic boxart I’ve seen on an MG kit, however, it does look decent enough to make people be somewhat interested in the kit. Another thing that I really like about the packaging for this P-Bandai kit is that dark green tone that they decided to use throughout here on this box, really makes the packaging for this MG Dozle Zabi Rick Dom look quite good.

Another typical trait of the P-Bandai that I noticed here is seen on this P-Bandai kits side packaging. Like all the other P-Bandai kits it only had the name of the kit printed on the sides with no signs of any lore or information about the kit present there. Although it sucks that they kept it as such, however, I can understand why they choose do it as such.

Because it does make the kit look quite intimidating to newbies, while at the same time baiting in the veteran builders into getting it. Regardless of what I think of P-Bandai’s reasoning behind making it be as such, I do admit that I do like their approach on it.

Because it manages to make me want to unbox it and to see what is inside as soon as I got it in my arms.

However, as soon as get to the actual unboxing bit…I was left a little bit underwhelmed by what I see here. But am not saying that the parts for this kit look bad. Oh no, in fact, I do think that this kit has some quite decent looking runners, with a pretty decent color scheme on some the parts. However, since this is a kit that was based on a very OLD MG frame, you can see on some sections of the runners that there are some parts that look like it was molded badly.

Which I don’t get why didn’t they take the time to iron out all the issues beforehand. Although I do admit that isn’t really something that I was THAT bothered about since you can still hide the parts up as soon as you put em together.

But what I was really bothered with is the ‘P-Bandai Exclusive’ parts which are made for this kit. Because unlike the rest, these things don’t really make me feel like it belongs in a P-Bandai kit.

Why?

Well mainly because the said parts looked cheap, that is why. This is especially obvious when I take a closer look on the ‘P-Bandai Exclusive’ Gold runner, the individual parts looked terrible, it looks and feels cheap and it had gates in places that I know which going to be a pain in the ass to get rid of without making the part look terrible. Frankly, I’m not really looking forward to that.

Looking at how bad the part looked here, it does make me feel bad for whomever that bought it for my colleague because as I looked at it more and more it is obvious to me that they might as well just spend that money on some other kit.

But…

It is not to say that all is lost here, because the one thing that really manages to catch my attention is when I take a closer look at the MG Dozle Zabi Rick Dom’s badass looking stickers. I know, I know by this point of the unboxing, you might be thinking, have I lost my marbles here?

Even though yes I do think the lack of rest and sleep is making me go slightly insane. But hear me out, because I do have some legit reasons on why I say that the stickers for this  P-Bandai kit look badass.

But first please do take your time to look at these awesome stickers.

The stickers look quite badass, right?

I was quite surprised to find myself feeling this way for a sticker set. Usually, I don’t care about them that much since I would instead prefer to paint the part up instead of trying to use the darn things. But not with this P-Bandai MG stickers, because I really can’t imagine completing the kit without using the darn things.

Plus unlike the rest of the kit, these stickers really looked like something that I would expect to see on a Premium kit. The stickers look like it was made using some high-quality materials and the detail on them is just insane. I remember looking at it and being intimidated by its sheer awesomeness.

But even with that said, I’m not deterred by it. In fact, it made me really looking forward to the challenge that I will face when the time comes for me to apply it to the kit.

But enough about the stickers, let us move on to the next bit. The manual section.

I was actually quite surprised by their choice of MG Rick Dom manuals that they could use for this kit. Because at first as I go through the runner list, I was sure that they would want to use the 1999’s version of the manual. but instead, they decided to go with the MG Char’s MS-06RS Rick dom’s manual.

Which I do admit was quite weird when first I saw it inside the box, but when I consider that the MG Char’s Rick Dom Manual format is a million times better than the one we’ve seen on the first-gen MG kits. I can understand why they decided to opt for this version instead of the 1999’s version.

Yes, even though you don’t get the lore of how this version of the Rick Dom came to be and what you end up learning about is on a kit that is completely unrelated to what you get. But truth to be told it was something that I still find myself I really enjoy going through since this is my first time unboxing an MG Rick Dom variant. Although I do admit that to those which do have some experience working on the MG Char’s Rick Dom before might not be too happy to see the manual again here.

However, that is not the only booklet that you’ll be getting here for this kit, because you do as well get a small booklet to help guide you on where to place all of that fresh spiffy ‘P-Bandai Exclusive parts and as well to help guide you through on how to apply the ‘P-Bandai Exclusive’ stickers and decals.

Which I do admit is quite cool.

But even with that said, looking at it does make me wonder why didn’t they just make a new manual for this kit? Seeing on how essential all of this ‘new’ ‘P-Bandai Exclusive’ parts and stickers is to this kit, they might as well make a new manual for this kit instead of having us use the some other kit’s manuals while being having to use another booklet for the other sections of the kit.

Overall I find that my experience unboxing this kit has been quite alright. However, I do admit because this is one rarest P-Bandai kits around, I was kind of expecting something more here but admittedly it was my high expectations of it that really killed my enjoyment of unboxing this P-Bandai MG kit.

I think I might have a better time if I started off without any expectations on the kit.

So the question remains do I think this kit is worth the current insane asking price? At the moment right now, I have to say no. I know my feelings would change over time as soon as I start work on this kit which only is the case if the kit turned out to be brilliant that is. But, for the time being, I’m not that convinced that this kit is worth all that much.

Regardless, time will tell if this kit is something worth getting or not.

With that ends this week’s Unboxing and First Impressions for the P-Bandai MG 1/100 MS-09R Rick Dom Dozle Zabi Custom. What do you think of this week’s kit that I just unboxed? Do you yourselves have the same experience as I did with this P-Bandai MG kit? Not the best of unboxings that I’ve done, but it is something that I still looking forward to experience building.

It might still turn out to be an awesome kit.

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 the review or an unboxing, So do look forward to that!

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Ciao!