Covering the last of The Witch From Mercury releases
HELLO! We are back!
In today’s 403rd edition of our Let’s Talk Gunpla segment, we will finally finish our coverage of the remaining The Witch of Mercury release announcements. Yes, we are aware that by now, most of you already know and have seen in detail the kits we’re covering today. But we just felt like putting our opinions on them regardless.
So, without further ado. Let us get into it, shall we?
HG 1/144 Expansion Set for HGTWFM Demi Trainer (HGTWFM)
Release Date: December 2022
Estimated price: JPY 880 (MYR RM 29.51* / USD $ 6.64* / EUR € 6.42*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
Yes, we finally came around to talking about this one! Yes, we know we should’ve included this in the last Let’s Talk Gunpla segment. But we feel like pushing it to this segment so we can bundle them together with the other supporting plamo and Gunpla releases.
But enough on that, let us talk about what we think of this Expansion set release.
Honestly, before we saw the Expansion set in detail, we thought we’ll only be getting one weapon set that is enough to make one similar to what you get with Character B’s Demi Trainer.
But after we spent more time looking at this, we realized that is not the case here.
Yes, you could build a weapon that looks similar to what you get with the HGTWFM Character B’s Demi Trainer, but it comes with several parts that enable one to make different weapon sets.
From what we can see, you can build a chain gun bazooka, a beam pistol that looks like something inspired by Zaku Marnier’s beam weapon, you can even make a piler, a saw, and you as well get a few hand parts so you can have a much more dynamic hand poses with your HGTWFM Demi Trainer’s. What’s more, you can even turn the Demi Trainer’s arms unit into Guntank Gatling Arm.
Honestly, we can see that we are getting a lot of stuff here. Not to mention, we think that these are one interesting expansion set Bandai has here, which makes us wonder what other expansion sets they have planned.
SD Gundam EX-Standard Gundam Aerial (SDEX Standard)
Release Date: December 2022
Estimated price: JPY 660 (MYR RM 22.13* / USD $ 4.98* / EUR € 4.82*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
If I were, to be honest, I’m ashamed that we didn’t talk about this release back when it was revealed together with the standard HGTWFM Gundam Aerial.
Why?
Because we all here think that the SDEX Gundam Aerial looked pretty badass for an SDEX release.
Not every day do we see an SDEX kit that looks as good as the HGTWFM release, not to mention an SD kit that maintains its good looks. We’re impressed that they went as far as to make the chest and leg ‘clear’ part look as good as its HGTWFM counterpart.
But we can’t help to wonder, as we looked at this SDEX release, how much of it is painted here in its promotional pictures. Because through our own experience of SDEX kits, the kit out of the box won’t look this colorful.
We all know that this will come with a lot of sticker parts.
What’s more, we are surprised that the SDEX version of the Gundam Aerial doesn’t come with the same Shield/Bit Funnel gimmicks. We here don’t think it’s hard to recreate that gimmick in SDEX form. Even for the standard kit, we can’t see how it needed a complicated mechanism to make the shield/funnel bit work. So we are sure the SDEX version could replicate it somewhat.
So, yeah, we are disappointed to see that Bandai didn’t recreate the shield/funnel bit gimmick in SDEX form.
Regardless, we still think this is a Gunpla release we are looking forward to getting. But that is, of course, as long as you’re coming in with no expectations for this SDEX kit.
Figure-rise Standard Suletta Mercury & Miorine Rembran (Figure-rise Standard)
Release Date: October 2022 (For Suletta Mercury) November 2022 (For Miorine Rembran)
Estimated price: JPY 3,520 (MYR RM 118.05* / USD $ 26.56* / EUR € 25.70*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
It has been quite a while since we covered a Figure-rise Standard release here in the blog. The last time we did, if we’re not mistaken, it was back when Bandai announced the Figure-rise Standard Fumina Hoshino kit.
Although we have not yet built or gotten one ourselves, we admit that even back then, we were impressed by the quality shown on every Figure-rise Standard kit we saw.
So do these two new entries to the Figure-rise Standard lineup lives up to the high standard set by the previous entries from this series?
Well, by just looking at the promotional materials? We’d say yes.
In fact, we would go as far as to say that the Figure-Rise Standard Suletta Mercury & Miorine Rembran is another milestone in quality for the Figure-rise Standard lineup.
Why are we making that bold claim when we haven’t even gotten or built one for ourselves and haven’t even built any Figure-rise Standard kits to make that claim?
That is because we noticed a few things when we looked at the promotional materials for these two Figure-rise Standard kits and compared them to the older entries. The first thing we noticed here is the quality of the face plates, the mold of the hair parts, and their overall looks. Secondly? Its articulation system.
Let’s first talk about the overall quality of the mold. Admittedly, when we compared these two to any Kotobukiya’s plamo girls kits, the Bandai Figure-rise Standard kits are still far behind their Kotobukiya counterparts.
But for a cheap plamo girl kit, we’d say that Bandai is getting close to getting it right, especially on the premade face plates you’re getting here in this kit.
The expressions on the face plates are very close to what we’ve seen in the anime stills, and we think that in terms of the quality, we’d say it is getting close to what you’d get from koto’s plamo girl’s face plates.
Even the overall mold for the rest of the kits looked good for something this cheap.
For the articulation bit, we like it because the joints looked more natural overall than what you’d get with the Koto kits. Yes, we know that the Koto kits system is more in line with what you get with action figurines, which means you’d get pretty impressive articulation but sacrifices the natural look.
But for Bandai’s Figure-rise Standard joints system, Bandai focused more on making sure that the limbs look like natural human joints, but the downside is the articulation you get for this kit is limited. But if you’re someone that values looks over getting an action figurine level of articulation system, you can consider getting these two Figure-rise Standard kits.
What’s more, they’re cheap kits too!!
Overall we are impressed by what we see here, and we’re really looking forward to getting these awesome Figure-rise kits as soon as it is out here.
And that concludes our 403rd edition of the Let’s Talk Gunpla segment for today. It’s nice to finally cover all The Witch of Mercury Gunpla and Plamo release announcements, and if we are, to be honest, this is the first time we’re excited about everything Bandai announced here.
We are really looking forward to seeing more awesomeness coming from this series!
Anyways, we’ll be back again next week (hopefully) with a new blog post. So, please do look forward to that!
Oh, one more thing before we go, it would be a tremendous help to us all here in the blog if you guys were to leave a like on our posts and subscribe to the blog if you find yourselves enjoying our gunpla/plamo-related posts. We would appreciate it if you guys would take the time to show your support by leaving an upvote on our R/Gunpla posts and by leaving a like on our Facebook and Instagram posts or pages!
We are also open to any good and bad feedback, so feel free to write away.
Hopefully, by sharing our love and passion for building and writing about gunplas or other plamos here, we sincerely hope this post will inspire you guys to pick up on the hobby. Or better yet, reignite your love and passion for the hobby.
We shall see all of you again soon, and we hope all of you here have a splendid day and week ahead! Oh, before we go, please have an excellent time building your awesome gunplas there and until next time.
Ciao!
Kimi The Builder 