Kimi The Builder

Finally, some fascinating MG releases!

HELLO! We are back! 

In today’s 417th edition of our Let’s Talk Gunpla segment, we’ll look at some of the retail release announcements we see made recently. There are a lot of badass Gunpla announcements coming from the retail side, but today we’ll talk about only the major news that we see from the retail side.

So, without further ado. Let us get into it, shall we?

MG 1/100 MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam Ver.Ka (MG)

Release Date: February 2023

Estimated price: JPY 7,170 (MYR RM 229.86* / USD $ 49.56* / EUR € 50.78*)

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

Let’s start with this, the new MG Zeta Ver.Ka. 

Honestly? Even though the Zeta Gundam is one of those MS designs that we are looking forward to seeing, getting that MG Ver.Ka treatment, we admit we find ourselves a bit underwhelmed by this announcement. 

Why?

That is because despite it being in the list of MG kits that we are looking forward to seeing getting the Ver.Ka treatment, the Zeta isn’t sitting on top of said list. We all hoped that Katoki Hajime would give us something we haven’t seen made to MG yet. One MG Ver.Ka release that will make us blow our minds and really makes us look forward to its upcoming release. Or better yet, redesign something that needed an update. 

But no, he decided to release something that has seen two versions of it released in MG. 

But we should’ve guessed that Mr.Katoki would go for this since the last two MG Ver.Ka’s was the MG ZZ kits. So it’s only natural that we get the Zeta as the next MG Ver.Ka. 

But we still were hoping for Bandai to surprise us here. Unfortunately, it will take a while before we get something completely unexpected.

However, not all is bad here because after we spent time looking at this and comparing the upcoming MG Ver.Ka to its Gundam Fix version, we have to say that, at the very least, Mr.Katoki Hajime really does a good job designing the MG Zeta Ver.Ka.

We here actually were quite impressed by how badass the MG Zeta Ver.Ka looked here. We were even more impressed to know that Mr.Katoki Hajime based the design and look of this MG Zeta to be as accurate as its Anime counterpart as it can be. 

What’s more, in keeping with the theme of keeping it as accurate as its Anime counterpart, Mr.Katoki Hajime also made the MG Zeta Ver.Ka’s transformation to be like its Anime counterpart too. 

From what we can see from the promotional materials that Bandai has shown us, it looks like the MG Zeta Ver.Ka transformation wouldn’t need extra parts to make that happen (aka, this is not a partsformer). 

If that is really the case here, this MG Ver.Ka does sound quite promising. But we shall wait till we see more of this kit before all of us commit to the preorder. 

Hopefully, this won’t be a disappointing MG Ver.Ka release. 

MGSD ZGMF-X10A Freedom Gundam (MGSD)

Release Date: January 2023

Estimated price: JPY 4,290 (MYR RM 137.53* / USD $ 29.65* / EUR € 30.39*)

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

When we asked our readers whether we needed an MGSD kit a few days back, we ourselves didn’t think we would be interested in this MGSD kit. 

We didn’t even plan to talk about the MGSD before Bandai made the MGSD reveal. We thought we’d focus more on the Gundam Arial Full Mechanics and the MG Zeta Ver.Ka. 

However, after seeing this and seeing how badass this upcoming MGSD release looked over the FM Gundam Aerial, we know that we can’t ignore this upcoming MGSD release. 

The insane level of detail inside and out manages to blow our minds. Yes, we know that MG kits are supposed to have this feature to have a highly detailed look in and out. But that hasn’t been the case for most MG SEED Remaster releases. No, we’re not talking about MG SEED Remasters outer frame look here. We are talking about the details of its inner frame system. Honestly, the newer MG SEED Remaster kits have been dropping the ball on that one. So it was surprising and refreshing to see the MGSD Freedom Gundam having a high level of detail on its inner and outer frame. Plus, it’s nice to see an MG kit having the same level of detail we commonly see on the newer RG and OYW MG Ver.2.0 kits. 

The MGSD Freedom Gundam even comes with a working articulation system. Yes, this is something that we don’t expect to see on SD kits. Even though we were expecting the MGSD to have better articulation when compared to other SD releases, we were expecting some limitations. Somehow Bandai’s MGSD design team managed to find a way to make a fully workable articulation system without limitation work on an MGSD kit. 

All in all, we admit that we are impressed by what we see here. We would even go as far as to say that this is a 2023 must-buy Gunpla kit for us. 

Hopefully, the MGSD will turn out to be as good to build as it is to see. If it is, then we here wouldn’t mind buying more MGSD kits in the future. 

And that concludes our 417th edition of the Let’s Talk Gunpla segment for today. Don’t worry, this is only the start of our coverage of the upcoming 2023 retail releases. There is still a lot of Gunplas to talk about, and we will be back soon to cover the rest in our next blog post. 

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!