Kimi The Builder

The premium-grade dagger

HELLO! We are back! 

In today’s 424th edition of our Let’s Talk Gunpla segment, we will look at the latest P-Bandai release announcement made a few weeks back. Yes, we are aware that we are late to this P-Bandai Gunpla release announcement party, but the reason for that is that we were all too busy talking about all the Gunpla releases from the retail, The Gundam Base, and P-Bandai side. 

Even with that said, admittedly, it is nice to now cover this P-Bandai release announcement.

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

HG 1/144 GAT-01 Strike Dagger (HGCE)

Release Date: December 2022

Estimated price: JPY 1,650 (MYR RM 53.35* / USD $ 11.27* / EUR € 11.18*)

We admit that this announcement managed to catch us all by surprise. 

Not because it’s a Gunpla release we do not expect to see, but we did expect to see the HGCE Strike Dagger at some point, especially when the HGCE Dagger L did so well.

So what is it about this release that surprised us? 

Well, it is because we are getting this HGCE Strike Dagger not as a retail release but as a P-Bandai one. 

Honestly, it’s like seeing Bandai locking the bog standard HGUC Zaku II as a Premium release. Look, we get it if P-Bandai wanted to release this as a premium release if it’s a pilot custom Dagger unit or an MSV one. But a bog standard one? For fucks sake, P-Bandai. Can you at least give this to us as a retail release? 

What makes this even more frustrating is that the upcoming HGCE Strike Dagger looked badass. If they made it look ugly, we might consider not getting it, but P-Bandai put in more effort in making it look so good that this becomes something that we find the HGCE Strike Dagger hard to ignore.

What’s more, from what we can see, it is clear that the only thing that the HGCE Strike Dagger inherits from the HGCE Strike Gundam is its ‘Strike’ name, some part of the shoulder armor, and the backpack connector. The rest of the HGCE Strike Dagger looks to be new.

Which we admit is quite impressive.  

But the most impressive part is that it looks like it would be one color accurate to the anime HGCE Strike Dagger. Because none of the HGCE Strike Dagger parts here looked painted, and admittedly looking at the HGCE Strike Dagger promotional materials reminds us of the recently released HGCE Dagger L. So we can expect this to be a good HGCE release. 

We admit that it is frustrating to know that something this good is getting that premium release. But at the same time, it’s one of those P-Bandai releases that looked so good that you find it hard to look away. 

That means we’d better start preparing ourselves to go into a Shopee fight with them scalpers again. 

And that concludes our 424th edition of the Let’s Talk Gunpla segment for today. An interestingly frustrating P-Bandai Gunpla announcement to date. It has been quite a while since we saw a P-Bandai release that made us all feel this way. 

But we all agree that P-Bandai again has another hit in their hands here because we’re looking forward to this one. 

Anyways, we’ll be back again this coming Saturday (hopefully) with a new blog post. So, please do look forward to that! 

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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!