Kimi The Builder

The very best way to celebrate Eid? Spend time writing about Gunplas.

HELLO! We are back! 

In today’s 464th edition of our Let’s Talk Gunpla segment, we will be taking the time to talk about P-Bandai’s latest Gunpla release announcements! Interestingly, we learned that P-Bandai just announced a batch of new kits for the HGCDI lineup! 

Yes, more specifically? P-Bandai just revealed another two Southern Cross Corps High-Mobility Zaku’s.  

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

HG 1/144 MS-06GD High Mobility (Surface Type) Zaku II (Wald’s Custom)(HGCDI)

Release Date: August 2023

Estimated price: JPY 3,080 (MYR RM 101.95* / USD $ 22.97* / EUR € 20.90*)

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

We are surprised it took P-Bandai this long to reveal the new HGCDI High Mobility (Surface Type) Zaku II’s right after they announced the Egba’s Custom version. We assumed that since they completed the Prototypes, it shouldn’t be that hard for P-Bandai to keep churning them up every week until they covered all the Southern Cross Corps units. 

But it seems that P-Bandai wanted to take their time with this set and announce one or two at a time when we least expect them to. And admittedly, this batch of announcements really surprised us. They really caught us with our pants down this time. 

We were so unprepared for these that we didn’t allocate proper funds to preorder this. So, as you can already tell, yes, we have to skip the preorder window for this kit. The reason? The announcement comes too close to Eid, and just like we said earlier, we didn’t allocate funds for those. So, obviously, we had to prioritize. 

But enough talking about sad things, let us now talk about what we think of this kit, shall we? 

Despite our love for Egba’s version of the HGCDI High Mobility (Surface Type) Zaku II, we admit that seeing Wald and Selma’s version does make us reconsider our love for it.  

Why wouldn’t we’d be? 

Despite these two versions being more and less the same, we noticed that the lack of dark brown color tones does make the whole thing look even better than the commander’s (Egba’s version) version. 

But the thing that gets us is its badass types of equipment. 

Yes, the Wald and Selma version of the HGCDI High Mobility is basically the same thing, but the difference here is the types of equipment they got and some of their decal designs. 

Let’s first talk about Wald’s version. Here, you’re getting two types of anti-ship Rifles, the standard and the Shorty. Obviously, there is nothing much to talk about the standard version since this would be the third time we see this rifle included with the HG Zaku (Well, those from the HG Origins lineup).

Oh, it also gets a lot of spare magazines for both the anti-ship rifle that you can stack on the HGCDI High Mobility (Surface Type) shoulder armor, and also P-Bandai included the iconic Zaku heat axe in this version. 

For Weld’s decal design, there are only two decal design changes made by P-Bandai that we noticed here. One is the change of the black star position on its logo to indicate Wald’s ranking in the Southern Cross Corps, and the second is the machine numbering that indicates to whom this machine, Zaku II belongs. 

Now let’s talk about Selma’s variant of this HGCDI High Mobility (Surface Type) Zaku II. 

HG 1/144 MS-06GD High Mobility (Surface Type) Zaku II (Selma’s Custom)(HGCDI)

Release Date: August 2023

Estimated price: JPY 2,970 (MYR RM 98.31* / USD $ 22.15* / EUR € 20.15*)

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

The first difference we wanted to discuss in Selma’s version is the design of the decals.

The first difference we noticed is Selma’s Black Star position in the Southern Cross Corps logo. As we learn with Weld’s black star position, the black star position in the logo symbolizes her rank in the Southern Cross Corps. 

The other difference in decal design is in the machine numbering part. As discussed with Weld’s version, the custom numbers are to show to whom the custom machine belongs. The rest of the decal designs is the same as what we get with the HGCDI High Mobility (Surface Type) Zaku II Walds’s custom. 

The other difference is in the types of equipment that Selma’s version gets. Instead of getting an anti-ship rifle, this version gets a familiar bazooka and the same Heat Dagger that the Egba’s variant gets. 

But the rest of the kit looks the same. Even the camo decals patterns are the same. But we’re not surprised since, in the anime, they share the same camo scheme.

But we can deduce from looking at the two of them they are practically the same Zaku unit. So, we don’t expect to experience anything different or new on these two HGCDI High Mobility (Surface Type) Zaku II kits. 

But even with that said, we’re still quite excited to see the rest of the Southern Cross Corps High Mobility Zaku II variants. 

Hopefully, when they announce the new ones, they’ll reconsider reopening the preorder window for the ones we missed. 

And that concludes our 464th edition of the Let’s Talk Gunpla segment. What a way to spend our 1st day of Eid here, talking about P-Bandai’s latest Gunpla offering. It’s nice to see P-Bandai following through with more new releases under the HGCDI lineup. 

We hope we’d see more kits released under this lineup, but honestly, though? We wouldn’t be surprised if the last two Southern Cross Corps Zaku IIs would be the final HGCDI kit we’ll see. 

Speaking of Eid, we wanted to take the time to wish all of our Muslim readers a happy Eid Ul-Fitr! May this Eid bring you peace, prosperity, and success in all your endeavors! Have a blessed Eid filled with happiness and joy.

Anyways. We’ll be back again this coming Thursday (hopefully) with a new blog post. So 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 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 all of you 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!