It’s funny that all the kits we’re excited about are from the SEED series.
HELLO! We are back!
In today’s 545th edition of our Let’s Talk Gunpla segment, we’ll discuss the recent HUGE Gunpla announcements from the Shizuka Hobby Show 2024! Bandai has a lot of exciting Gunpla release announcements this time around, but we’re mainly getting news about new HGs, one RG, and one MGSD. No new MGs
We also share your disappointment in the lack of new MG news this time. Honestly, we are not sure if we will ever get new mainline MG news at this point. However, there’s still a wealth of exciting Gunpla news to delve into. So it is okay.
As usual, we’ll discuss the first three exciting releases we are most excited about and cover the rest in the next blog post.
So, without further ado. Let us get into it, shall we?
RG 1/144 ORB-01 Akatsuki Gundam w/Oowashi pack(RG)
Release Date: December 2024
Estimated price: JPY 8,800 (MYR 268.18* / USD 56.54* / EUR 52.60*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
Admittedly, we refrain from buying or even considering getting any of the gold-coated kits that Bandai announced.
Why?
It’s because you must be more careful working on them and put in extra work dealing with its nubmarks. You simply can’t deal with them like you have been dealing with nubmarks with other kits. Why? Well, because unlike standard colored kits, which are more forgiving if you make a mistake, mistakes made on gold-colored kits are a bit hard to cover without the use of Gold paint. Even if you have some lying around, painting the mistakes up might not solve the issue because if it’s in the wrong shade of gold, it might look ugly when applied. Also, it would help if you treated them differently than you would with regular kits since they tend to be more fragile. And not to mention, you can’t handle them with your bare hands since it would leave fingerprints all over, so you have to work on them using gloves.
So yeah, what we are getting here is that working on gold kits is a handful.
But even with that said, we admit that when we saw how badass this looked, we started to reconsider our stance on getting Gold kits, and we’re sure that most people who see the RG Akatsuki would also think the same way. Plus, seeing how good newer RGs are nowadays, we can’t imagine Bandai screwing this one up.
We admit that, with the lack of information, we’re only speculating here. But we’ll stop speculating until Bandai releases more details and a proper close-up of the RG Akatsuki; at this point, we can decide whether to place a Preorder for this badass RG kit or not.
HG 1/144 ZGMF/A-42S2 Destiny Gundam Spec II + A-GXQ754/V2 Zeus Silhouette (HGCE)
Release Date: November 2024
Estimated price: JPY 7,920 (MYR 241.38* / USD 50.89* / EUR 47.34*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
If there is one MS variant from the SEED FREEDOM movie that we want to see made into Gunpla, it is SEED FREEDOM’s Destiny Spec II. Yes, we have been lifelong fans of Destiny Gundam’s design, so it is evident why we are looking forward to this.
It is also nice to see Destiny getting the proper redemption arc it deserves in the SEED FREEDOM movie. It was also nice to see how they treated Shinn as a character this time.
Enough talking about our feelings; let’s discuss what we think of this release.
After seeing the movie, we didn’t expect this version to differ from its earlier iteration. However, we didn’t expect Bandai to include the Zeus Silhouette alongside this release. Seeing how incredibly HUGE the Zeus Silhouette is, we thought Bandai would release it as a separate expansion for both the upcoming RG Akatsuki and the HGCE Destiny Spec II (that was our speculation before seeing this release, mind you).
But Bandai might be worried that the HGCE Destiny Spec II will not sell well if they release the Destiny Spec II as a singular release, so it makes sense why they chose to release the two as a combo.
Anyway, we’re looking forward to learning more about this release, which looks promising from its appearance.
We hope they release some sweet decals alongside this badass kit.
HG 1/144 STTS/F-400 Murasame Kai (HGCE)
Release Date: October 2024
Estimated price: JPY 2,750 (MYR 83.82* / USD 17.67* / EUR 16.44*)
*The price is subject to change, depending on the situation
The Murasame is another kit Bandai revealed that we are most excited about!
Why, you may ask? For one, it may lead to us finally getting the HGCE version of the Murasame. We imagine it might be something that is not hard to achieve, too, because, looking at the HGCE Murasame Kai, Bandai would only have to do a little work to convert this into the standard Murasame.
Secondly (and lastly), this is one of the best-looking redesigns we’ve seen compared to all the other SEED FREEDOM MS designs we’ve seen thus far.
Also, we hoped that this would be something other than a partsformer. Yes, the original version was a partsformer, too, so we hoped that Bandai would figure out a way to transform the HGCE Murasame Kai without swapping parts and still making it into a solid kit.
However, after seeing and hearing all the good things about the recent HG Macross kit releases despite them being parts former, we wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be a partsformer. Plus, seeing how cheap the Murasame is compared to the partsforming HG Macross kits gives us little hope that Bandai will not make the upcoming Murasame kai’s partsformer.
We shall wait until Bandai releases more details about this upcoming HGCE kit; hopefully, it will be the kit that surprises us.
That concludes our 545th edition of the Let’s Talk Gunpla segment. There are still a lot of kits to cover, and admittedly, they’re as exciting as the ones we cover today!
We’re looking forward to finally covering the other releases that we find interesting.
Anyways.
We’ll be back this coming Saturday (hopefully, as long as the laptop will not give us more headaches) with a new blog post! Please do look forward to that!
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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 