Kimi The Builder

Now you can really ride to battle in style

HELLO! We’re back!

In today’s 572nd edition of our Let’s Talk Gunpla segment, we’ll discuss one of P-Bandai’s latest-ish Gunpla release announcements announced recently.

Yes, we know they just announced a few new kits, but we decided to cover the one that flew under the radar for us first.

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

FM 1/100 GAT-X370 Boost Raider Gundam (FULL MECHANICS)

Release Date: 14th September 2024

Estimated price: JPY 6,820 (MYR 208.65* / USD 27.02* / EUR 24.46*)

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

Yes, we will finally get to sit down and discuss the FM Boost Raider Gundam weeks after its release announcement. To be honest, the real reason we didn’t cover this kit when P-Bandai announced it was that we weren’t even aware that P-Bandai announced it. Plus, they announced it the same week as all the awesome Retail announcements, so it makes sense why it flew under the radar for us.

Not to mention, we are quite surprised to see this design already given the Gunpla treatment, even though it wasn’t that long ago that this SEED MS design was featured in the SEED Eclipse manga.  

But enough of fangirling; let us now discuss our thoughts on this upcoming P-Bandai Exclusive FM kit.

We admit that we aren’t particularly fond of the Full Mechanics series because most of the kits we’ve worked on feel like we are building a 1/100-scaled HG kit.

But even with that said, we admit that the FM kits are not that bad. How do we know this? Well, we’ve worked on the FM Calamity before and found it quite a decent kit. As we said earlier, our only issue with the FM series is that it felt like building a 1/100-scaled HG kit.

What does that mean exactly?

Well, with our experience with the FM Calamity, we can feel that the team behind the design of this kit purposely put themselves in the box. There are so many things that we can see that they could make it work in MG form, but since Bandai commissioned them to make an FM kit, they restrain themselves from going too far. So they end up with a kit that feels like building an HG kit that looks like an MG kit.  

This could be the same team Bandai commissioned to design the MG Zaku Warrior. If that is the case, it might explain why we ended up with an FM kit with some MG init.

Anyway, sorry for going off on a tangent. We’re still salty about how they treated our favorite SEED DESTINY’s MS design.

As we said earlier, despite its shortcomings, we did like the time we spent working on the FM Calamity.

So, to see a P-Bandai exclusive version of the FM Raider that comes with the FM Calamity’s backpack-mounted beam cannons, Astray-inspired backpack wings, an array of really badass melee weapons, a cool color scheme, and, best of all, leg cannons, you can say that we were pretty intrigued by it.

What makes it even more impressive to us is that despite all those upgrades, it doesn’t hamper the articulation or the FM Raider’s transformation gimmick. In fact, all of these new upgrades managed to make the raider’s MA form look more badass this time around. The new look makes it look like a modern fighter plane and not like a rejected Transformers design.

However, what we love most about this kit is the FAZZ-inspired head unit design. This is by far the coolest-looking SEED MS Head design we’ve seen to date, and again, it does make the Boost Raider look dangerous.

Even though we liked how it looked, we admit that we are still finding it hard to justify spending RM200 plus (that is, as long we plan to get this through the P-Bandai shopee page rather than through Gunpla scalpers) for an FM kit. We are okay with doing so with an MG kit since we know what we are getting with an MG kit. With the FM kit, though, it’s hard. It’s because we know what we are getting here isn’t much to satisfy us, and it makes it hard for us to justify spending that much when we can be spending the same amount of money on an MG that will be a much better value for our money.

We’re confident that we aren’t alone in this thought.

But then again, it does look quite good, and we might be tempted enough to get this version just because we haven’t gotten the FM Raider yet. Time will tell if this will end up being worthwhile or if we will be left wanting this to be an MG instead towards the end of it, just like what we felt when we completed the FM Calamity.

This concludes the 572nd edition of the Let’s Talk Gunpla segment. Another strong showcase from the P-Bandai side. However, as we mentioned previously, we still have a few more P-Bandai releases to cover, and we feel that the conversations we will have on them will be as enjoyable as we think they will be today.

Anyhow.

We’ll return in the upcoming segment this Saturday (hopefully) with a new blog post! So 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!