1/100 Master Grade Perfect Gundam OOB

Dude… your super-robot heritage is showing! The dramatically overwrought box art of the Perfect Gundam matches the ridiculously overdone model in the box. It’s tough, but they made the first “real robot” look like a cheap Mazinger clone with this one!

Anyone who builds Gundams knows that there are a lot of different series out there. One of the odder stories out there is “Plamo Kyoshiro”, a manga from the early days of Gundam. It is about a young boy who loves Gundam models and customizes his own to fight battles with his friends. If this sounds suspiciously familiar, say like the newer “Gunpla Builders Beginning G” series, that’s because Bandai/Sunrise stole from themselves.

The Perfect Gundam is the protagonist’s customized version of the classic RX-78-2 Gundam from the original anime. His customization includes lots of extra armour, guns, hoses and, well, whatever else he could think of. The end result is a very heavy and bulky looking MS that sacrifices the Gundam’s mobility for more firepower, and a much higher quotient of goofiness. If there was a Gundam Hallowe’en masquerade, this is how the RX-78 would dress up as a Megazord, I think.

The Box:

The Perfect Gundam is a big machine and it comes in a big box. It’s one of the wide MG boxes, similar to the Strike Freedom and Infinite Justice (among others) which have boxes much wider than they are tall. This means that there is a lot of room on the box for artwork.  Unfortunately, the Perfect Gundam is a very gaudy, overdone and colourful machine. However, it’s more loud and obnoxious than beautifully coloured, and having the picture of it be this big is actually overpowering.

The box plays up the “heroic” nature of the MS inside, and as a result is just as overdone as the suit is. It also harkens back to the original MSV boxing which had much older-school artwork (because it was from the early 1980’s). I must admit that while I don’t love the artwork on the box, it is striking and the retro touches are kind of neat.

The Kit:

 Inside the box, the Perfect Gundam gets the same MG treatment as other more “serious” or “legitimate” Mobile Suits. There are a lot of parts in the box. There’s everything you need for a normal RX-78-2, plus all the armour and extra weapons carried by the Perfect. The kit itself is very colourful, so that means that you get a lot of colours of sprues, too.

The Perfect’s box art wasn’t lying; this MS is a jumble of colours and shapes unlike any other MS you’re likely to encounter. Still, it seems somewhat legitimized by this professional-looking box insert.

There are racks of white, blue, yellow, red and dark-grey (black), and the racks are all nicely bagged as one would expect. There are also some screws, which tells you that this MG is an older kit; new MGs don’t, insofar as I’ve experienced them, include screws any more.

Here’s what you get in the box; there are a lot of parts in this thing, and the come in a lot of different colours. It might be a goofball MS, but the folks at Bandai tried to do right by it, at least.

The detail on the kit looks good, but it’s not up to the same standard as the newest “ver. 2.0” MGs that we’ve seen. The internal frame is simpler and there isn’t as much detail on the inside of the armour plates as on newer kits. Still, there’s a lot to cut off the rack when it comes to building this guy, so be ready for a chopping and sanding marathon!

The instructions are the same as those found on a typical MG, and are very clear and easy to follow, even without any meaningful English to be found on them. Just because you can’t speak Japanese doesn’t give you an excuse for not being able to build this kit! There are some nice full- colour illustrations and pictures in the middle of the booklet, too.

The full MG treatment is here, right down to the instruction book. A nice full colour spread adorns the middle of the book, as always.

There is a small comic in the back of the instructions, which is very unusual. While I don’t read Japanese, it looks like it’s about Shiro Kyoda (the main character from Plamo Kyoshiro) who is now grown up, going into a hobby shop and getting a bit nostalgic. It gets more nostalgic when he is introduced to a new generation of Gundam builders who rekindle his youthful spirit from back in the day. It’s over the top, but then so is everything Plamo Kyoshiro, so it fits right in!

Conclusions:

The Perfect Gundam is quite gaudy and overdone, and is not a design that many people truly like. I got this kit because it was half price, but I have to admit it’s growing on me. There’s a lot of potential for customizing built right into the kit, so it’s great for a kitbasher. The kit itself is nice and nowhere near as childish as its appearance would suggest.

Even if you don’t paint the kit, you’ll still have a colourful MS to add to your shelf. However, I think this is one kit that would really benefit from an alternate colour scheme!