Bandai 1/100 Scale Gundam Heavyarms Custom

If there's one thing that the venerable Gundam franchise is known for, it's reinvention. The popular and long-lived giant robot saga has had numerous incarnations and permutations in the last 20+ years as Japan's premier animated franchise. A great example of this is the series "Shin Kido Senki Gundam Wing," which was an alternate universe take on the classic. Not intent on re-inventing the wheel, however, Bandai and Sunrise went a bit further and created a three part sequel called "Endless Waltz."

For this OVA (original video animation - i.e. straight to video anime), new Gundam designs were used. The original designs from Wing Gundam were revamped and beefed up. Perhaps none were so radically modified as the Heavyarms custom, which is surely one of the most heavily armed mobile suits in the AC storyline of Wing Gundam.

The original Heavyarms was a heavy weapons type of mech. It had an arm-mounted Gattling and small missile pods on it. The Heavyarms Custom, however, is a walking arsenal, equipped with TWO giant Gattling and missiles squeezed into every available space.

The Kit:

The original Heavyarms didn't warrant production of a High Grade (HG) 1/100 kit, but the Custom did. This model is typical of Bandai's 1/100 HG offerings in being well detailed and very nicely molded. While not as chock full of panel lines as some of the other HGs of this size, there is a good deal of surface detail, all of which is crisp and cleanly etched.

The fit of the kit is excellent, and only normal amounts of sanding were required to get the thing looking really good. Very little putty was needed on the Heavyarms Custom, the most troublesome spots being the tops of the upper legs and the tops of the shoulder cannons.

Like all of its ilk, the Heavyarms Custom is molded in several colours, including white, grey, dark blue and light blue. Oddly, there were no vacuum metalized gold components, and no clear components for the eyes, which seems like a bit of a cheap-out, until you realize that I'd paint it anyway.

While the kit's instructions are in Japanese, they use Arabic numerals, so assembly is easy. There's very little build around, except for the torso, which can be easily corrected by chopping off the attachment pins and then sticking the waist in later.

The Heavyarms Custom's gimmick is weapons - lots of them. Thus, there are hinged doors on a variety of missile pods and shoulder compartments. These hinges don't work well (or at all) if they get paint on them, so theoretically you need to decide if you want them open or closed. Open is the best, but then you have the challenge of painting the missiles.

The proportioning of the kit is excellent, and when finished it is fairly poseable. The main problem is that the elbows are too weak to support the massive double Gattling cannons, and this can lead to posing difficulties. However, the menacing countenance of the Heavyarms Custom with full weapons load is worth the effort.

Painting:

Painting was done by hand and was very straightforward. The white is Gundam White (mostly Tamiya XF-2 Flat White with a drop of purple) over Rustoleum White spray primer. I found this worked wonders in making the Tamiya very durable and it helped to reduce the number of coats of paint required from 10 of Tamiya to 3. The primer is available at Wal-mart for about $5 a can. Invaluable, I tell you...

The dark blue is a slightly modified 35042 Flat Sea Blue from the old Model Master Acrylic line. It was easy to put on and sand smooth, and only three coats were required. The Gattling are done in Tamiya XF-50 Field Blue, and the light blue is a mix of various colours from Gunze, Badger, Testors and Tamiya. It was the best colour for painting and touching up of them all.

The green trim (which is barely visible, but can be seen on the waist packs) is Gunze Light Green and was very difficult to put on. It was applied with a toothpick, to get into the small areas. The gold on the headwings and shoulder spikes is Humbrol gold, and the backpack and missile packs are Virsago Black (a mix of black, dark grey and jet exhaust). The cannons are done in Metallic Black Anthracite with a black wash for detail. I found this MM oil paint to be very disappointing. I expected excellent coverage, like on the ml bottles, but instead I had to apply 4 coats just to bet some kind of solid colour.

The hardest part of painting the kit was doing the various missile bays. These come molded as one piece, so the walls of the bay, the missiles themselves and the black 'empty' background all have to be done carefully. This is especially true of the ones in the shoulder pods, which are deep and confined. It would have been nicer if the missiles had been separate parts, let me tell you. However, with a toothpick and some good luck the results were excellent.

As with all my Gundams, the outlining was done using the fine black Gundammarker, except on the face which was done using a mechanical pencil, since the detail is too small there. The entire mech (except for the guns and the engines on the backpack) were coated in about 4 coats of Future to make it smooth and shiny.

Conclusions:

This is, overall, a pretty nice kit of a very cool looking piece of equipment. It's a bit different from other Gundams in that it has no beam sabers and no red anywhere on it (thank goodness...). It is fairly easy to build, and a few quick tricks with the torso and the shoulder armour can save a lot of time in construction, and a lot of headaches for painting.