One of the newest series in the venerable Gundam franchises is Gundam Seed.  In many ways, this tale is a retelling (albeit with modifications) of the original Gundam story.  However, with over 20 years of improvements in animation and mech design, Seed is a great watch.  It has a good plot, excellent action sequences, and lots of Mobile Suits (MSs) flying across the screen.

It is this last point, of course, that is of the most interest to me as a modeller.  If there's one thing I love it's finding brand shiny new mech kits.  There's really no rush like it - even Luft '46 stuff doesn't have the same feeling (if you can believe it).  That's why I couldn't resist picking up this particular kit, the Aegis Gundam, when I saw it at Amazing Hobbies.  It was a good price, considering it is 1/100 scale, and it came in the biggest non-Master Grade box I've yet seen for a Gundam.

The Kit:

Upon opening the box, I was treated to a ton of sprue.  Each rack was individually wrapped and it was quite a colourful experience.  The kit comes moulded in bright pink, dark blue, grey, white, yellow, clear, clear yellow, and includes a big rack of polycaps (rubber washers) as well as a 1/20 flesh coloured figure of the Pilot, Athrun Zala.

My first impression of the kit was: WOW.  Everything was so crisp and clean, with no flash and no sign of mould wear that I was blown away.  I looked at the instructions to see what I was up against, and immediately my heart sank.  Unfortunately, this kit is variable, meaning it is designed to transform into the Aegis' other form: a clawed mobile armour.

Any time a kit is designed to be variable, it suffers.  The Aegis, as it turns out, is no different.  However, it isn't proportioning that is the problem here, but complexity.  By having the thing transform, the designers at Bandai were forced to make the kit much piecier and much more complicated than they needed to.  I don't know if the small scale (1/144) Aegis has this ability, but my feeling is that it would be difficult to pull off on a kit that size.

Regardless of the apparent extra complexity, I decided to go ahead with the big kit anyway.  I liked having a pilot figure, and I also think the mech just looks better in 1/100.  Besides, all those pieces just looked so tempting.

The kit has typical Bandai Gundam engineering, and there is a moderate amount of detail etched into the surface.  There's nowhere near as much as on 1/100 Wing and X Gundam kits, but there's enough to keep the Gundammarker in business, if nothing else.  Most of the pieces are quite large, and handling the subassemblies is very easy.  Some pieces, like the upper arms and upper legs are a single piece (like on V Gundam kits).  All the moulding is very crisp, although the plastic is a lot more brittle than the plastic on a plane kit (even a FROG).

Building the Aegis:

Building this kit wasn't all that different than building any other Gundam kit in 1/100.  What was surprising, though, was how BADLY some of the major pieces fit together.  The lower legs, the hip binders (those wing things on the hips) and the center-body were all very poor fits.  For an old or small Gundam, I expect that.  For a brand new kit to be like this was a very unpleasant surprise.  Part of the problem was due to the kit being designed to 'snap' together.

The posts and holes for the snap fitting are too tight.  It's really, really difficult to get pieces to fit together, such force is required.  You can also forget about test fitting, since you'll never get the subassemblies apart, either.  I found that Testors liquid cement was insufficient to hold the pieces together, in some parts, and I got seam sinking.  Gundams are made of a more brittle plastic, it seems, and the Testors cement doesn't hold all that well, despite causing the seam sink.  I switched to Ambroid Proweld and found this glue was a lot better.

There are a lot of subassemblies to this kit, mostly due to the fact that everything seems to bolt onto the central core.  Most of the subassemblies can be put together after being built, but there are some exceptions.  There are two particularly bad cases of build around: one is the tail assembly on the Aegis' back, and the other is the crotch piece.  The crotch is difficult because the yellow piece must go in before the pink pieces are built around it.  These have to be sanded and painted, and it looked like a long  series of touching up was ahead of me.  Thankfully, a small modification (just cutting the snap-fit posts off) allowed the yellow part to slip in once the entire pink assembly was done.  The tail was another story, with the long pink part needing to be sandwiched in between the tail holder before the holder could be done.  This was unacceptable, and I chose to chop most of the tail's main support posts away.  This allowed me to put the tail on afterwards, which was a godsend.  There are other instances of build around, such as the shoulder armour/upper arms (as expected) and the grey trim on both the shoulders and legs. 

Painting:

Of course, despite being moulded in colour, this kit needs to be painted, and like all my mecha the painting was done by hand.  The pink plastic is far, far too bright, and is almost neon in its intensity.  The black is actually moulded in dark blue, so the end result of not-painting would be pretty scary.  The main body of the mech is painted a colour made from Tamiya X-16 Purple, Model Master (MM) Acrylic Piping Pink, Badger Milwaukee Maroon and MM Guards Red.  This yielded a colour best described as 'Dusty Rose.'  The problem is that when I mixed the colour, I did it to match the photos on the box.  Unfortunately, these are totally wrong!  The mech is supposed to be a cranberry red, like my Queadluun Rau (link).  I quickly checked to see if there was any of that left, but then I remembered that I used it all up on the L.O. Booster (link).   Thus, I was stuck with a colour that is nice, and that matches some anime shots, but isn't really right.  Surprisingly, it was easy to work with.

The black on the kit is all Virsago Black, and the grey is Gunship Grey.  The internals of the mech are painted in non-glossed Tamiya XF-50 Field Blue, which looks very grey in most lights.  (Note that the box also shows the insides of the shoulders, legs, etc. in a dark grey/black colour.  I've been advocating this for years, so it's nice  to see the folks at Bandai prove me right!)  The yellow is a mixed Badger yellow, and the white is Gundam White, which is mostly Tamiya XF-2 Flat White with a hit of purple and blue.

Once the kit was painted and the finish was sanded smooth, the outlining was done with a black Gundammarker.  The engines were painted Jet Exhaust and washed with a black wash made from MM Aircraft Interior Black.  The kit was finished with numerous coats of Future, thinned with about 40% water.  This gives a nice shine after about 7 coats, but is very, very prone to picking up fingerprints.  The gun was actually flat coated using my airbrush and Microscale Microflat.

Athrun Zala:

As mentioned earlier, there is a 1/20 pilot figure included with the kit.  Like all of the figures Bandai includes with kits (a trend that seems to have started with the Evangelion kits of the mid 1990's), it is a beige, rubbery blob.  Athrun clearly needs paint in order to look good.   He also has prominent seams which need to be sanded down.  This is not as easy as it sounds, since the plastic is so rubbery that it is difficult to sand.  I have found that an emery board works the best for this.

Athrun was primed white using white spray primer from Rona (which is too yellow, as far as I'm concerned), and then his coat was painted using Milwaukee Maroon.  His boots are Gundam White, and his skin is the 7mL 'flesh' colour from Testors.  (Interestingly enough, this colour is now called 'cream'.  It uses the same number, 1116, but has been renamed for political reasons.)  His hair is, not surprisingly for an anime character, Tamiya XF-8 Flat Blue.

The hardest part of painting Athrun is the eyes.  Those of you familiar with anime will know why right away.  Those who are not, however, are in for a surprise.  Because most anime characters have such big eyes, it is possible to paint them exactly as they appear on the show.  Athrun's eyes are green, and to get the right effect I use the colour I normally use for gun sights and sensor windows.  First the whites of his eyes are painted and then the green is painted.  Then a bit more white is put on to make the 'shine' so common to anime characters' eyes.  The pupil was dotted in using a Gundammarker, and then the whole eye was outlined with a filed down mechanical pencil.  Athrun's eyebrows are done with the Gundammarker.