RGM-79C GM Command

 

Scale: 1/144
Maker: Bandai
Year: 1989 – this is NOT the HGUC kit!
Type: Injection Moulded styrene
Aftermarket: None
Cost: about $10 at Cool Toys (back in the day)

This shows the old Gundam 0080 GM Command kit finished in the blue and grey livery normally associated with the GM Kai units from Gundam 0083. I wanted to convey a mech from the 0081-0082 time period, and this little kit fit the bill perfectly!

Nowadays, it is not all that novel to have a sequel to a show (anime or otherwise, for that matter) that is actually a prequel, or at least one that takes place within a time gap left in the original storyline. However, back in 1989, when Gundam 0080 War in the Pocket was made, it was something of a first. It was definitely the first Gundam story that had to be shoehorned into the existing continuity, and as such it posed some interesting problems for both writers and mecha designers.

When creating the mecha for Gundam 0080, the designers had to do something that had, at least for Gundam, never been done before, and that was to create new designs that were fresh and exciting, but also would fit in with the already established canonical mecha. This art, now known as “retconning”, produced some excellent designs which have stood the test of time.

The well-retconned mecha of 0080 were equally well served by the model makers of the period, and the kits produced for the six-episode OVA were many, varied and overall well done. In fact, many of the kits from 0080 stack up very well with even the HGUC versions of the same mecha made more than a decade and a half later.

Surprisingly, given the modern trend to making kits of almost only Gundams, the 0080 line is populated almost entirely by ‘grunt' mecha. Of these, the RGM-79 GM, which is the Federation general purpose “cannon fodder” mech, is actually available in two versions; the land-based “Command” and the space-capable “Command Space”.

This review takes a look at the “Command” version built for ground use. The “Space” version is very similar, and in fact differs only in colour, gun and backpack.

The Kit:

The GM Command (henceforth simply called the “GM”) is a basic kit with only a few small racks of parts and one rack of polycaps. The box is much, much smaller than modern 1/144 HGUC kits; about one third the size, actually! Despite this, the parts you get are well moulded and have no flash on them whatsoever.

The kit is moulded in a dark blue and beige, with a clear green sensor visor and head sight. There are a few little red pieces, too. There are no clear beam sabers; they come in beige only. There are some of the clear-backed plastic decals, but these suck and should be avoided at all costs.

The polycaps are a bit weird in that they are a light greyish colour, with a hint of purple, rather than the usual Gunship Grey. This is actually a bigger handicap than it sounds, as they look a bit weird on their own.

The rear view of the GM Command highlights the simplicity of the mech. There's not a lot extra going on, and that contributes to the low part count. Still, given its age, the kit is quite posable. The polycaps were all painted to get rid of the weird perrywinkle colour.

Building the GM Command:

The main assemblies of the GM come in halves. There's nothing surprising or complicated about this kit, especially when compared to what I'm working on as I write this, the HGUC Blue Destiny Unit 2.

The bulk of the kit is just built by gluing the halves together. However, there is some significant build around. The knees are built around as are the upper arms/shoulder armour. This makes the job of swiftly completing what appears to be a simple kit much harder than it ought to.

I tried to shortcut the process by making it so that the arms could slide into the armour afterwards. Usually, this is successful. However, it was NOT on this kit, and I had to cut away so much of the shoulder that it actually made the armour floppy! Thankfully, I hadn't done the same thing on the other side, and I was able to use the shoulders ‘half and half' – one good half and one chopped up one. There's total left-right/front-back symmetry to the shoulder armour, and this was a godsend.

The kit fit very well, given its age, and not a lot of putty was required for the most part. There was a sink mark on the chest above the breather, but this seemed to be very reluctant to fill correctly, no matter what I did. In the end analysis, I sanded it as flush as possible, but it still sank. Gaaahhh!

There aren't a lot of detail parts that come separately. All the thrusters (save the main two on the backpack) and vents are moulded right in. This is part of the kit's old school charm: if you want it to look good, you're going to have to actually BUILD it and PAINT it!

The only disappointment was the hollowness of the backpack. I had to use some sheet styrene to build a ‘collar' in the pack because you could see it was hollow from the front of the mech once everything was together. Thankfully, I thought of this first, and was able to get things in place before painting.

The only thing I added to the kit is the gun. The original gun is like that used in 0080 and 0083: a small machine pistol with a top-mounted clip. However, my HGUC Hazel had a beautiful machine gun like those carried by the GMs under South Burning in 0083. I love that gun, but it looks weird with the Hazel, so I stole it for this kit. Amazingly, it fit perfectly in the GM's hand! (I guess there's something to this ‘scale' thing after all!)

This closeup of the gun and hand on the GM Command illustrates a few points. Firstly, you can see that the black wash that was applied to both the hand and the gun. Secondly, you can see that the gun is a perfect fit for the hand, despite being from an 18 year newer kit!

Painting the GM:

I don't like the Brown/Black (or dark blue, or dark brown, or whatever it is) that is shown on the box and in the instructions. In fact, I don't like the looks of the GM at all. I only bought it because it was cheap and a buddy said I really should have one, especially at the price I paid. Thus, I had to come up with something that would make this lanky string bean of a target at least halfway exciting to paint.

Since I had the gun like Lt. Burning's machines, I figured I could paint the GM like his as well. The GMs in 0083 are done in a light blue/dark grey scheme. I custom made a light blue, based on the colour I used for my Daughtress Custom. It was nearly perfect. As it turned out, good old Gunship Grey was also spot on!

I primered the entire mech with Rustoleum Grey primer(RIP Colourplace grey primer – Wal-Mart no longer carries it…) with no masking at all. It turns out the primer even sticks to polycaps! Once the primer was dry, I painted most of the polycaps with Testors Model Master Acrylic Gunship Grey and used a black oil wash to stain them.

The bulk of the mech is painted a light blue colour the composition of which I cannot rightly remember. It started as my Daughtress colour, and then I added some more white and a bit of grey, plus some more intense blue. All grey parts are Gunship Grey. The blue colour, despite being a Tamiya-based ‘Frankencolour' worked out very well.

As is the usual case, the thrusters were all painted with Jet Exhaust MM Acrylic outside and orange inside. They nozzles were washed with the same oil wash I used on the polycaps, rifle, hands and shield-back.

The hardest part was the head, because it required some touchy masking. In order to keep the clear visor clear, and shiny, it had to me masked BEFORE the head was assembled around it. I used Tamiya tape and hoped that it would be able to be pulled off later. It turns out that I was able to get it out, but not without a fight. The end result looks good, though. To improve the look of things and add some ‘lighting' effect and depth to the visor, the back was painted in white and the front was coated a few times with Future floor polish.

The chest vents are done in a mixed yellow, and the red is Model Master Acrylic Guards Red. All outlining is done using a 0.020mm Sakura calligraphy pen. This pen is finer than the finest Gundammarker, and works very well. You've just got to remember to let it dry, otherwise it will smudge.

As with the Slaughter Dagger, the mech was first clear coated using airbrushed Future (thinned to 50% with alcohol), and then flat coated with Gunze Clear Flat. My jar of flat coat was pretty old, and I think it had some alcohol mixed in it. When I sprayed it on, thinned to what I thought was the normal ratio, I got some chalking, salting and overall bad effects! When I switched to a new jar, this went away, but the result was that the mech was even FLATTER than normal. Thus, when I ‘satinized' it with the Microscale Microflat, I still ended up with an overly flat GM.

This closeup of the head and chest shows the clear green visor (with white painted in behind it to highlight it. Getting the Tamiya masking tape off of the visor was tricky! In contrast to many of my earlier mecha, this one is quite flat, as you can tell by the lack of reflection off the surfaces.

 

Problems:

There was one kind of problem that plagued this build, as simple as it might appear to be. The problem was one of the plastic disintegrating after being oil washed!

On the upper arms, the parts that hold the polycap in place cracked on both sides of both arms! This meant I had to rebuild the upper arms, and hope that whatever caused the cracks would allow me to glue it back together. It worked; the arms, after surgery, seem solid enough and there's no sign of them continuing to crack.

I also had this problem on the face of the kit! There was a small crack that ran from the top of the vent on one cheek to the bottom of the visor. Given the proximity of the clear glass visor, touching this up was quite delicate, nerve-wracking work. I got it done, but I would hate to have to repeat it.

It seems that this kind of plastic failure has been cropping up since I built my Slaughter Dagger. This was the first kit upon which I used an oil wash. At the time, I thought it was due to the turpentine I was using corroding the plastic. It turns out, this isn't exactly the case.

It appears that any kind of oil paint solvent will cause microcracks in the plastic to run very quickly. The only places I've observed this phenomenon are areas in which there is high stress: around polycaps (where they're exerting pressure on the surrounding plastic) and on the face, which was under stress from the thickness of the Tamiya masking tape.

Thus, if you're using oil washes, you need to be careful anywhere there is a polycap or masking. In addition, it seems that this problem is exacerbated by the application of heat. I generally put my washed pieces near a lamp in order to have them dry sooner. This worked fine on the rifle and the shield, but not so well for the arms. On my current kit, I had a polycapped equipped part and washed it. I left it to dry ‘naturally', and didn't encounter this phenomenon. Just a note for everyone out there….

Conclusions:

Despite being a design I'm not all that fond of, I like the way this kit turned out. The GM looks good in blue/grey, and makes a convincing pre-0083 mount for all those cannon-fodder Feddies.

The old 0080 GM is still a good, if not simple, kit. In comparing it to the supposedly “new and improved” HGUC kit of the same machine, it looks like the 0080 model is actually BETTER!! The HGUC doesn't have clear sabers, has redesigned feet (making it less like the animation design) and even has the saber moulded INTO the hand! That's so terrible it's not even funny!

Despite some build around, the 0080 GM is a good kit for anyone, including beginners, and makes a neat looking display piece if you're into expendable nobody-type mecha. I enjoyed building it, and it makes an interesting comparison to some of the newer, flashier designs.

This is the last thing a straggling Zeon can expect to see! Interestingly, the bottom of the feet are very well detailed on this old kit, and are far superior to those found on the newer HGUC version of the same mech. Note the blackwashed engines, which are much deeper on this kit than its newer incarnation.