ガンプラ命- Z's Gundam Model Review

This model has long been on my WANT list but other priorities (MG) kept pushing me away from it. This one was suddenly acquired and I must say… I felt very lucky ^^;. The Hrairoo is probably my favorite non-Gundam design. Thing just looks so… odd yet so cool. Must be the v-fin…

I gotta admire the detailing effort put into this TR-5. The metal weathering, the pipe-coloring, the sensor painting, the decals, the thruster trims… It’s just meticulous.  That decal with the little winged thingy on the right canon is pretty cute ^^. The original modeler did a pretty awesome job :D

A little fiddling around with the model and you’ll soon figure out that it’s not meant for melee posing. Unlike the Hazel, the Hrairoo doesn’t come with real beam sabers but rather two solid dark blue toothpicks that you have to paint. What’s up with the selective inclusion of beam saber effect parts, Bandai?

Painted the spare beam saber in titanium silver and clear red. The original was in magenta which I thought was a bit weird ^^;.While the joints are sturdy, articulation is severely limited by design. There is no waist rotation and the arms are blocked by its shield and protruding shoulders.

I’d say the guns are where this MS likes to play. Love the beam canons. Though they are attached to the elbow, they do have some degree of tilt and rotation before they get obstructed by other parts of the body like the shoulder… or its own elbow.

There’s a bit of a flaw… Unless you slide out the canon a bit from the elbow socket, the hands won’t be able to reach the handle… or they’ll just pop off of the wrist. I checked Dalong’s review to see how he did it and… he actually didn’t pose Hrairoo holding the canons. Not a really big problem but strange that Bandai overlooked this measurement. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

Hrairoo prefers to be in the air

Long Blade Rifle :D

This is a great looking rifle ^^. What’s with the engineers designing the rifle to be so long in the back? Anyway, the Long Blade Rifle consists of three parts: the long blade (front), a pew pew rifle (gray), and a long back part that docks with wherever.

Not very easy to pose with this weapon since any sort of twisting can pop the hand out of the wrist.

Due to restricted articulation in its whole body, I wasn’t able to do most of the poses that I had imagined it could do :(

The Rifle stays on pretty nicely on the shoulder. No mass problem even though it sticks out so much ^^

The arm behind the rear skirt allows for some peculiar placement of the rifle…

Though I didn’t build this model, browsing over the manual shows that this model would be quite the challenge for its grade. I see MANY tiny pieces o_0 The structure and assembly process (arms, legs, waist) makes this look almost like a 1/144 MG. Heck, I can say for sure this thing definitely looks like more of a challenge than some older MGs I’ve built. 10 runners of parts is almost unheard of in this scale ^^;

Compared to other 1/144, 1/100 and even some MG, the Hrairoo is one of the more impressive models for its price. Between its HG drawbacks (foil stickers, lower fine details) and MG structures, this model obscures itself well for a HGUC 1/144 if one put in the effort to assemble and detail it (such as this one). The only drawback are its restricted articulation due to its design. Noticed that I’m not saying it lacks articulation because it does have a good amount but its own body sorta gets in the way. I don’t mind though because this Gundam-like thing looks great just standing there. This model should be on one’s top GET list of HGUC.

… Oh yea, I forgot this thing can actually transforms until after I’m pretty much done with this review >_>;

OTHERS’ REVIEW:

Beamknight87

Celestial Preventer