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MS-06F ZAKU II Gundam Suit - 1:100 Bandai Master Grade


Julien

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MS-06F ZAKU II Gundam Suit

1:100 Bandai Master Grade


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Gundam or as often referred to Gundam Series is a sci-fi franchise created by Sunrise in Japan that features giant robots or "mobile suits", that carry the name "Gundam." The franchise began in the late 1970s as an anime TV series called Mobile Suit Gundam, this featured the giant robots in a militaristic war setting. The popularity of this genre has spiralled from there, and they have since appeared in multiple television series, movies, manga, novels, and video games. The franchise has also led to the creation of one of the biggest toy and hobby franchises in the Japanese toy industry currently pulling in approximately £100 million a year in sales. The Principality of Zeon, also referred to as the Duchy of Zeon and Zeon Dukedom; is a nation featured in Mobile Suit Gundam. It was in control off the colonies of Side 3 and fought against the Earth Federation.

The MS-06FS Zaku II is one of many variants of the standard MS-06F Zaku II created by the Principality of Zeon during the One Year War. The suit features head mounted 40mm Vulcan Guns. The suit features a shoulder mounted ballistic shield to block incoming ballistic and explosive projectiles, and can also be used in close quarters battle with enemy mobile suits. Other hand held weapons include A Heat Hawk axe-shaped close combat weapon, which uses a super-heated blade to cut through the enemy's armour, the thermal energy being generated by suit's thermonuclear reactor. The machine gun is the standard 120mm weapon for Zaku type mobile suits. This is a shell firing gun that does not require energy to be used, its effectiveness against heavy armour is very limited and it holds 100 rounds per drum, with spare drums that can be stored on waist armour racks. The other major hand held weapon is the 280mm Bazooka, and super bazooka. These fire explosive rounds that are quite effective against the armour of Earth Federation mobile suits and battleships. These can an be stored on the rear waist armour of the suit when not in use.


The Kit
The kit comes in a bigger box than I thought which gives some idea of how large the suit will be even in 1:100 scale. Inside there are six sprues of light grey plastic and four sprues of light green plastic. There is a clever spure which combines Dark grey, light grey, green and clear plastic all on the same sprue. Finally there are two sprues of a flexible plastic, one of these has a second colour plastic moulded around the primary colour. All of the parts are extremely well moulded with no imperfections that I can see. It should noted that the kit is designed to be put together without paint, or glue. In the instructions they suggest only the pilot be painted if you wish. As this kit will be the subject of a build review I will leave you with the sprue shots and combine the construction notes into the build review.

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Conclusion
Gundam is a new genre of the hobby to me, and when researched it has a massive following in Japan which now seems to be taking off in the west. There are it seems a vast array of kits in different scales, as well as TV series, films, books etc. It would seem the sky is the limit. There are even an array of tools available for building the kits (See Japan Cool's Website) This looks to be a well engineered kit which should fit together with no problems (I hope! build review coming soon). Very highly recommended.



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That's an unusual subject for Britmodeller, nice to see it reviewed. I have a variant version (Shin Matsunaga I think) but I've never built it because I haven't really got my head around how to stage the painting and construction and still deal with any seams.

Will

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That's an unusual subject for Britmodeller, nice to see it reviewed. I have a variant version (Shin Matsunaga I think) but I've never built it because I haven't really got my head around how to stage the painting and construction and still deal with any seams.

Will

Snap it together and see. Shin Matsunaga's machine is just a Zaku II High Mobility type in custom colours. Is it the 2.0 version do you know?

Most of the modern MGs (and Bandai kits in general of the last decade) hide the majority of their seams on panel lines. The normal procedure would be to build and paint the inner frame and then paint the individual armour panels then assemble it and weather decal etc. If you don't have 50 pieces of plastic stuck on the end of BBQ skewers you're doing Gunpla wrong :P

Edited by Blastvader
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Snap it together and see.

This is what I am doing with this one. I intend to start a build review later tonight. Done the main body unit so far and that had over 50 parts. Some cleaver engineering of parts in there.

Julien

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The reason I was wary was that from experience snapping can be a one-way thing, although you can e.g. trim the pins to make it reversible. And I know that a smaller scale HG Zaku I have had seams to fill in many of the armour panels. But it sounds like that's not the case for the newer MG stuff (mine is a 2.0 as well)

I will follow the build with interest, thanks for doing this Julien!

Will

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The HGUC Zaku II is a relatively old kit and one of the earlier HGUC models. I think it came out in 2003 and as such the engineering isn't as refined. Still better than the 94 vintage F71 G-Cannon I'm slowly building at the moment. It's a seam filled nightmare. But it is the same age as my missus.

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I will follow the build with interest, thanks for doing this Julien!

Will

No worries I needed something to break out of a modelling rut and the opportunity came with the kit from japan:cool so I went for it. My only problem is I am now looking at other kits! they do this same kit in 1.48 scale!
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Many thanks for an interesting and thorough appraisal. Although I have far too much of a backlog as is, I really fancy trying my luck in the Gunpla arena -it's a desperately competitive place, but what appeals to me are the possibilities hinted at in Wild River's G-WORLD...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/37164963@N06/14122564253/in/photostream/

The 1/100 Master Grade item looks ideal.

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Was quite surprised to see this on here myself (like others)... it's nice to see that Gundam is getting a bit of showing here as a few of us do make them, or in my case attempt! :P I do know that the HG lines are all getting refreshed I think Bandai are calling it "Gundam Revival" or something silly like that, even the Freedom Gundam has been "revived" so to speak. I only deal with HG (1/144) so it's nice to see what an MG (1/100??) kit is like. Might have to give Japan:Cool a try also.

The best thing about these kits as AngustROM has shown, is the the fact that dioramas are literally limitless. If you can think it, you can build it and Kit bashing is encouraged too. There is also a GunPla (basically Gundam Plastic Models) competition held every year but it hasn't come over here yet, altho it is in Italy??? WHo knows....

Look forward to reading the WiP Julien :)

Kind Regards,

Dazz

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This kit is actually one of the earliest ver 2.0 Master Grades, but it really shows off what Bandai can do. But even the earlier non-2.0 MGs are still great kits, even though they don't have full inner frames. The Zaku F2 that someone mentioned earlier is not a 2.0 but it's still a lovely solid kit.

Modern high grades are miles ahead of the old kits though. The new Origins Char's Zaku could be mistaken for a Real Grade at first glance.

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No worries I needed something to break out of a modelling rut and the opportunity came with the kit from japan:cool so I went for it. My only problem is I am now looking at other kits! they do this same kit in 1.48 scale!

Thing is though, the 1/48 scale kit is a lot less detailed and simpler than this one. The one to go for if you want bucket-loads of detail is the 1/60 scale Perfect Grade kit - full inner frame, panels and gimmicks galore.

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Thing is though, the 1/48 scale kit is a lot less detailed and simpler than this one. The one to go for if you want bucket-loads of detail is the 1/60 scale Perfect Grade kit - full inner frame, panels and gimmicks galore.

Thanks, that is worth bearing in mind. I am primarily an aircraft modeller so this whole scene is fairly new to me.

Was quite surprised to see this on here myself (like others)... it's nice to see that Gundam is getting a bit of showing here as a few of us do make them, or in my case attempt! :P I do know that the HG lines are all getting refreshed I think Bandai are calling it "Gundam Revival" or something silly like that, even the Freedom Gundam has been "revived" so to speak. I only deal with HG (1/144) so it's nice to see what an MG (1/100??) kit is like. Might have to give Japan:Cool a try also.

The best thing about these kits as AngustROM has shown, is the the fact that dioramas are literally limitless. If you can think it, you can build it and Kit bashing is encouraged too. There is also a GunPla (basically Gundam Plastic Models) competition held every year but it hasn't come over here yet, altho it is in Italy??? WHo knows....

Look forward to reading the WiP Julien :)

Kind Regards,

Dazz

Thanks Dazz. I could not help myself last night so went ahead and finished the head unit also.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234990205-ms-06f-zaku-ii-gundam-suit-1100-bandai-master-grade/

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No worries I needed something to break out of a modelling rut and the opportunity came with the kit from japan:cool so I went for it. My only problem is I am now looking at other kits! they do this same kit in 1.48 scale!

The one in 48th is just an upscaled 144th HGUC model as such it's missing all the details that you get with an MG kit. I've got one and intended to do a hanger diorama with it but just haven't gotten around to it as of yet.

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Thing is though, the 1/48 scale kit is a lot less detailed and simpler than this one. The one to go for if you want bucket-loads of detail is the 1/60 scale Perfect Grade kit - full inner frame, panels and gimmicks galore.

The 1/60 PGs are an entire modelling career, judging by the instructions on HobbySearch! Again, the only limit is your imagination...

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  • 1 year later...

Sorry for awakening this maybe-too-old-of-a-thread,  but I have built this Zaku (and also the J variant) and l am pleased (and proud) to say that this kit has no seamline to be glued whatsoever. But of course some parting lines are present.

Most new MGs only have seamlines on their weapons, AFAIK.

 

Cheers!

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9 hours ago, Will Vale said:

Not even on the inner frame? That's pretty cool.

 

Will

My builds were from a couple of years back then, but if my memory serves me right... no seamlines are present. The parts cleverly separates at the "panel" lines.

As I've said before, parting lines are present, especially on finger parts and tubular parts (bazooka, machine gun, "pipe beads" --> last photo, first post).

 

For the "pipe beads", my personal way to tackle them is try to clean them up before sliding them down to their pipes (snipping green gates, proceed to sand, and maybe polish them).

 

For those who worry about their (overly) snug snap fit and want to disassemble it afterwards, the (my personal) easiest way is to drill out their female holes (sorry for my inability to find more politically-correct term) with metric drill bits (1mm, 1,5, 2, so on). The perfect alignments will be preserved but beware that the kit may disassemble itself when handled.

 

Finally, be wary when using enamel- or spirit-based paints and washes. The plastic may become brittle from excessive exposure. However lacquer-based paints are generally safe.

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Thanks, I've built some smaller Gundam and the older kits could involve tricky assembly and masking when there were seams on limbs to deal with. So knowing that it's not an issue on some of the MGs makes them much more appealing prospects. Cleaning up mould lines and sprue attachment points I have no problem with :)

 

I still don't have an answer to the enamel weathering - every time I think I've been careful enough (little thinner, mild thinner, primed the whole part not just the visible areas) I get cracks. And sometimes when I'm careless it all works fine! It's been interesting to see more Gundam models appearing in books and magazines, but almost all of them have avoided mentioning the subject despite using enamels - maybe I'm unlucky, or there's some wrinkle in my technique which makes it worse!

 

Sadly acrylics just aren't as good for streaks and blending.

 

Will

 

 

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5 hours ago, Julien said:

I would suggest a solid acrylic clear coat maybe future or such like, the enamal weathering should not go through that.

 

Julien

I second that. Personally I haven't experienced my MG parts breaking from enamel washes, because they're relatively thick. In other hand my 1/35 UC Hardgraph kit does not share that fortunate fate, even though I sprayed the parts with a lacquer clear coat.

 

I can only say be careful around thin parts and joints (i.e. finger joints).

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  • 1 month later...

i simply think Bandai's gundams are a work of art. They're beautifully engineered, nicely detailed, goes togheter with not even the need of glue and they fit perfectly.

one day i'm gonna build a Perfect grade i swear. 

Edited by cambridge
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