HGFC Shining Gundam Mini Review

I love G Gundam, any person who's talked about favorite Gundam series would know that G Gundam is one of my tops. No, it's not a realistic gritty series with developing characters that you'll both love and hate. G Gundam is similar to Gurren Lagann at a lesser scale, fuck the realism and harshness of war, we're gonna settle all things with a giant tournament called the Gundam Fight and have giant robots duking it out with each other! The mechs in G Gundam are so unique, creative and weird to the point I love them all. Too bad we only have 4 HGFC kits, get on it Bandai!

The Shining Gundam is the first of two main Gundams in the series, the other being the God Gundam, and therefore he was brought as an HGFC kit through the All Gundam Project, bless it. The kit itself is a decent HG kit, however if there is one thing you'll want to be doing, it's panel lining. This guy has a few missing color apps, for instance, a few areas should be black in the anime, facevents, upper leg and arm armor, knees etc, you need to line this guy for best effect. Maybe even use some grey pour type marker for the closed face like I did to give it more depth. Articulation on this kit is pretty good, it's not too limited and despite it's slightly bulky design, it does well. There is one major problem of this kit though, and that is loose parts. A lot of parts like to fall off on this kit, and i'll show you why later. As of now, one of them is the Core Lander, which you can see detached in the first image of the review.

For weapons, it comes with a nice amount. The Shining Gundam itself doesn't have a lot in the way of weapons. Most G Gundam kits have some sort of certain fighting gimmick or strategy, with only one or two real types of weapons. The Shining Gundam is an all rounder with little weakness, and Domon uses the potential the Gundam has to great extent. This Gundam uses martial arts, punches and kicks to do it's fighting with the mobile trace system to copy Domon's every move, and it does it well. It does though, have a few weapons, the vulcan guns in the head, machine guns in the chest, and two beam sabers, one long one, one short one, similar to a samurai. You get an extra side skirt with an area where you can store both of them in if you want to have them there, you can see them stored in the second image.

If you know the anime, the Shining Gundam can transform. Since this is G Gundam, the main character is known for having his famous finisher attack techniques. For his standard finisher, you can replace the head with an open version, as well as use the green hand part to do his "Shining Finger", you even get an optional effect part for a really epic looking large version of the attack, sadly it doesn't always fit on the finger very well. This attack is usually targeted at the head, as a destroyed head means the fighter is disqualified. He uses this as his main finisher, and it makes stuff go boom.

Now, I said this kit has loose parts, why you may ask? Well, it's because the MS transforms, or in the case of the HG, it partsforms. Now usually i'd be okay with partsforming, the only thing about this kit is the parts that do partsform, while hold well at first, really like to erode, and this kit gets loose really quickly after you parts form it once, not to mention that unlike me, a lot of people hate partsforming, so this could be a turn off. The gold parts inside the thighs and under the armguards are grey OOB, but I painted them gold for anime accuracy of the super mode.

You can still do everything the regular mode can do in the super mode, articulation is very good and he can still pull off his Shining Finger.

You also get a clear Shining Finger Sword "effect part" which is quite detailed, and even says G Gundam on it just like in the show (not a good angle for the sword here but I did it because it's the signature pose).

Verdict:

The Shining Gundam is a good kit overall in my opinion, and to fans of the Shining Gundam, it's probably the best looking option out there right now, as it's got the most effect parts, and can do the most display options. However, it does have problems, those being the infuriatingly loose parts, minor missing color apps, and partsformation. If you can get past these issues, you're in for a nice looking HG kit from an awesome series. However, if these aspects are a major turn off, there are alternatives. You could go for the MG or old NG and 1/100 HG, but those kits have their own fair share of problems, seriously Bandai, give us MG G Gundam Ver. RM kits and i'll love you guys. Despite it's flaws however, the HGFC kit is definitely the cheapest one and the one with more display options, and if you're a fan of G Gundam, definitely consider this.

Pros:

- Tones of display options and effect parts. (!)

- Can replicate most, if not all of Shining Gundam's attacks, it's only kit that can do that.

- Articulation is very good.

Cons:

-Partsformation is annoying due to falling parts, it's not a very good one and i'm someone who usually doesn't mind it. (!)

-Due to partsformation and type of plastic used, the joints erode slightly and get very loose very easily. (!)
-Small areas need gold paint.