| GC 1/400 Gundam GP03 vs Neue Ziel
Series: Gundam Collection (GC) 1/400 Title: Gundam GP03 vs Neue Ziel Release Date: 11/2006 Suggested Price: ¥ 8500 No. of Parts: 45 runners (no polycaps) + 2 loose Dendrobium weapons containers + 4 wires + 1 decal sheet (all adhesive) + 1 1/400 AGX-04 figure + 1 1/400 GP03S figure + 12 extra GP03S arms/weapons Plastic colors: dark sea-green, white, off-white, gray, black, red, blue Gimmicks: General: pre-painted parts, 1/400 GP03S and AGX-04 figures with stands, display bases for mobile armors with partial equipment storage, limited-edition Dendrobium/Neue Ziel sketchbook; Neue Ziel: deployable sub-arms with beam sabers, detachable forearms with wires for all-range attack; Dendrobium: docking slot for GP03S figure, fully operable 16-silo weapon containers, deployable beam-saber arms, holding clip to impale AGX-04 on main cannon
Contributor: tajisdurmin Date: August 14, 2007 I must begin with a confession: in 15 years of collecting Gundam models I've never bought anything outside the 1/100 scale established by my first kit, an elderly HG F90 II with its foil stickers now peeling all over the place. Nothing I've seen in other scales has even slightly tempted me, even slightly thrown my fixation on consistency into question—nothing save Gundam 0083's iconic GP03 Dendrobium. The 1/144 HGUC release came and went, but I couldn't afford the $400 it would have taken to ship one Stateside let alone a cubic meter of display space in my room; the 1/550 HGM version was a better size, but at $20 clearly could not do justice to the GP03. Instead of buying either, I watched the Gunpla headlines, laughed at the unveiling of the tiny 1/400 Gundam Collection line, couldn't help but think of its new White Base as a winged dollhouse...but just before Christmas I saw some photos of both the Dendrobium and its main opponent in 0083, the AMX-002 Neue Ziel, beautifully rendered as a single Gundam Collection release. I ordered the kit on sight and received it in a massive box (its bottom is the backdrop for most of my photos) about two weeks later. There were numerous parts within, of course, but the runner count is deceptively high: most are half the size or less of an MG runner, and contain as few as two parts with about half a dozen being the norm. If you're reading this as a fellow Dendrobium fan, I'm sure you're breathless with anticipation, so I'll start where you want me to: the Neue Ziel. [ducks]
The Neue Ziel comes molded in a fairly anime-accurate shade of dark sea-green, with gray and red accents but very few panel lines pre-painted. The three main sets of hull appendages (shoulder armor, binders, fuel tanks) have limited articulation and can flex enough to suggest maneuvering without radically altering the MA's fundamental T-shape. The head, an elongated design oddly reminiscent of an Alien warrior, is mounted on a ball joint but has very little freedom of motion due to the extensive collar built around it. Two long plates trail behind the hull from the chest armor, above an aft-facing antenna molded in rubberized material to prevent breakage; both of these parts were slightly warped in my kit, but can likely be bent back into shape with careful application of heat. A single adhesive decal, an elegant cursive-D Delaz Fleet logo, is intended for a point on the Ziel's left shoulder disturbed by raised hull detail, so I applied mine to a smoother and more central point on the tail binder instead.
Regrettably, most of the Neue Ziel's formidable arsenal is molded into the hull as mega-particle cannon and missile ports, leaving only the melee weaponry to display any movable parts. Bandai does a decent but imperfect job here, with the heavy claw arms' ball-jointed shoulders largely limited to sideways motion by the surrounding armor and most of the arms' practical range coming from the elbows. Two pairs of interchangeable wires, one long and one short, allow the forearms to be launched from the elbows for an all-range attack...but the forearms are too heavy for the wires and don't have their own stands like the MG Zeong's, rendering the pose extremely delicate. The four beam-saber sub-arms are also a mixed success, the majority of their length folding double and stowing under the shoulder armor but any attack pose relying on the manual addition of their detachable spiked forearms. That said, the assembled sub-arms can straighten and/or twist through 180 degrees, bringing any combination of saber blades to bear fore or aft of the Neue Ziel's hull; this ability to simultaneously threaten an entire sphere around itself makes for a sexy display piece. All four forearms and their wonderfully molded beam-saber blades (you'll never look at an MG blade the same way again) can be stowed beneath the Neue Ziel's display base, which mates with the hollow tip of the tail binder. The base will also hold the claw arms' claws behind the fixed-angle pedestal to allow a cruising pose, but making a beast like this look so non-violent borders on blasphemy.
Most of the Orchis' body is an extremely sleek rocket sled, with the massive mega beam cannon and I-field generator slung from its sides and the weapons containers held above its deck by a plate rising from the sled like a dorsal fin. The engine pods incorporate numerous curves formed by hull plates that fit together perfectly, save for minor gaps around the ventral beam-saber arms. Strangely, a forward section of the hull hinges open slightly to accept the GP03S figure which lies prone atop it but doesn't actually dock the Orchis and Stamen; in practice, only closing the inner set of weapon-container doors to catch the Stamen's shoulders will prevent it from taking a nasty spill in a dive. Pre-painted detail mainly consists of gray and black accents of exhaust vents and the like, with some red in the main engines; the Orchis seems to be a trickier paint job than the Neue Ziel, with a faint half-inch dark squiggle along the side of my machine's main cannon and some gray smudges on other parts. Most of the residue can be rubbed off, but even the few patches that can't pass as weathering given the fierce battles in 0083. Dozens of decals help the overall sense of scale, ranging from tiny warning-label rectangles to massive Katoki-style Anaheim Electronics logos that adorn the weapons containers. Normally I'm opposed to seeing my secret prototypes covered in huge lettering listing their names, pilots, armaments and NASCAR sponsors, but in the Federation arsenal the Dendrobium is only exceeded for sheer audacity and brute force by the Solar System; the machine's already as blatant as it can get. Neat touch: the main Anaheim logo includes “LR” and “AL” tail letters hastily added after the Dendrobium identifier, indicating its assignments to the La Vie En Rose and the Albion. Not so neat: the eight decals meant to highlight painted and inset reaction-control thrusters that instead cover them in crumpled plastic and aren't worth applying.
Ah, the literal money shot of this entire kit…something like a third of its parts seem to go solely into arming the Orchis, and the effort is well spent. Each of the 16 triangular weapons silos visible upon opening the four weapons containers is fully operable: six contain 108-round micromissile pods, four are three-packs of anti-ship missiles (not separable into individual missiles like the HGUC version's), two are removable panels that reveal attachment points for chain mines (which use wires shared with the Neue Ziel's claw arms), and the last four are storage racks for the Stamen's folding shield, bazooka, folding bazooka and beam rifle. Mid-launch poses are slightly loose and unstable, but all of these stow firmly in their respective slots and closing the container doors secures everything completely. The main mega beam cannon has every feature necessary to recreate Cima Garahau's demise as seen in 0083: a flip-out trigger handle the Stamen could grip if it had workable hands, a few degrees of horizontal traverse, and a special muzzle plug that allows the included AGX-04 figure to be balanced on its tip if the Dendrobium's tilted back on its display base. Opposite the cannon, the I-field shares the HGUC version's coin-like faceplate design, which shows opened innards on one side and closed louvers on the other; you change the displayed side by removing and flipping the faceplate. Beneath everything, though, the Orchis' two beam-saber arms nearly steal the entire show. They start flush with the hull but separate from it by sliding diagonally down and forward, then the fin-like opening “hands” move into position by sliding their wrist joints forward from the elbows along tracks in the forearms. It's a very smooth transition, and the elbows are full ball joints that allow blades nearly as long as the main gun 360-degree horizontal coverage. The arms don't depress much but the wrists will elevate the blades about 60 degrees to protect the Dendrobium's face, allowing it to use the beam sabers defensively as well as offensively…either way, they're a great deal of fun to play with. Both sets of beam sabers can be stored under the Dendrobium's display base, along with a cover plate for the GP03's display-arm attachment slot and the chain mines' rocket heads and silo covers. The base and tip of the display arm adjust to angles from a 30-degree dive to a 60-degree ascent, but the headpiece tends to work loose of the arm and potentially drop the Dendrobium due to vibration or posing. As a result, I'm seriously considering picking a headpiece angle I like and super-gluing it into place.
The tiny GP03S and AGX-04 included with the kit are by necessity much simpler pieces, their excellent paint jobs not quite compensating for their limited flexibility. Small stands for the mobile suits hold them suspended in space, eliminating the problem of trying to make them stand on feet angled for flight poses. The Stamen includes four sets of interchangeable arms molded in a range of poses: one empty-handed pair bent at the elbows for a versatile riding pose, a pair with its sub-arms deployed upward to reach the Orchis' storage racks, one pair holding its beam rifle and folding shield, and a final pair holding its two bazookas for point-blank work. You “arm” the Stamen by swapping out the arms to taste and removing stowed guns from the Orchis' racks, which works well for posing but less so for casual play. As for the Gerbera Tetra, no extra parts are included save the muzzle plug to put it on the Dendrobium's gun, and it's further limited by having its limbs molded spread-eagled to favor the impalement pose when they're all twisted forward. Both figures are quite fragile, and the AGX-04's two-piece sturm booster falls off its back with unintentional ease...another probable super-glue job. Unfortunately the sketchbook is just an eight-page gimmick, two of which are a Gundam Collection ad, and unless you can read very fine handwritten Japanese in the sketches you won't learn anything about either MA you didn't already know. I would have gladly paid another thousand yen for a short action-footage DVD similar to the one that accompanied the HGUC Dendrobium, perhaps with the GP03 episode of Gundam Evolve instead, but in its absence AMVs on YouTube fill the void.
While I haven't been completely sold on 1/400 mobile suits by the two specimens seen here, the mobile armors are a very different story. Few high-end Gundam kits offer the chance to build one MA, let alone two, and the change of pace from the usual MG repetition of arms and legs was quite refreshing. Each finished model is comparable in size to an MG kit, requiring about a cubic foot of space to display decently, and looks great thanks to the pre-painting; the overall high quality opens the door for Gundam Collection to become the equivalent of MG for anything too large to practically produce in 1/100 scale. The Neue Ziel is admittedly less impressive than the Dendrobium but it's due to a less toy-like initial design, not any real failing of the kit. I bought this for about $110 shipped in December, but since then it's become available for less than the GFF wannabe Dendrobium presently commands on eBay. In the final analysis, if you've been holding out for a good Neue Ziel and Dendrobium the laundry list of features, excellent balance of cost versus size and impressive “swoosh factor” make these the ones to buy. Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars <<back to Gundam |
