Series: High Grade Universal Century (HGUC) 1/144
Title: MS-15C Gyan Cannon (B-Club conversion)
Release Date: 09/2000
Suggested Price: ¥ 3800 (conversion kit only)
No. of Parts: conversion kit - 14 resin pieces + 4 polycaps, Gyan - 41 plastic + 16 polycaps + 1 transparent orange beam
Plastic colors: black, beige, gray
Gimmicks: conversion parts

Introduction

Contributor: Clem-Master-Janitor
Date: June 19, 2007

Hey look, it's the Gyan… with some BFGs instead of the standard missile shield and beam saber. Look at that! Hey, wait, something seems off?  What ever could you mean? Is there something not sitting right in the land of B-Club with this latest upgrade to a kit that should never have been classified in the line of HGUC? Certainly B-Club would fix that. Right?

Head

The head is the exact same head as the 1/144 HGUC Gyan. This is not a great thing. The ‘pinhead' design is a unique and often called ‘knightly' looking design and it still retains this in its upgrade form. The head bobbles a lot but only if you want it to. The problem is the Gyan head only has a very lackluster sticker that acts as the monoeye. It doesn't fit on the rail piece within the helmet, giving it a paper looking quality even after all the work you'll have to put into this kit. I ended up buying a LED piece and drilling it into the central plastic. It looks fantastic after but seems an unnecessary step. Probably should have been fixed prior to being released (or re-released as it was when I bought it).

Torso

The torso is also standard Gyan except for the skirt armor. Instead of the simple little skirt that connects directly to a rounded slot at the bottom of the torso, it has a new and bigger skirt with a bit more detail for you to drill out and glue to the old backside skirt armor. This is another headache as it causes you to notice that whole ‘what's the Japanese words saying' and ‘where do you get a 3mm drill bit'? All you really have to do is drill it big enough to allow the male pegs to slip in since you have to glue the resin parts together (resin-to-resin or resin-to-plastic), but a snug fit is nice. I ended up using a drill bit just barely big enough to allow the bits to work together. This came back to be a problem later.

Attached to the back is a new resin backpack that looks almost identical to the original except two spaces are made to allow the new BFGs to swivel up and down over the shoulders. This backpack and its guns require much drilling and you have little space for error. Now if I knew what all the warnings were, I'd tell you. Just don't goof up or you'll destroy the whole cannon piece and maybe cry as it's very thin after drilling the proper size holes in the cannon. Then you have to shorten the polycap pieces for the cannon joints and make them all play together nice. Add in some drilling in the cannon thrusters (anti-recoil?) and some more pain in the ass drilling for the cannons' optical sensors that need to be placed at a certain angle to look right (I think…can't read the damn instructions to know for certain) and your headache should be complete. Maybe. I had to glue the polycaps in as they kept popping off. Then the backpack decided to be a bastard and fell off so I had to glue it on. 

I should mention the resin weight in the backpack is heavy, almost to the point of causing the whole kit to fall backward. Good thing the base kit is so light…

Arms

The arms are standard edition Gyan arms with some new parts added.  Gone is the big missile shield. In its place are two sets of three wrist rockets very similar in design to the Gelgoog Cannon's wrist cannons.  You have to guesstimate where they fit (they do have a small indentation to vaguely show you the proper alignment and then glue them on. Also, part of the pieces of the wrist cannons hovers above and below the arm piece because for some reason B-Club decided the Gyan Cannon should have that piece open and floating. I'm guessing so the next time you're not paying attention, you can grab that piece without thinking and crush it. 

Shoulders are now given some heavy armor to protect the torso from attacks on the sides. These pieces glue somehow on to the shoulders.  Exactly how is again left to your imagination. I spent an hour trying to figure out the best way to glue them and keep the Gyan's arm movements. I lost the majority of them and had a hell of a time getting the pieces in perfect alignment with each other. You just drop the shoulders on the shoulder balls and kind of hope for the best with gluing. Might help again if I could read the Japanese instructions as the pictures don't tell too much. 

A huge let down in this Gyan design is the exposed elbow and knee polycaps. Think 1/144 08th MS Team model kits, especially the Gouf Custom's and you have the exact same set up. There are kit upgrades available for the regular Gyan so to give it the true HGUC look, but for some reason Bandai opted not to release such a part for this kit. That means bare polycaps that, though they can be blended well, still look tacky. 

Now you have a super heavy shoulder mounted piece and some heavy (not as heavy, though) pieces on the arms hovering forward so to balance the heavy back weapons. Oh boy, hope the legs get some weight balancing or all hell could break loose.

Legs

I lied. Standard legs. Very light and exposed polycaps that link to a hip joint that inserts into the upper torso. Very limited movement of the lower body due to the skirt armor confining the legs. Should be noted the only time you can see the knee polycaps is when you look at it from behind.  Annoyances are abound when putting the feet into the ankle polycaps as this causes the frail seam along the lower legs to split, even after glue.  It's caused by the angle you have to put the polycaps at to link up with the socket of the feet. They put too much space between the pegs and the end of the ankle armor as it's about the right spot to place your fingers to push back. Any higher just doesn't work. Very big pain in the ass when you're assembling for the final time and have to figure a way to fix a part splitting and marring the paint job! Damn it! 

Weapons and Accessories

As mentioned, you get the cannons on the back and wrists. All fit the detailing of the normal Gyan kit so not to seem too detailed. The big beam saber is also back and looking nice with the regular kit. You can opt to leave it off as Bandai gives you the weaponless hands for your long range pleasure, but without the saber, it's just not very Gyan-ish. 

All decals were taken from the Zimmad HGUC waterslide decal set for the Gyan. I had to guess on where to place them as I found reference pictures few and limited. They work great for the kit.

Conclusion

What can I say? It has some serious faults. The Gyan base kit isn't the greatest kit. It barely deserves the HGUC title it was granted. A few more minutes of draw time back at Bandai could have fixed all these problems but they opted against it. Extreme weight imbalances make the kit precarious and instructions that make you wonder what the hell is going on or what the warnings are make things worse. Plus, what color is this kit? I went with a sand gray color and medium blue, but staring at the few pictures, I think Bandai wanted a bit  more gray. How can I know for certain? I can't. Maybe the instructions say otherwise. I doubt it. 

If you love Gyans, this kit will appeal. If you're curious about trying B-Club kits - stay far away. Seriously. Just stare and wonder about what could have been and hope Bandai upgrades the Gyan to 2.0 and gives a good HGUC job to this and all the other variant Gyans out there. Poor Gyan Cannon. You look so nice, too. Poor, back heavy, bastard.

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

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