NG 1/100 GNY-001 Gundam Astraea

Hey Builders! 

I just got back from a short weekend trip to New York City. I decided to spend a bit of my time searching for Gunpla stores. When I was younger, I used to pick up a few kits while visiting Chinatown with my family. That is how I ended up getting my HG 1/100 Altron, NG 1/144 Collector's Blaze Zaku Phantom, HG 1/144 08th MS Team GM, and NG 1/100 Strike Freedom. 

Most of these broke...

I haven't been back since 2009, and I heard a lot of the stores I used to visit had closed down. I ended up finding two stores, Da Shop and Image Anime based on references from Reddit. 

Da Shop was located in Chinatown, across from the Elizabeth Center (where I used to get my kits). Their prices were pretty marked up, so I didn't pick anything up. I picked up the Astraea from Image Anime which was closer to my hotel, and I could walk there. It was only a $3 mark up from the Amazon price, $6 including taxes. 

Parts 

The kit comes with  12 Runners, A, C, E, F, H, I, J, K, L, M, SB, and PC. Many of these runners draw from the NG 1/100 Exia and looking at the leftover parts, you may be able to turn this guy into its successor. It comes with one small sticker sheet as well. 

Weapons and Manipulators

Manipulators:

2x Open

2x Holding

Weapons:

1x GN Beam Rifle 

1x GN Launcher

1x Proto GN Sword 

2x GN Beam Sabers with 2x Short Blades and 2x Long Blades

1x Shield

Size Comparison

Here is the Astraea next to my other 1/100 Gundam from 00, the MG 00 Raiser. The 00 is noticeably taller, and also more slender than his No Grade predecessor. The legs on the Astraea are a bit bulkier, and not as sleek as the 00. 

Articulation

Arms:

The arms bend fairly nicely, but in the 3rd picture, the arm will pop out at the elbow if you bend it all the way 180. The shoulders are independent of the arms, similar to the MG 00, and can rotate freely from the arms. 

Legs/Ankles: 

The legs also have fairly good bend, but cannot achieve a full split. The knee has a double joint which allows it to bend farther. The ankles are on ball joints and has some side to side movement. The foot is in two pieces, where the toe can bend forward via polycap. 

 Color/Quality

The Astraea comes in White, Blue and Red plastic, with off white/purplish rubber pieces that accent certain parts. It provides you with green stickers for the rifles, the chest piece, and the head piece. It also provides gray stickers to detail certain areas. I opted to paint a few areas with silver paint and metallic green (like the chest) instead of using a sticker. 

Unfortunately, the white isn't true to the off white of the Astraea's line art. It looks very nice and clean, but the line art has hints of light light gray and maybe even slight purple. 

The GN sword is all gray, so I painted the outer edges with Tamiya Acryllic Titanium Silver. The sword guard also needs gray stickers as well. The shield comes in gray, blue and white pieces. 

The guns come in all gray, and use a clear piece with a green sticker on it to create the sight. They could use some paint. 

All in all, this kit is of very good quality for a NG. The joint pieces are definitely a step up from the NG SEED/SEED DESTINY line, and are much much better than the Wing line. Even so, the plastic still has that thin feel to it. Some of the armor pieces pop into place, like around the knees/thighs without any pegs and are just asking to pop off. Not sure why they would do that. Other pieces are meant to come off, like the spikes on the neck area, so you can mount the launcher. 

The kit offers a lot of panel lining and spots for detailing. If you don't, the kit can end up looking very plain with just the white plastic. The panel lining really makes it pop. However, the kit also has a lot of seam lines that need to be taken care of, especially around the ankles as well. 

Pros and Cons

This kit looks great. If you put in the TLC that it deserves (and needs) it'll look great on your shelf. With all the detailing that you can put in, you can really make it stand out. The weapons are really cool, and attach to the forearms so holding is much more secure. The multiple beam sabers are pretty unique, and you can have a bunch of play styles and poses. 

Besides that, this kit has a very awesome design in its own regard. There aren't too many color mistakes, and it looks very clean upon finish. It's not heavy, and it even comes with an action base adapter so you can pose it on an Action Base #1

Its not a difficult kit, but it still has a lot of parts and will take up a good amount of time to finish, especially if you put in all that effort to detail and make it look good. That being said, it is not a frustrating kit to build. Its easy, will take up a good chunk of time, and will look great when you're finished. 

Unfortunately this is still a NG 1/100 kit. It has similar problems to the other NG 1/100 kits. Even though it has some very nice improvements to its predecessors, I found some annoying pieces that might turn you off from this kit. 

Some sections that require a polycap clamped between two pieces won't fit together properly, or will take a lot of fidgeting to get it right, (hopefully before you crush one section of the polycap connection...)

The hands pop off fairly easily on the ball joints, and don't seem to flush deep enough into the wrists. 

The legs pose fairly well, but cannot maintain lower crouched poses without a lot of adjusting. 

The thigh joints are fairly loose and can cause the kit to split when trying to pose. 

Some armor pieces pop off because they don't connect well. 

Verdict

I would totally get this kit because of its design, and how unique it is. Until Bandai releases an MG Astraea this is the best you're going to get. With all of its problems, once you get it just right, it'll look awesome, and it gives you an adapter to alleviate some of its posing issues. If you like big swords like me, and the 00 line, this is a great kit to add. Once I finish my MG Exia I'll be looking forward to having my lineage up to the 00 Gundam. 

 Additional Comments/Photos

The Sword is probably my favorite thing, having an underslung blade is just too awesome.

The Beam rifle also deviates from the norm, and looks pretty unique attaching to the arm as well.

You can get some cool poses, but then you can also end up getting some derpy ones, bending joints in certain ways to try to reach weapons or whatnot. 

Here are the leftover pieces that I suspect you may be able to fashion together the Exia, only without its weapons. 

I'm glad I got this kit, but I'll be disappointed in it if they release an MG... But i'm very happy with my purchase. 

Until next time!

MG 1/100 Gundam Astray Red Frame Kai (Painted Build)

Hey Builders, 

Welcome to GunplaWorks. Today I have a post on one of my bigger projects, the MG Gundam Astray Red Frame Kai, with a candy red paint job for the frame. As you may know, the Astray Gundam in all of its iterations are best known for their unique design, with an exposed inner frame. For this reason, many people love the design of the Astray. 

For those of you who might not use an airbrush, or think its too costly, this might be for you. Many people ask, is it possible to attain the same metallic red color by using spray cans? (the cheaper alternative). The short answer is Yes, but I will get into it a little more later. 

For this project I used Mr. Hobby Mr. Surfacer 1000, Tamiya Color Clear Red, Tamiya Color Gold Leaf, and Tamiya Color Gloss Black. The order I went in was Surfacer, then black, then gold, then clear red. I used about one can on average for each, so I still have some left of each color. 

I decided with the myriad of red parts, I would just go by the runners. Here is the black gloss over the surfacer. 

After, I coated the black pieces with the gold leaf. Be very careful, this part is very important. Make sure you coat all the sections of the piece that you need to be coated in red as well. If you leave some black sticking out, the gloss red will not look as good over it. 

The next part was to coat the gold pieces in the clear red. 

Its hard to see because of the lighting, but it came out pretty well. 

Painting on the runners calls for one drawback. It is hard to see all the sections of the pieces clearly, so you may have missed some sections when spraying. It is also difficult to get in all the nooks and crannies, while leaving a lot of risk for pooling through trying to get in closer in between parts. 

Painting Aside:

Here is where I will talk a little about the spray paint. Yes it is possible to achieve a candy coat of metallic red or whatever through the process of priming, black, (gold or chrome) and then a clear coat of what color you're using. In theory and in practice it works. However it leaves a lot of room for mistakes. I found a lot of  sections that I missed when I was painting, (left black, or left slightly gold). 

If you try to paint in this way, I suggest taking off the pieces, and taking your time making sure the coats are smooth and thorough. The other thing is, make sure you mask off the pieces that connect together, or you will have a hard time fitting pieces together. (I used a hobby knife to scrape off excess before putting pieces together). 

Finally, a small tip. What happens if you missed a section? You can't very well go out and spray clear red over again and start from scratch. It's too much of a hassle. Here's a little trick I used. I took a small plastic saucer (the kinds you might use at a fast food restaurant for your ketchup or sauces or whatever) and then covered it with plastic wrap (the kind you use to seal food) leaving some slack. Then I cut a small hole at the top, enough for the top of the spray can to fit, and then pushed the spray can with the plastic saucer so it would be contained inside, and then used a brush to brush whatever pieces needed to be touched up. This helped me fix a lot of my mistakes. 

Here is part of the torso being built

From the side. 

After awhile, this is my progress. The upper body pretty much finished. 

As you can see on the forearms, on your left, I did not coat enough gold, thus the red sat on top of the black, and is much darker. On your right, I didn't spray enough red, so the gold comes out more, making it lighter. I touched up both towards the end. 

Red on too much black is much more difficult to fix than just not enough red. Be careful when coating the gold!

Here is the inner frame on the leg

I love the design of the leg. The way you put it together really makes each section pop out. Having the frame and then putting the white armor pieces on top, and then putting more red pieces over the armor really gives for a unique design. 

Finished. Prior to building the weapons. I gave him a beam saber. 

Hey, that's not your big sword...

Borrowing from Shinn Asuka and his Sword Impulse

The swords are to die for. Here are the Tiger Pierce and Gerbera Straight. 

I painted the gold parts of the swords with the Tamiya Gold Leaf as well. You may find that if you build this kit, you won't like the "gold" that it comes in. It's very unattractive. 

Here he is with the Tactical Arms II L

Thoughts about this kit:

A few things to say. I really love the design of this kit. However, I would not have purchased it if I was not planning to give it a paint job. The red and gold that it comes in were not to my liking, and though the colors are accurate to the manga/anime art, I don't like it as much as the candy coat. I found that the red color molding that the plastic came in was much too bland. 

But you can feel free to disagree with me. 

This kit has amazing articulation. You can sort of see in the picture above this one, that he can do some pretty awesome slashing poses without a stand. He is also very sturdy (though I'm not sure if that's because the paint makes the pieces fit together that much more snugly)

The Tactical Arms II L looks amazing, however it is much too heavy for him to hold without a stand in Sword Form. Though the kit comes with a stand, so that is very helpful.

The Tactical Arms also changes form into Arrow, flight, V, and Delta, so the different poses you can achieve are just awesome. 

You can check out some of the photos HERE

 Until next time!