GFFN Full Armor Unicorn Gundam - Quick Review



This is the quick review of GFFN RX-0 Full Armor Unicorn Gundam.

If you want to read the Full Review separated in 4 parts with lots of photos on them, click the links below;

Part 1 of 4
Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4
Part 4 of 4

Otherwise... you can now continue to read the rest of this article;

The price of this item is a gigantic 8,000 yen (about SGD 128.00) before adding whatever shipment charges and surely for a figure at 1/144 scale I personally would say that this is pricey.... I wont say expensive but rather - pricey...

This is because it has to do with the customer groups or sector that Bandai is targeting for this class actually. Yes, I personally will say that this is a high end class figures from Bandai.

All those GunPlaMo kits - the HG, the MG and so on is from Bandai Hobby Division which in general target wider customer and they can priced their items lower because of the frequent releases (every month) and in huge amount of quantity. Usually the targeted customers are students or young working adults.

The GFF, GFFN (1/144), GFFMC (1/100), S.H. Figuarts and Robot Tamashii is from Tamashii Nation (Bandai Collector’s Division) thus the price is higher because they are originally meant for those working adults or real collectors. In other words, people or fans who willing to spend extra money on a particular item.

Another thing to consider is that GunPlaMo kit usually will never go out of production but action figures like GFF/GFFN/GFFMC/Robot Tamashii have limited production run time. The same pattern with other product from other company as well, Figma from Max Factory for example. You can look at those Figma from Max Factory, nowadays, plenty of models were quickly discontinued by those online hobby shop immediately once the stock all gone.

And then come another important aspect to be taken into account. People like me, I'm getting old and lazy to spent more time on GunPlaMo kits nowadays, in fact I'm on the verge of retiring now. Well, I may not abandon GunPlaMo kits for good, but lately and also in the future, maybe I will just buy and build 1 or 2 nice HGUC kits and that's about it.... I'm no longer interested to have 100 or 1000 GunPlaMo kits in my collections.

Similarly to other people, when one is still a student maybe, they might have some extra times to spare and they can do lots of GunPlaMo kits project, but as an adult, when you have this distraction (or rather commitment) from work and family stuff (wife, kids and annoying in laws and relatives) you might have less time to spare...

So it's all about market segment and targeted audience/customer.... if you study marketing, you sure knew what I mean....


Nonetheless, let's start the review now....

The box....




Out of the box....





The box is just slightly larger than any other normal GFF or GFFN in the past.... 1 of the thing I like about GFFN is that Bandai no longer use that wires to "secure" the figures and all the extra parts, weapon and armors. In the past they use plenty of those wires and unboxing the GFF canbe a daunting task for a lazy bump like me....


Out of the box you will get all these stuff;




The Unicorn Gundam in NT-D Mode




Large Rocket Booster....




All the weapons.... the standard Beam Magnum Rifle, Gatlings Beam Guns (six of them in fact), 2 Grenade Launcher and those 2 Hyper Bazooka....




3 shields, 2 is fixed (and attached with 2 Gatlings Beam Gun each) while 1 have slide and expansion articulation in which you can also attached the other 2 units of Gatlings Beam Gun on it...




2 Anti-Ship Missile Launchers and 4 hand grenades...




3 pairs of extra hands....




Only 2 units of beam saber parts and the rest of the left of this photo are extra parts needed for the Full Armor attachment....




Last but not least, this beautiful standard GFFN action/display base in white color with the name of the Gundam printed on it....






As usual let's have a look at the Gundam first....





Let's see the Unicorn with some weapons and armaments and let's see some action pose...






Everything can be attached accordingly.... just like the MG counterparts...






Some outdoor shots...







Hyper bazooka....







The left arm can't really reach to also hold the bazooka plus there is nothing for the left hand to grab or hold onto anyway....






And now the beam saber....




The arm can reach and grab the beam saber accordingly.... very nice...







And if one is not enough.... grab both of them.... and don't forget there are 2 more hidden on the arms.... but only 2 red beam saber parts were supplied....





And n0w the last part... finally the RX-O Full Armor Unicorn Gundam....

This is basically how it looks like when you attached all those goodies....




That Rocket Booster or what I prefer to call as Twin Tail is quite light on its own but once you attached it onto the body of Unicorn..... the physic law applies and in general it will give a serious extra weight to the Unicorn....





The decals is pretty nice... Katoki really love to watch Japanese adult video and thus he is quite keen on lots of decals... I love Japanese adult video as well and I really appreciate all those lovely decals in GFF/GFFN/GFFMC....

In fact this is one of the main reason why I love the GFF/GFFN/GFFMC so much.... despite the high end price, some flaws here and there and not so great articulation if compared to other mecha figures from different toy series/line up, the GFF/GFFN/GFFMC are all beautifully designed and every aspect of it have this Katoki touch on it...








Those on the legs are hand grenade actually (another 2 units were attached onto the Hyper Bazooka...






Some outdoor shots....





With all those condoms.... not much articulation anymore... I think this is all that he can do...





Right after this review, I will basically remove the Twin Tail and display this FAUG without it to reduce the weight burden....




Something like this.... much lighter this way....





Overall, this GFFN Full Armor Unicorn Gundam is indeed a brilliant action figure for collectors and the fans of GFF/GFFN - the typical urine of Hajime Katoki - beautiful design lot's of extra stuff, lots of decals and finally in the GFFN, no more lousiness and stupid loose armor or limbs part that we used to experience in the previous GFF series. Well done Bandai, I am happy to pay for this great item.

Nonetheless.... despite all my praise, this unit that we have is not really a perfect one in terms of workmanship... we can see some ugly cutting mark left over or nubs mark as some will call it - we also spotted some dried white super glue spot on certain area and the the joint on the left shoulder is to stiff which at the end I just pull it out, do some minor cutting and adjustment and finally it's great now.

At first, I personally quite disappointed that this GFFN FAUG doesn't incorporates die cast metal on the elbow and knee joint system unlike the previous brilliant GFFN Aile Strike and I started to have doubts on the joint parts... However, after spending several hours on this figure while doing the review, I can now finally say that even with the PVC materials, the joint system it is in fact quite good - apart from the fact that the articulation capabilities is just average. So basically, it doesn't matter what material Bandai use, most important is it can perform accordingly.

In fact, when I think of it again, if Bandai were to use plenty of die cast metals materials, the price might be higher than the current 8,000 yen and maybe - just maybe, thanks to the effort from the design team, they somehow manage to reduce die cast metals and more importantly also the cost and the pricing - otherwise the price might reach 10,000 yen or more.

Another thing that surprises me is the lightweight of the figure, since they use less metals now it feels like just a light cheap figure - previous GFF figures is slightly heavier than this one. But then again, after a while you don't really bother about it as the most important thing is that everything is solid and firm and you have more confident to play with this GFFN FAUG.

So for now... I wonder if Bandai and Katoki will soon design/produce GFFN Sinanju? The Robot Tamashii Sinanju available soon at 5,000 yen but I'm not interested with it as it has less decals and I prefer the wonderful hard materials mixtures of GFFN over Robot Tamashii softies...

My personal estimation is that if Bandai/Katoki produced some sort of GFFN Sinanju, the price will be near 10,000 yen - slightly more or less maybe - but should be not far from that range - time will tell if that will ever happen and I surely hope to grab one as well....

You can order this item from your local hobby/toys retailer or you can also get it directly from HLJ from the link below;

http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN963182


If you want to read the Full Review separated in 4 parts with lots of photos on them, click the links below;

Part 1 of 4
Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4
Part 4 of 4



end

Comments

  1. This thing is amazing looking! Pity it costs way too expensive.....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Expensive stuff have a lot of parts to review :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great review! Love this figure, yet to snap shots of mine yet, sadly.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Shaun, welcome to Shewsbury Land, I'm glad that you like the review.... thanks...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just to let you know, Bandai actually continued the GFFN line in the non-Gundam genre called Composite Ver. Ka. The line features mechas from Code Geass, Gurren Lagann and even (mileage may vary from person to person) Haruhi's Custom General Purpose Multi-domain Humanoid Exoskeletal Combat Armor with Katoki's famous warning decals.

    ReplyDelete

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