HGAC Gundam Heavyarms

 I am a big fan of the Gundam Wing series. 

As a kid who grew in the USA, I can't help it. It was the show I watched when I grew up. While it wasn't the first Gundam show I saw, it was the first I saw from start to finish. I am pretty sure I am not the only one. 

Unfortunately, Bandai didn't give much love to this series when it comes to model kit. Despite knowing its large popularity in the United States, their HG line kit is really old and hard to find, and their MG kit isn't that accurate compare to the TV series, not to mention they have their own problems. 

A few years ago, Bandai began releasing HG kits from the Gundam Wings series and I was really happy, patiently waiting for Heavyarms and Deathsythe. 

And finally, here is HG Heavyarms. 

And I was happy.

The kit does have few problems. Actually one big problem but lets start with the usual. The box art.

Ah... nothing screams Heavyarm than this. lots of guns and missiles. 

The kit includes small sheet of foil stickers used for color corrections. 

It is a standard HG kit, but the colors are really vibrant. 

It does use poly caps, but not a lot. 

The kit was easy to build. Even with carefully cleaning, it took me about an hour to finish this out of box build, 

As you can see, it has a great modern proportion while keeping its anime like look. I dig it. 

For gimmicks, it has this knife on right arm.

And a bunch of panels opens up to reveal more guns and missiles. 

Unfortunately articulation is limited on arm, making it hard to pose some dynamic poses. 

painting this kit was easy as well. The color separation was good, and only a few masking was needed on the chest piece. 

I painted the kit using Tamiya Acrylic with Badger Acrylic Primer. 

I kept the weathering to a minimum since this has a more anime look. Few chipping effects with Acrylic paint and staining with Tamiya Weathering Master. 

Anyways. Here is the finished kit.

That one problem I was explaining earlier was this. The arm articulation is bad. 

It doesn't go up very much. This is all it can do. 

So it's really hard to pull some dynamic shooting pose. It's do-able. But most of the time, it ends up looking weird. 

The kit was cheap and easy to build with lots of gimmicks. While I still prefer the Master Grade version, but for money and its anime like looks, I recommend this kit.