Gunpla Review: HG A-Z Gundam

2 posts in a week? Another new kit? How many times have I said here that I'll quit? I guess I can never quit until I can find a replacement for the toy collecting hobby :( Anyway, since I have these things, might as well write about them eh. Here's a review of the HG A-Z Gundam.

He is literally doing nothing at work. Don't empathize with him

The A-Z Gundam popped up on the battleougue series as a cap to build fighters where it battled the useless Build Strike Galaxy Cosmos (made by Samsung). The kit was an Amazon Japan exclusive, at least in Japan. Here in Manila though, you can just pop up to a Toys R Us, Toy Kingdom or Toy Town an grab one for an obviously inflated price. The name itself can either be interpreted as the AmaZon Gundam or Amazing Zeta Gundam. Pretty smart.

Aesthetics

The Zeta Gundam, in my opinion, is one of the best looking Gundam suits in the whole of UC. It doesn't look like it came from the 80s. Thus the A-Z Gundam has a nice base, injected with Gundam Seed aesthetics. It looks very cool in animation.

I'm not sure describing it as Gundam Seed-sque is a compliment

The kits can never recreate the more dynamic look in the animation. At least not in Build Fighters where the aesthetic is more dynamic with longer thinner bellies, a longer neck and beefier shoulders and legs. In the case of the A-Z Gundam, I feel that the chest is too tall and the shoulder armor could be a little bit larger.

I'm sure the larger chest is to accommodate the shoulder mechanism, the armor separation and the parts forming. But as you can see, the head is just too sunken in. At least compared to this screenshot from twitter.

As compared to his more sedate look, beer belly and sunken in shoulders.

The animation also features a beefier back pack, but in this case it's actually narrower than what I remember. The width is actually just the fins, which i think is too big. There's also not enough clearance so they bump into each other.

The build is surprisingly involved with a few nitpicks. Simple this is not. The parts separation is excellent. Aside from the eyes and the head camera, no stickers are used in this kit. All the yellow bits are plastic. Heck, all the individual thrusters on the legs and rear skirt are all tiny separate pieces. the only bits that require color are the 4 vulcans on the chest and maybe the rectangle bits on the shoulders.

It's obviously more complicated due to the transformation mechanism, especially the legs.

Draw backs? The seams aren't as well hidden on the new remolded parts. The head is mostly just 2 halves sandwiched together. The "mohawk" isn't a separate piece unlike the OG revive so there's an obvious seam line there. The new shoulders also has very visible seams which is normally hidden by an actual intentional molded seam, but here, there is no molding. You can see on the legs as well that the fit isn't as flush. Also the nubs are HORRIBLE on the new light blue parts. They are huge and in very obvious places it look me almost an hour for each piece with the blues as I had to slowly file and sand them else I'll have to fill 'em in.

again, he was building this on the latter half of his shift. Don't pity him

Overall, it looks good but you do need to be very, very careful cleaning up the newly molded parts and little bit patient on building it, especially the chest. The kit's aesthetic isn't a home run and misses on dynamism probably due to the physical limitation of the base mold.

Articulation

And here we hit the weakpoint. TLDR, it's all there, but for some reason, it's a bit loosy goosey. It's probably due to the wd--40 I used on the nippers, but the hips and all the polycap ball joints on my kit are very easy to pop off. These polycaps are notorious for being loose on heavier kits and this kit is quite back heavy.


The head is mounted on a ball joint, with the  base of the neck on a hinge so it can look up and down just fine.

The new face plate and helmet hits the yellow collar so for this kit to look left or right, it'll also have to look a little to the ceiling. Doesn't help that the head and collar assembly is also too sunken in to the chest.

says the person who can barely articulate his neck because if his double chin

The shoulders are connected to the torso via ball joint. Do be careful moving it around as it's a plastic on plastic connection and the shoulder mechanism might break if it gets too tight. There's also a joint here that allows the shoulder mechanism to pull out of the chest and swivel up.

Add that to the joint inside the shoulder armor, the shoulder has very good range.

as compared to his shoulder, where the right tends to pop off the sockets and he still refuses to see a doctor

Here's a better look on the mechanism.

The torso has mutiple joints but for some reason, doesn't plug in that deep. So trying to utilize this joint to get it in more dynamic poses will just make the ball joints on the torso (both the one in the hinge and the waist). Again, could be the wd-40 leaking on the clippers but posing the waist in this kit is a nightmare, constantly falling apart to anything other than swiveling it side to side.

You get the hip joints that can swivel up and down. The hip joints (the swivel and the connection to the legs) are a bit loose on mine.

Every other joint though is present.

not shown is the 5 minute struggle to get to this pose

The toe can move together for the transformation, though this too a a bit loose.

The ankles in theory is also very articulate. It uses a ball joint polycap and is also a bit loose.

The ankle title though, coupled with the hips and ankle ball joint might limit the ground poses you get as it's top heavy and being a little loose makes it hard to balance.

The backpack itself has several joints and the wings are on hinges. the main issue are the top cannons interfering with the blue fins on the head so you need to preplan your poses and fiddle with the backpack position .

Overall it's all there but some bits being a little loose on the chest down and top heavy makes it difficult to nail a ground pose. It's no RG Sinanju and this kit ideally should be posed on a stand anyway. Also it can kneel so overall it's a pass in my book. I'll just have to give this a warm soapy bath and a top coat to hopefully solidify it further.

if you can kneel, you can be friends with him. Not that you'll want that

Weapons and Extras

The original Zeta Gundam has a pretty much standard Gundam weapons load out, with a Rifle, a shield, beam sabers, and a bazooka (in Zeta's case, mega launcher). The A-Z Gundam sports new weapons.

1st the overpowered hyper mega launchers. It has 2 of these.

Underneath the blue and white is basically a larger beam rifle.

Since the handle is just a rectangle with no trigger guard, it's easy to slot into the kit's hand.

kit can dual wield cannons, blogger think a 9mm is too heavy

The rifles have slots and pegs on the bottom that allows you to combine the rifle.

The arm surprisingly holds it quite well and it doesn't droop. You can blast Luna II with ease with the strength of these joints.

There are also ports on the backpack and pegs on the top of the rifle allows you to connect the guns to the backpack for it's Amazon Prime cannon mode.

it's kinda silly looking to be honest.

The other A-ZZ exclusive weapon is the shield. Like the Zeta Gundam, this is just a spaceship nosecone made into a shield, except it's smaller.

There's an open slot on the front of the shield that allows you to plug the HGAW Gundam XX's beam sabres.

You get a grey piece to plug it to the arm. It's very, very secure btw.

The overall look with the gigantic weapons sort off balances the short comings of the kit.

You also get Zeta's beam sabre but you can't store it on the skirt armor.

And of course, it's a Zeta Gundam so it needs to transform. It's also a HG so it's more parts form than transform which is fine since a kit will normally be more solid that way.

You get this gigantic platform to plug Zeta parts into.

But for you to use it, you expect the arms and legs to break off, maybe the backpack. But I was not expecting the chest and back plate to be removed as well. Here's part of the instructions and there are plenty of videos on how to parts form it so I'm skipping that.

did you know that he's super lazy? He once spent an entire sunday on reddit

The final wave rider looks good. Zeta is one of the better transformable gundams as it's not just a gundam lying on it's belly. the A-Z reminds me more of a SRW OG mech more than anything.

There's a square hole at the back of the grey piece but I cannot find the adapter needed for it so I just used one of he ports of the backpack. This will probably be the last time I transform it on waverider mode.

Overall, it's pretty decked out. The weapons are yuge and the arms are strong enough hold em. Posing it with the weak torso though can be challenging.

Size Comparison

The Zeta Gundam was pretty tall. It's somewhere inbetween Ol Granpa Rx-78 and Nu.

It's actually a head taller than most of my UC0079 kits.

The wave rider is actually quite large as well.

Summary

When it popped up on the final battlogue basically owning the Galaxy Cosmos, I was hyped. It looked beefy with the new backpack, yet sleek and dynamic with it's Zeta base body. In kit form though, the backpack isn't as beefy and the chest area isn't as sleek. It has horrible nubmarks on the new parts and the ball joints can be loose. Between this and the GEP Zeta HG, I would easily recommend the original Zeta Gundam despite the stickers on the backpack. If you want this kit or find the OG Zeta too plain, then by all means get it. I cannot guarantee availability though since in Japan, it was suppose to be an amazon exclusive. Overall good, but it's no Origin Zaku or Revive Hyaku Shiki

Good:
- The Zeta base is excellent.

Bad:
- Loose bits on the kit plus it's horrible balance makes poses challenging
- giant nubs on the blue parts