GFFN Full Armor Unicorn Gundam - Full Review Part 1 of 4
This is the full review of the GFFN (GFF Next Generation) RX-O Full Armor Unicorn Gundam from the brilliant mecha designer who loves to eat noodles and cheese cake - Hajime Katoki.... additionally if you just want a quickie, you can skip this 4 Parts Full Review and read our Quick Review by clicking here.
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....
The face/head of this Gundam...
GFF/GFFN/GFFMC Gundam figure series are the babies of Hajime Katoki and thus he have the pleasure to "enforced" all of his usual brilliant decals all over the figures, armors, weapons and accessories.... No compromise on those thing.... beauty is certainly the vision of Katoki...
And although many can guess it already... but maybe some still curious about it.... I can tell you that this figure is not transformable to Unicorn mode.... they have cemented or super-glued all the armor parts accordingly and firmly....
The hidden beam saber on the arms are still like normal - you can take them out... no worries...
1 thing that surprised me is the weight of this figure. This GFFN Unicorn is quite light - I would expected it to be heavy like the previous GFFN Aile Strike Gundam but I was wrong.
Looking at the materials, Bandai seems to use slightly different materials on this GFFN and I can confirmed that unlike the previous GFFN Aile Strike Gundam which use die cast metal on the joints part and some on the inner frame, this Unicorn have maybe less than 5% metal materials embedded on the whole frame. I can see that they only use it on certain armor attachment part on the shoulder and that's about it...
But even so, I can also confirm that you will not experience the "lousiness" that you experienced in the previous GFF series. Things like loose armor parts and limbs here and there are history now.
Everything on this GFFN FA Unicorn that we reviewed is solid and firm... though the light weight is really something surprising....
The joints parts for you to see....
Hip and pelvis ?
The elbow...
The knee....
Articulation wise - generally GFF/GFFN/GFFMC are not as great as those Robot Tamashii but even so, they have decent articulation ability and reasonable limbs movement range.
As I said earlier, GFF/GFFN/GFFMC are the babies of Katoki and this Unicorn is in fact is one of his direct original creation and with that mind we have to understand that "Ver. Ka" are always beautiful and unique but in terms of articulation.... they are just "good" not great - so far Sinanju is still the best of them all (amongst the Katokians models).
This GFFN Unicorn figure is quite good when it comes to articulation but still, he can't do the usual kneeling pose of Shewsbury Land....
This is the maximum movement range on the knee....
And if you try to do "back-kick" this is the maximum....
Though "front-kick" is much better....
This is the maximum spread of both legs to the sideways....
Arms movement range....
Simple standing pose....
Continue reading the Part 2 of the review or you can click the links below;
Part 1 of 4
Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4
Part 4 of 4
end
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....
The face/head of this Gundam...
GFF/GFFN/GFFMC Gundam figure series are the babies of Hajime Katoki and thus he have the pleasure to "enforced" all of his usual brilliant decals all over the figures, armors, weapons and accessories.... No compromise on those thing.... beauty is certainly the vision of Katoki...
And although many can guess it already... but maybe some still curious about it.... I can tell you that this figure is not transformable to Unicorn mode.... they have cemented or super-glued all the armor parts accordingly and firmly....
The hidden beam saber on the arms are still like normal - you can take them out... no worries...
1 thing that surprised me is the weight of this figure. This GFFN Unicorn is quite light - I would expected it to be heavy like the previous GFFN Aile Strike Gundam but I was wrong.
Looking at the materials, Bandai seems to use slightly different materials on this GFFN and I can confirmed that unlike the previous GFFN Aile Strike Gundam which use die cast metal on the joints part and some on the inner frame, this Unicorn have maybe less than 5% metal materials embedded on the whole frame. I can see that they only use it on certain armor attachment part on the shoulder and that's about it...
But even so, I can also confirm that you will not experience the "lousiness" that you experienced in the previous GFF series. Things like loose armor parts and limbs here and there are history now.
Everything on this GFFN FA Unicorn that we reviewed is solid and firm... though the light weight is really something surprising....
The joints parts for you to see....
Hip and pelvis ?
The elbow...
The knee....
Articulation wise - generally GFF/GFFN/GFFMC are not as great as those Robot Tamashii but even so, they have decent articulation ability and reasonable limbs movement range.
As I said earlier, GFF/GFFN/GFFMC are the babies of Katoki and this Unicorn is in fact is one of his direct original creation and with that mind we have to understand that "Ver. Ka" are always beautiful and unique but in terms of articulation.... they are just "good" not great - so far Sinanju is still the best of them all (amongst the Katokians models).
This GFFN Unicorn figure is quite good when it comes to articulation but still, he can't do the usual kneeling pose of Shewsbury Land....
This is the maximum movement range on the knee....
And if you try to do "back-kick" this is the maximum....
Though "front-kick" is much better....
This is the maximum spread of both legs to the sideways....
Arms movement range....
Simple standing pose....
Continue reading the Part 2 of the review or you can click the links below;
Part 1 of 4
Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4
Part 4 of 4
end
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