Stage 1: Body Assembly		Stage 2: Leg Assemblies		Stage 3: Arm Assemblies

Completed 4 May 2001

Model Specifications

Capsule
Completed this kit 4 May 2001. I've got mixed feeling about it. The fit and quality of the plastic is good - which is important to me - but the price is high and the design is very simple. Can't decide if I like the gold either. :) All this in mind - I'd say mildly recommended... if you must get it, wait for a good sale.

What you get is 13 runners (about 220 parts) including the polycap set. 5 of these runners are gold-plated.

Kit Details
In General
First gold-plated MG kit. It is an all new design. Appears that designers have cut down on internal skeleton details and other gimmicks to cut costs (I guess the gold plating must be very costly).

Head Unit
The head of the Shiki has more parts than most gundam heads:

1 transparent piece for the eyes
2 pieces for top of the head
1 face-plate
2 side plates
1 rear piece
1 antennae
1 transparent piece for the vent above the eyes
1 polycap

Head movement is limited but a nice touch is that the vents on the left and right side of the faceplate are cut-out and the internals molded on a seperate piece so it looks quite realistic.

Body Unit
No internal details here at all except for the chair in the cockpit if that counts. The chair is molded with more detail than older kits which is also a nice touch... but the chair is hardly visible after the body is assembled. Shoulder joints are polycapped ball joints and so is the waist joint. Pretty simple except for a little gimmick for the cockpit hatch. Although looking at the pictures online and in the magazines you may think that the cockpit mechanism is just a hatch rotating on one axis, the two gold pieces on the left and right actually overlap the hatch slightly and slide to the sides when the cockpit opens.

Backpack has removable cover to reveal the engine details inside but the thruster assemblies are not poseable at all. The backpack literally hooks onto the back of the upper body and the joints have some polycaps to hold them with some security. 2 wing units attach to the sides of the backpac via polycapped ball-joints. There are also areas to mount the bazooka and the beam-rifle too.

Lower torso ends up with 5 pieces of poseable armor: left-front, right front, left side, right side and the back is one piece on a rotating joint. This allows for quite a range of hip motion. On the rear panel has opening 'clasps' for holding the beam-sabers.

Arm Units
Arm units don't have any internal details unless you want to consider the *very* minor upper arm stuff that is revealed when you remove the armor - I wouldn't consider that an internal skeleton though. Double jointed elbows allow for a good range of movement (click here for pic). The shoulder armor is more complicated than most gundams too - primarily because there is an additional piece that hangs on the outer side of the armor... it also tries to mold everything in color.

The hands are interesting. They aren't the typical MG hands you've come to expect. What you get is 2 sets of hands for each arm. The palm and thumb are molded in one piece and the 4 fingers are molded in another. The 2 pieces are joined with a pivot point to allow the 4 fingers to open and close to insert/remove weapons. However, the whole assembly slides into a gold piece which acts like an outer sleeve - it is designed to remove almost all of the movement in the hand so any weapons being held should stay put. This 'sleeve' assemble makes the Shiki's hands *huge*...

Correction: Although the sleeves to limit the movement on the hand, they do not - as I had earlier thought - prevent the weapons from being removable. The little movement they have still allows for the weapons to be inserted or removed from the hands.

Other than that, nothing much is outstanding. Forearms are simple to assemble without any inner frame.

Leg Units
Knees are double jointed with quite good range of motion. Upper legs (thigh area) consist of 2 gold pieces... that's it! Don't expect any internal structures there.

The lower leg features some internal details with 5 pieces of removable armor - all polycapped on... but I suspect this was included because part of the Shiki's design leaves the leg exposed - I wouldn't be surprised if there were no internal details here if this had not been the case.

One of the gimmicks is in the legs - this is a working piston in the lower leg. Nice touch... the piston is thicker than any I have found in the MGs I have built so far, but there is not a huge range of motion though.

Feet themselves are also very simple - no fore-foot/rear-foot individual movement, just a ball-joint where the lower leg section attaches.

Some curious modellers have asked whether the Shiki can pose... well, it took a little effort, but the Shiki can do a decent crouch. Check out the gallery for some pictures of the crouch. :)

Weapons & Accessories
Nothing really outstanding here. The bazooka is a 2-piece affair which means lotsa sanding to remove all the seamlines. The rifle is generally also a 2-piece design (left and right halves) although there is a small rotating catch that flips out to allow it to be hooked onto the backpack. A nice touch is that both weapons feature removable magazines. The one for the bazooka is nice with even molded details of the shells inside.

The Good
The problem with gold-plated (or any chrome plated kits) in the past is that removing the part from the runner often leaves an ugly uncoated area. Bandai has taken this into account and has chosen to mold the runners such that the ugly patches are covered up when the kit is assembled - and this is nice. The 1/144 scale HGUC Shiki is molded in the same way.

Parts fit so far has been superb. I like that Bandai is working hard on improving their kits. I just started on a Master Grade Gundam NT-1 recently (which is an older kit) and I can really tell a marked difference in the quality of the molding, design and plastics used. The newer kits are molded out of tougher plastic and in better colours too.

The cockpit opening action is cool...

Like most MG kits, the waist is articulated and the front and side panels are also poseable. What's nice is that the back panels are jointed which will allow for greater mobility of the hips.

Ball-joints are used to connect the arms to the main-body. While these are very tight now, I will only be able to tell if they hold up the arms properly when I complete the model. In any case, I don't think it's anything a little paint or tape won't fix.

A quick review of the manual will show other cool bits - like working pistons for the ankle joints, cool removable magazines from the beam-weapon and the bazooka, as well as a removable armour for the lower feet and backpack to reveal inner details.

And of course... the gold! GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! Everywhere... one of the main reasons I am looking forward to building this kit is that there isn't much for me to paint! I just finished my RX-93 Nu-Gundam and that took forever so this is a welcome change! The gold looks pretty cool although I've heard that some think it's too "loud" - well... it *IS* supposed to be special plating that deflects beam weapons...

Like I mentioned earlier, the other part colours are also pretty nice so I think this kit won't look too 'toyish' if left unpainted.

The Bad
Now some rants...

The wrist joints have *very* limited movement which limits the number of poses the figure can achieve when holding weapons. I found that the bazooka fits only in one position which is the one shown in the promotional pictures... so you're better off leaving it on the backpack. I believe if they had done away with the 'sleeve' hand design the whole hand would be smaller and allow for more poseability.

While the removable armour on the backpack is cool, the rocket units are non-poseable. As far as I know, this is one of the few - if not the only - MG kits where this is so. Putting these rocket outputs on ball-joints would have been better... but perhaps these were too small to accomodate ball-joints.

The connecting "hoses" - the red tube-shaped things - that attach the backpack to the main body (and also a few on the fore-arms and knees) are molded in red plastic. This just looks plain cheap to me. If the cheaper kits like the Zakus and the Goufs gould have properly molded "hoses" (I think they were called conductive cables), I don't see why these could not have been made with similar detail. This would have greatly enhanced the look of the model.

On the same note, the Shiki has a lot less internal detail than most other MGs I've built. Other than the backpack and the lower legs, there is no other hint of an internal skeleton. I'm no expert on the storyline, but I think the Shiki was the first experimental model with an internal skeleton (or movable frame) so it just doesn't seem right that an MG costing so much would leave out these details.

Now because the kit is gold-plated, it is important that it is designed in such a way that seam-lines are molded according to the panel-lines of the actual mecha. Otherwise, they will look terribly unsightly - and stand out even more because of the shiny gold surfaces. On other models, any unsightly seam-lines will be puttied and painted over... but this isn't possible for a gold-plated model unless you have a gold plating machine at home - your only other alternative will be to putty the seam and repaint the whole model while watching that expensive gold go to waste.

And here is where the Shiki commits the ultimate sin. While 99% of the seamlines are nicely hidden away, there is one glaring one on each of the forearms! The worse part of it is that it wouldn't have taken much effort for the designers to have worked around it... so that is simply disappointing.

Another disappointment is the molding of certain of the gold plated parts. While it's nice that they designed the runners to attach to non-visible areas, they didn't do so for all the parts - which I just don't understand. The most glaring problem is the piece just above the hand (which covers the wrist ball-joint). There is no way to hide the ugly non-gold patches where the piece attached to the runner. It's very small, but nonetheless irritating to know they needn't be there! Other little violations would be on the beam sabers but that is much less conspicious.

It's also very difficult to work with the gold surfaces without causing scratches and scrapes on those smooth surfaces. I exercised a lot of care but there are still some gold loss from the pieces. Good news is that once assembled, it's not that easy to spot them on this shining figure unless you are specifically looking... the gold just seems to draw attention to itself.

Oh... with this kit you can also play police detective if you want to... why? Well, the gold plating makes an excellent DIY finger printing kit - So any changes in posing the model after completion will involve tissues/cloth and a lot of care and cleaning. It does get annoying.

In Closing
The Shiki was definitely a pleasant build - like most new MG kits (Sazabi excluded), parts fit and finish is excellent and the plastic is of high quality *and* what is gold-plated is generally molded in nice colours.

With that said, you probably don't want to go through the trouble of painting these non-plated parts. I did... but like I mentioned before... the gold draws attention away from everything else - so the painted parts really don't add much to the look of the figure. hmm... should I remove the gold?

Plating is always a controversial topic. Although the Shiki has only minor seam problems (which is a big problem on most other plated kits), plating still doesn't suit everyone's tastes... As for me? I'm still undecided.

Closing thoughts? Nice kit, but it could have been much better. It's a little too simple in design for it's price... get it if you can get a good price, but S$84 is definitely too much to pay for it in my opinion. :)

Bandai should release a non-plated version.

Check out the gallery for more pics.

Send questions or comments to gunbase@hotmail.com.

More Opinions...

~ Here are some comments on this kit sent in by Tommy, minor editing by me~

"I also recently purchased the MG 1/100 MSN-00100 "Hyaku Shiki" with gold armor plating. It's true that some places (almost all online stores) sell this model for 70 dollars or so, but i have been able to purchase it for 45.00 at a local anime store here in New York City. ($45.00 is the standard going rate for a MG model)

I built the model and the problems you mentioned exist, there are some spots where it is connected to the plastic and the gold plating is not there, so instead you see a metallic silver area where obviously a cut has been made. I finished the model in 3 or 4 days with about 2-3 hours a day. I have these 2 pieces left over that look like should pads, but arent mentioned in the instruction manual.

Also this model in my opinion is not very poseable. It is unstable and does not stand well. The should pads are not even attached to the arms. Instead their is a hole where the arms connect to the axle at the body, and the same goes for the shoulder pads. So basically the hole for the shoulder pads and the arms become concentric and the should pads wobble around a bit. I must say this model is not solid as compared to some of my previous models that were HG and some even 1/144.

I should say I am disappointed with this model as I was hoping a monster in shining gold armor that would tower over all my other models. Well one thing i got was a monster in shining gold armor. But it does not tower over other models in any catergories. Also the wings have this gaping crack that i cannot seal even after closely exaiming the model."