MG GP03S Postmortem
About two months ago, I uploaded an unboxing video of the MG GP03S. I tore into the plastic bags and started building later that night, right after filming, and it took me all the time since then to finish this kit. This is that unboxing video.
And now I have to eat a lot of my own words. The review and build video won't be done for a while yet, but there are a few things that I can say about it now, while the experience is still fresh in my mind. Hopefully, after I've had some time to take a break, come back, and re-evaluate this kit, I can be a bit more impartial. In the mean time, I'll warn you that what I have to say right now won't be very positive.
The picture above shows a hairline crack along the highlight. The curve and direction of the crack leads me to believe this is an injection "vein," which can occur when the injection pressure is too low, allowing gaps to form between separate flows of material. This is likely due to the injection machine not compensating for mold degradation, which gradually results from repeated high-pressure injections over time. Given this kit was first printed in 2001, I don't think this hypothesis is too outlandish.
For out-of-box builders like me, these hairline cracks are very problematic, because--during lining and detailing--capillary action will "suck" ink into these cracks, creating unsightly stains that are essentially impossible to remove. Solvents (e.g. alcohol) can loosen up the pigment, but can't be picked up out of the crack to remove the stain. Due to depth variations, sanding is not a practical solution either: some cracks are superficial, while others may extend much deeper beneath the surface.
More thorough modelers (who typically sand, prime, and paint their kits completely) won't be bothered by the aesthetic side of this problem, but the structural issues still remain. Because the material is not fully bonded around these cracks, the affected part is much weaker. The structural impact varies, depending on the crack's direction, depth, and location on a part and how much load that part carries in the finished model. I was fortunate in this case, in that the visible cracks were generally all in inconsequential places, but it's entirely possible to have critical joints and mechanisms fail unexpectedly from these near-invisible faults.
It's possible to completely fix these cracks. All you need to do is apply a very diluted solution of polystyrene cement to the crack, let capillary action pull it in, leave the part to dry, and sand off any surface deformations from the cement. The problem is finding them in the first place. Ink will help you find the cracks, but also stain the plastic and negatively affect the effectiveness of the cement (by introducing foreign, non-plastic material into the area). Sanding dust isn't fine enough to get caught in the cracks and reveal them. This is a pretty nasty catch-22, where, as far as I can figure out, fixing the problem necessitates making it worse first.
By the way, remember that mold degradation I mentioned earlier? Why, yes, it has affected the quality of sculpted details! The panel line that was supposed to follow along the highlight above is almost completely gone. This is the case for both sides of both knees. You can also see some jagged edges on the inside of the calf vents, which are excess flash from the interior edge the part. The distinctive uni-brow on the head is also ridiculously hard to paint neatly without tricky masking, because the raised edges that are supposed to help you put paint in the right places are softer than raw egg yolks. And the panels that hold the insides of the arms together have almost no hope of lining up properly when they're closed. (You can tell by the uneven shadows along the seam.)
So what does this mean? A lot of sharp bits are actually quite mushy and most of the edges need at least some clean-up. Again, this is not a problem for seasoned modelers who are used to scribing and shaving, but it's a huge obstacle for casual or beginning builders who may not be equipped with the right tools or skills for the job. If the original design wasn't decked out in those thick, deep stripes, the finished model would probably look really gummy and awful without any work.
Except the stripes are ruined, too. The upper of edge of the highlighted stripe just sort of disappears into the rest of the cowling, without any indication of how the stripe is supposed to end. (Does it keep going along the diagonal? Does it bend back to be parallel with the panel line?) On the plastic, you can kind of feel where--sixteen years ago--that edge might have been, but it just isn't there anymore. The best thing you can do now is make your best guess and hope the result looks good.
I can't figure out this next one at all. In the photo above, the highlighted divot looks like plastic that deformed as if it melted. This occurred in two other places of my kit: the bottom-most flap of the core fighter and the rear inside corner of the left foot. I managed to sand off most of the deformation in those to places, but I wasn't as fortunate here. I know the deformation wasn't a result of temperature, because the kit was never stored above ~72 degrees Fahrenheit.
In all three instances, the parts were in contact with some other type of plastic before I discovered the deformations. The bottom piece of my core fighter was touching the handle of my nippers, which is coated in a soft, rubbery material. The other two parts were, at various points, touching the (upper, rounded) edge of my acrylic parts trays. My research turned up nothing, and I couldn't replicate this deformation behavior. Thankfully, I've never run into this problem before, and, with any luck, I won't run into it again.
Maybe it has something to do with the plasticizers, humidity, whatever. I don't know.
Initially, I thought this was fantastic! The GP01/Fb and GP02A all came out between August 1997 and June 1998, so a three-year gap and lack of common parts between this and the older kits must mean Bandai made a bunch of improvements, right? I haven't built the GP01/Fb or GP02A (and I don't plan to), but a quick comparison of the manuals from all four kits reveals just how misguided I was. Minus some necessary mechanical differences (e.g. arm extensions, shoulder binders, etc.), the construction process across all four kits is nearly identical.
You know that leg inner frame touted on the box the MG GP03S? The MG GP01 had it all the way back in 1997. (I can only guess that Bandai hadn't figured out their customers were into that back then; otherwise the GP01 box would've advertised it as well.) I don't mind that Bandai reuses frames or construction techniques, especially when they borrow them from great kits, but I have two issues with what happened here.
First, if Bandai wanted to build this kit in the same way as the MG GP01, why didn't they just borrow parts from that kit? Why spend the time and money to retool a bunch of similar pieces into brand-new molds? This seems like a huge waste to me, because this kit didn't take much of a departure from the GP01 build experience. And it costs a lot more than it probably could have, had Bandai just recycled a few plates from somewhere else.
Second, if Bandai really wanted to re-engineer the MG GP03, why didn't they innovate more? There are plenty of opportunities for improvement that wouldn't affect the parts count. For instance, using the same number of parts, the hips could've incorporated universal joints, which are much more posable and painter-friendly than ball joints. Another example: all of the boosters and thruster vanes could've been attached without the use of poly-caps, which could've reduced the parts count significantly. And it's not like the design team weren't aware of these "groundbreaking" techniques, because they already used them in plenty of kits before this one.
There's also the odd decision to label identical parts with different numbers, which is needlessly confusing, but let's not get into that. With the crazy logic behind this kit out of the way, let's see how well the design comes through in the build.
Fun fact: if we go back 10 MGs before the GP03S and forward 10 after, of those kits that use screws, they almost all either put screws in the knees (to help stand up) or elbows (to help carry big guns). The MG GP03S, however, uses its two precious screws in the ankles, where they don't help to do anything. First, the heavy rear boosters wear out the poly-cap knees pretty quickly, so the knees will give up on their own. Second, the poly-cap socket that attaches to the ball joint directly behind the screw joint (this one) sits poorly and wobbles in its housing. So neither of the joints above nor below the ankles are strengthened in any way by the addition of screws. They're almost completely pointless.
Of the black vents that you'll see on the finished example featured on the box, cardboard insert, and manual, all of them need to be painted, except for the ones on the side skirts, which have gray inserts beneath the white armor (as pictured above). The obvious question, then, is why don't the shoulders and other skirt pieces have gray inserts underneath as well? Normally, I wouldn't complain about this, except the interior corners of each vent are extremely difficult to clean out properly, which means the mold release sticks and paint doesn't. My parts chipped multiple times throughout the build, and having to repaint them repeatedly was one of my biggest setbacks. Very frustrating, especially considering that all this painting shouldn't have been necessary in the first place. And it doesn't end here.
At the very top of kit is a single ball joint that supports the head. Looks fine, if a bit stiff, right? Sure, except it doesn't connect to the chest by a peg underneath the neck, but from behind. What's the problem? With nothing else securing the neck, if you rotate the head left or right, you can feel that single connecting peg flexing under your pressure. The peg is very thin too, so the neck is almost guaranteed to snap with enough handling. I immediately glued down the whole thing upon discovering this flaw. Why did Bandai even bother making the neck a separate piece at all without adding a second joint? It just makes no sense.
I'll talk more about the finished kit in my review (since this is long enough already), but here are the key points:
Would I still say this kit is a classic? Sure, in the sense that it's an excellent reminder of what gunpla could have been and just how lucky we are today that Bandai has their head screwed on straight (mostly). If this post didn't put you off or make you want to strangle me, please look forward to my MG GP03S build video and review.
- Citrus
Reference photos courtesy of dalong.net.
Support me by shopping with my Amazon Affiliate link.
And now I have to eat a lot of my own words. The review and build video won't be done for a while yet, but there are a few things that I can say about it now, while the experience is still fresh in my mind. Hopefully, after I've had some time to take a break, come back, and re-evaluate this kit, I can be a bit more impartial. In the mean time, I'll warn you that what I have to say right now won't be very positive.
Good Grief
In the unboxing, I casually mentioned that the kit had "pretty sharp sculpting." And while that was superficially true, I was almost immediately corrected upon removing the parts from their bags. The plastic quality on my specific example was very dubious. (I didn't think this would be a problem, because Bandai reprints kits regularly, and I expected reprints to stand up to the same standards as newly released kits.)
The picture above shows a hairline crack along the highlight. The curve and direction of the crack leads me to believe this is an injection "vein," which can occur when the injection pressure is too low, allowing gaps to form between separate flows of material. This is likely due to the injection machine not compensating for mold degradation, which gradually results from repeated high-pressure injections over time. Given this kit was first printed in 2001, I don't think this hypothesis is too outlandish.
For out-of-box builders like me, these hairline cracks are very problematic, because--during lining and detailing--capillary action will "suck" ink into these cracks, creating unsightly stains that are essentially impossible to remove. Solvents (e.g. alcohol) can loosen up the pigment, but can't be picked up out of the crack to remove the stain. Due to depth variations, sanding is not a practical solution either: some cracks are superficial, while others may extend much deeper beneath the surface.
More thorough modelers (who typically sand, prime, and paint their kits completely) won't be bothered by the aesthetic side of this problem, but the structural issues still remain. Because the material is not fully bonded around these cracks, the affected part is much weaker. The structural impact varies, depending on the crack's direction, depth, and location on a part and how much load that part carries in the finished model. I was fortunate in this case, in that the visible cracks were generally all in inconsequential places, but it's entirely possible to have critical joints and mechanisms fail unexpectedly from these near-invisible faults.
It's possible to completely fix these cracks. All you need to do is apply a very diluted solution of polystyrene cement to the crack, let capillary action pull it in, leave the part to dry, and sand off any surface deformations from the cement. The problem is finding them in the first place. Ink will help you find the cracks, but also stain the plastic and negatively affect the effectiveness of the cement (by introducing foreign, non-plastic material into the area). Sanding dust isn't fine enough to get caught in the cracks and reveal them. This is a pretty nasty catch-22, where, as far as I can figure out, fixing the problem necessitates making it worse first.
By the way, remember that mold degradation I mentioned earlier? Why, yes, it has affected the quality of sculpted details! The panel line that was supposed to follow along the highlight above is almost completely gone. This is the case for both sides of both knees. You can also see some jagged edges on the inside of the calf vents, which are excess flash from the interior edge the part. The distinctive uni-brow on the head is also ridiculously hard to paint neatly without tricky masking, because the raised edges that are supposed to help you put paint in the right places are softer than raw egg yolks. And the panels that hold the insides of the arms together have almost no hope of lining up properly when they're closed. (You can tell by the uneven shadows along the seam.)
So what does this mean? A lot of sharp bits are actually quite mushy and most of the edges need at least some clean-up. Again, this is not a problem for seasoned modelers who are used to scribing and shaving, but it's a huge obstacle for casual or beginning builders who may not be equipped with the right tools or skills for the job. If the original design wasn't decked out in those thick, deep stripes, the finished model would probably look really gummy and awful without any work.
Except the stripes are ruined, too. The upper of edge of the highlighted stripe just sort of disappears into the rest of the cowling, without any indication of how the stripe is supposed to end. (Does it keep going along the diagonal? Does it bend back to be parallel with the panel line?) On the plastic, you can kind of feel where--sixteen years ago--that edge might have been, but it just isn't there anymore. The best thing you can do now is make your best guess and hope the result looks good.
I can't figure out this next one at all. In the photo above, the highlighted divot looks like plastic that deformed as if it melted. This occurred in two other places of my kit: the bottom-most flap of the core fighter and the rear inside corner of the left foot. I managed to sand off most of the deformation in those to places, but I wasn't as fortunate here. I know the deformation wasn't a result of temperature, because the kit was never stored above ~72 degrees Fahrenheit.
In all three instances, the parts were in contact with some other type of plastic before I discovered the deformations. The bottom piece of my core fighter was touching the handle of my nippers, which is coated in a soft, rubbery material. The other two parts were, at various points, touching the (upper, rounded) edge of my acrylic parts trays. My research turned up nothing, and I couldn't replicate this deformation behavior. Thankfully, I've never run into this problem before, and, with any luck, I won't run into it again.
Maybe it has something to do with the plasticizers, humidity, whatever. I don't know.
Beyond Materials
Is this kit complete trash? No, not yet, because I haven't gotten to the build. Aside from the dodgy materials and casting quality, Bandai made some pretty questionable (read: awful) decisions in executing this design. The most immediate oddity I noticed was that, despite the canonical similarities and relationships between the GP03S, GP01/Fb, and GP02A (all mobile suits of the Gundam Development Project), this kit doesn't share any parts with the MG GP01, GP01Fb, or GP02A. (Inexplicably, even the manipulators are completely different.)Initially, I thought this was fantastic! The GP01/Fb and GP02A all came out between August 1997 and June 1998, so a three-year gap and lack of common parts between this and the older kits must mean Bandai made a bunch of improvements, right? I haven't built the GP01/Fb or GP02A (and I don't plan to), but a quick comparison of the manuals from all four kits reveals just how misguided I was. Minus some necessary mechanical differences (e.g. arm extensions, shoulder binders, etc.), the construction process across all four kits is nearly identical.
You know that leg inner frame touted on the box the MG GP03S? The MG GP01 had it all the way back in 1997. (I can only guess that Bandai hadn't figured out their customers were into that back then; otherwise the GP01 box would've advertised it as well.) I don't mind that Bandai reuses frames or construction techniques, especially when they borrow them from great kits, but I have two issues with what happened here.
First, if Bandai wanted to build this kit in the same way as the MG GP01, why didn't they just borrow parts from that kit? Why spend the time and money to retool a bunch of similar pieces into brand-new molds? This seems like a huge waste to me, because this kit didn't take much of a departure from the GP01 build experience. And it costs a lot more than it probably could have, had Bandai just recycled a few plates from somewhere else.
Second, if Bandai really wanted to re-engineer the MG GP03, why didn't they innovate more? There are plenty of opportunities for improvement that wouldn't affect the parts count. For instance, using the same number of parts, the hips could've incorporated universal joints, which are much more posable and painter-friendly than ball joints. Another example: all of the boosters and thruster vanes could've been attached without the use of poly-caps, which could've reduced the parts count significantly. And it's not like the design team weren't aware of these "groundbreaking" techniques, because they already used them in plenty of kits before this one.
There's also the odd decision to label identical parts with different numbers, which is needlessly confusing, but let's not get into that. With the crazy logic behind this kit out of the way, let's see how well the design comes through in the build.
Screw Ankles
Fun fact: if we go back 10 MGs before the GP03S and forward 10 after, of those kits that use screws, they almost all either put screws in the knees (to help stand up) or elbows (to help carry big guns). The MG GP03S, however, uses its two precious screws in the ankles, where they don't help to do anything. First, the heavy rear boosters wear out the poly-cap knees pretty quickly, so the knees will give up on their own. Second, the poly-cap socket that attaches to the ball joint directly behind the screw joint (this one) sits poorly and wobbles in its housing. So neither of the joints above nor below the ankles are strengthened in any way by the addition of screws. They're almost completely pointless.
Of the black vents that you'll see on the finished example featured on the box, cardboard insert, and manual, all of them need to be painted, except for the ones on the side skirts, which have gray inserts beneath the white armor (as pictured above). The obvious question, then, is why don't the shoulders and other skirt pieces have gray inserts underneath as well? Normally, I wouldn't complain about this, except the interior corners of each vent are extremely difficult to clean out properly, which means the mold release sticks and paint doesn't. My parts chipped multiple times throughout the build, and having to repaint them repeatedly was one of my biggest setbacks. Very frustrating, especially considering that all this painting shouldn't have been necessary in the first place. And it doesn't end here.
At the very top of kit is a single ball joint that supports the head. Looks fine, if a bit stiff, right? Sure, except it doesn't connect to the chest by a peg underneath the neck, but from behind. What's the problem? With nothing else securing the neck, if you rotate the head left or right, you can feel that single connecting peg flexing under your pressure. The peg is very thin too, so the neck is almost guaranteed to snap with enough handling. I immediately glued down the whole thing upon discovering this flaw. Why did Bandai even bother making the neck a separate piece at all without adding a second joint? It just makes no sense.
Everything Else
After the extending arms, the rest of the build is nothing special. The experience was simultaneously unchallenging, yet troublesome, thanks to all the deficiencies in materials, design, and construction. Working on this kit was an endless cycle of frustration and disappointment, as I uncovered ever more nonsensical quirks in how it's put together.I'll talk more about the finished kit in my review (since this is long enough already), but here are the key points:
- Articulation is okay
- Accessories are okay
- Final product looks okay, but only with substantial effort
Would I still say this kit is a classic? Sure, in the sense that it's an excellent reminder of what gunpla could have been and just how lucky we are today that Bandai has their head screwed on straight (mostly). If this post didn't put you off or make you want to strangle me, please look forward to my MG GP03S build video and review.
- Citrus
Reference photos courtesy of dalong.net.
Support me by shopping with my Amazon Affiliate link.
Comments
Post a Comment