MSiA ZGMF-2000 GOUF Ignited

Height: 10.5cm to top of head, 12.5cm to top of backpack fins.

Articulation: 28 total points of articulation: ball-jointed neck; 7 points in arms- double-jointed shoulders, pre-elbow swivels, double-jointed elbow, post-elbow swivel, ball-jointed wrists; ball-jointed waist; 6 points in each leg - ball jointed hip, triple-jointed knee, double-jointed ankle.

Accessories: Shield, MA-M757 Slayer Whip, MMI-558 "Tempest" Beam Sword x2 (storage version and extended sword with removeable Beam blades), Extra Hands x5.

Colors: Molded light blue, blue, gray, dark gray, and transparent pink (Sword blades and Slayer Whip). Painted light blue, dark gray, light gray, black, white, orange, yellow, and pink (monoeye).

Release Data: Released in Japan on June 10th at a price of ¥1500. This item is still widely available as of this review (June 28th, 2006).

Gallery:  25 pictures.

Author: RAC

The Figure

The last mass-produced ZAFT suit seen in Gundam SEED: Destiny, the GOUF Ignited is also the second of the Zeon-inspired MS designs to appear following the ZAKU series. While retaining its ancestor's emphasis on close combat, the GOUF Ignited has been updated with flight and space capabilities as well as Beam weaponry. It's a modernized Gouf, and it uses the best of ZAFT MSiA technology to continue the streak of top-notch Destiny grunts.

The Head

The head is mounted on a standard single ball-joint, and can swivel 360 degrees. Tilt is good in all directions except straight back- for some reason the GOUF's head features a flared neck that restricts it somewhat. The snout is significantly shorter than its Zeonic forebear, and even looks a wee bit shorter than the Ignited lineart would suggest. Other than that, it's a lot closer to the 0079 design than the Zako Soldier-esque ZAKU series. The antenna is pretty standard for MSiA, and like more than one figure I've owned before came pre-warped for my convenience. As usual, no deductions for problems (hopefully) unique to my figure.

The Arms

While the entire figure is really good, the arms have some especially nice features. The shoulders use a new, refined hinge which has slightly better forward range, much better backward range, and are more stable in general. I haven't been able to disconnect one yet. Equally solid are the horned shoulder pauldrons, which seem to be glued to ABS brackets which then socket into the shoulder. Again, I'm not really brave enough to pop these off. Due to the flared forearm and spiky shoulder the elbow joint can't quite fold over on itself perfectly, but there are very few poses that would demand that anyway.

The flared forearm- presumably intended as a storage drum for the Slayer Whip- marks the location of the forearm swivel, returning from the GuAIZ-R and GuAIZ. (Why isn't this standard yet?) The forearm also features the four-barreled Beam gun, the Ignited's version of the original Gouf's gun-fingers or more likely, the Gouf Custom's optional arm-mounted machine gun. Also like the Custom, the hardpoint for attaching the shield is here. On the underside of each arm is a tiny removeable gray piece, the tip for the stored Slayer Whip. The pieces seem solidly attached, but they come off so easily when I want them to that it makes me nervous. The GOUF also has the best wrists I've seen in a long time, featuring a great range and a solid hold on the hands.

The Torso

The GOUF Ignited's torso looks, fittingly enough, like an upgraded ZAKU torso, complete with similar shapes and conduction cables. There's unlimited waist swivel here, as well as superb tilt that's only slightly less effective than its super-flexible ZAKU predecessor. The great hinged skirt panels make a return here, and the panels seem a bit more difficult to knock off this time, though they do still come off once in while. Only the front panels are hinged. No great loss- the side panels aren't really restrictive at all and the single-piece rear skirt would gain little to nothing from being hinged anyway. The conduction cable at the waist tends to pop out of place in the back, but it's easy enough to replace. As is custom for MSiAs, the small thruster on the back of the skirt is ball-jointed.

And now the backpack, the GOUF Ignited's best and most distinctive characteristic! While not a Wizard, sadly, the GOUF backpack is the ZAFT equivalent of the Jet Striker, enabling the MS to take on Daggers and Windams more effectively than with the landlocked ZAKU. Designed to fold when not in use, the backpack is made almost entirely of hard, light plastic, with the sole holdout being the smaller fins. The large tailfin comes separately in the box, and attaches to what seem to be softer-plastic pegs on the backpack. Once it's on, I recommend it stay on, as mine seems to be just a little loose and wobbly from my foolish attempt to remove it again. Other than that, it's absolutely the best winged backpack an MSiA has ever had, as no figure has had wings that were both folding and warp-proof before. For tactical and toy reasons, this thing really should've been a Wizard.

The Legs and Feet

There's not a lot new here, but everything's done absolutely right. While not quite capable of EMiA Gundam's full-on split, the hips have great range. The knee joint is slightly thicker than most MSiA, and slightly tighter- the new tolerances make for strong, stiff knee joints. Anyone who complained about how loose and floppy the earlier Destiny MSiA seem needs to buy themselves a GOUF, now. The third knee joint also uses a larger ball now, though this doesn't seem to affect articulation one way or another. The leg would fold in half easily if the shape of the calves didn't prevent it. The housings on the back and side of the calf contain ball-jointed thrusters which sort of help the legs mimic the shape of the original Gouf's lower legs. The ankle is a standard double ball-joint with good range in all directions. They could stand to be a bit stronger to take full advantage of the new knees, though.

Paint and Decoration

The paint is good overall, with a bit of bleed around the hilt of the Tempest swords. (Yellow has always been a problem color in this regard, in my observation.) The only glaring paint flaw is on the main thruster on the flight backpack. The black area is splotchy and extremely uneven- it really looks like they missed that paint application entirely and tried to fill it in with a Sharpie later.

Articulation gets 9/10

Sculpt and Deco get 8/10
 

Accessories

-Shield

Cleverly designed to evoke both the MS-07B's shield and the shoulder shield employed by the ZAKUs, the GOUF's shield is also made of the same nice, light plastic as the backpack. It's a bit thick due to the Tempest storage slot, but not unforgivably so. The mounting peg and handgrip are set up similarly to the Impulse's shield, but can't be used at the same time. The intention seems to be to use the handgrip in order to hold the shield out in front of the GOUF, and fortunately the stiff handgrip and good fit with the matching hand make this more than possible. You may need to re-angle the forearm to prevent a bit of wrist-droop, however.

-MA-M757 Slayer Whip

The equivalent of the Heat Rod, the Slayer Whip is a hard plastic piece that plugs into the GOUF's forearm. There's some issues to get out of the way here: while the Slayer Whip is, I believe, intended to glow when in use, it doesn't glow bright pink, and it's not a Beam weapon. Yet here it is, bright translucent pink. Bright, rigid translucent pink. The rigid is what tears it- this is Bandai-Namco being cheap. If they had to make it translucent, the softer plastic that used to be used on Beam Saber blades would make a heck of a lot more sense for, y'know, a whip. As it is, I can't help but think of the original 8-bit Castlevania and Simon Belmont's two frames of whip animation. To further the cheap, the GOUF Ignited is clearly equipped with a Slayer Whip built into each forearm, but only one correctly-angled hand/whip set is present, meaning the GOUF can really only use it right-handed. This makes sense for the Zeonic Gouf, which only had one Heat Rod, but this is not that Gouf.

-MMI-558 "Tempest" Beam Sword

The Tempest is similar to the swords of Destiny, Sword Strike, and Sword Impulse, except that it's double-edged and thus more similar in appearance to a European sword. Two versions are included, a collapsed version for storage in the shield and an extended version with removable Beam blades. When I first saw pictures of this I wondered why they couldn't have made a single extending sword after doing a good job with a more complex sword on the Destiny Gundam. Turns out there's a bit of trickery involved: the extended sword, were it collapsed, would still be significantly longer than the storage sword. Not the first time it's happened- the Stiletto weapons of the Dagger-Ls and Windams were done the same way. But it still seems odd for a sword.

That aside, it all functions perfectly- the collapsed sword stores just fine and the extended sword's beam blades fit well, once you note which end of the blade is which. The handgrip is tapered, so the fit starts feeling a little too snug near the hilt. Otherwise, the Tempest fits both the open hands and the angled Slayer Whip hand very well.

-Extra Hands

Seven in all: two trigger-finger hands, two open hands, two fists, and one hand for the Slayer Whip. This is kind of confusing and irritating to me- after all, the GOUF Ignited doesn't come with any weapons that require a trigger-finger hand. So you have two hands for weapons that aren't included (presumably the ZAKU Beam Rifle) and only one for an included weapon that should be mounted to each arm. Huh? Fortunately, all the hands included work very well, and the Slayer Whip hand doubles as a good sword-hand. So I can't really fault the figure for what it has.

Accessories get 7/10

Closing Remarks:

This is a figure that does nearly everything right. The only problems I could really pin on it are with the accessories, and there's nothing there that's really broken or incorrect, but some questionable design choices. And you could chalk those up to a matter of opinion if you were reaching. I paid about $22 shipped for mine, which isn't bad. You can probably do a bit better than I, though, if you're not in as big of a hurry to get it.

The GOUF Ignited would be rated Excellent even if it were simply an "MSiA Greatest Hits" figure, featuring all the best advancements of the past year of figures. But it doesn't stop there, giving us subtle but significant improvements to the knees and shoulders which should be the new standard for the line. Simply put, it's State of the Art.

-RAC, 06/28/2006