EMIA Atmospheric Entry Set (Gundam Mk II and Flying Armor)

Height: 11cm (Gundam Mk II); 19cm (Flying Armor overall length), 17.5cm (maximum wingspan)

Articulation: 36 total points of articulation: double-jointed neck; 7 points in arms- double jointed shoulder, ball-jointed shoulder armor, pre-elbow swivel, double jointed elbow, ball-jointed wrist; mid-torso ball-joint; ball-jointed waist; 9 points in each leg- ball jointed hip, thigh swivel, triple-jointed knee, double-jointed ankle, ball-jointed pistons, hinged toe.

Colors: Painted white, dark blue, yellow, green, red, grey, black, blue-grey (panel highlights); molded grey, black, clear pink.

Accessories: Beam sabres x2; Beam rifle; extra e-pac x2; Hyper Bazooka; Vulcan pod; Shield; Shield-to-shoulder connector; Shield arm-side mount; Extra hands x10; Flag; Flying Armor and stand; Amuro Ray

Release Data: Released in Japan on or about August 26th, 2006, at a price of ¥3800.

Gallery: 41 images.

Author: ExVee



There were once certain rules one could count on. One such rule was that Japan did not produce their own large MSiA vehicles. Any large vehicle that made its way to Japan was a product in one way or another of the US Gundam line, and even all of those didn't necessarily make it to Japan's store shelves. But with this release, that rule has been, if not tossed out the window, at least sidestepped for a moment. Indeed, the Flying Armor is an item of particular interest, I think. Not only did Bandai-Namco go for a large vehicle here, but they actually chose one of the bigger large vehicles do produce. The central mass is wider and longer than the average MSiA, and adding the wings on, you get a wingspan longer than most MSiA!(!) The only thing they could have done that was bigger would be the two-seater atmospheric Base Jabber or Do Dai Kai.

Now of course, this isn't the first time we've seen an MSiA scale Flying Armor. At the 2003 International Toy Fair in New York, Zeta Gundam was supposed to be the next import for the US brand, and on display among all the existing figures and hand painted testshots of the big scale Mk IIs was a presumably scratchbuilt Flying Armor, shown with the Hyaku Shiki riding on it. We never knew anything more about it, though. It was never mentioned again after the show, and with Zeta being terminated before it even began here, there was of course no chance for it to turn up in any way. But hey, it only took us almost four years to finally get ourselves a Flying Armor meant for MSiA, right?

The first part of this review will just cover the differences in this set's Gundam MK II as compared to the previous AEUG colors release. After that I'll cover the new accessories in the usual full detail. Instead of breaking down the MK II by body part as usual, I'll just break it down into important differences. For direct reference, see my review of the EMIA AEUG colors Gundam Mk II.


The Figure


Sculpt

The sculpt here is almost fully unchanged. What's important to note is that the designers did go back and address one of the worst issues of the original version of the mold when doing this version. As you may recall, the original had trouble with the ability of the beam sabre racks to hold onto the sabre grips. In this case, the thruster vanes that include the racks have been replaced. First of all, pegs have been added which the sabre grips plug into. The fit is somewhat tight, so it's pretty certain these won't be losing your grips whenever you brush past them now. This is similar to the method of storage from the first version Gundam Mk II MSiA, incidentally. Another result of this mold changing is that the thruster vanes look slightly bigger (in the best possible ways, of course), and the hard plastic simulated cables have been replaced by soft plastic. This is kind of a good news bad news thing. The good news is that when moving the thruster vanes, the movement of the cables looks more realistic. The bad news is that the cables are a bit long and tend to push the thruster vanes in toward each other, rather than allowing them to angle outward as shown in the lineart. Since these are secured only at one end, it would be possible if one were so inclined to trim a tiny bit off the free end and eliminate some of the push back that keeps the vanes from sitting the right way. Otherwise, the articulation range of the thruster vanes seem to have been improved with the remolding. Sadly, the other issue relating to the backpack was not addressed, that being the way in which it connects to the figure. Still just the single ball joint with no other means to stabilize it, allowing the backpack to swing and swivel all over the place. Maybe on the next re-release...


Paint

These changes are the most noticeable. To start, the previous Mk II's base paint color was a light grey. This one is much whiter, and probably more animation accurate. The other major difference is that where the other Mk II had airbrushed weathering effects for added contrast, this version is "clean", with no airbrushing at all. It resembles the appearance of the EMIA Freedom with the whiter color and lack of any attempt to make contrast between areas. The panel lines are also now a blue-grey color rather than the olive color from before. I've personally seen two copies of this Mk II, and on both there is a very noticeable paint fade in the black mask around the eyes. Toward the far left side, the paint simply fades away until the base plastic beneath is clearly visible. This begins far enough forward to be visible from the front, and makes the left eye look oddly painted. As an isolated issue I could accept this, but given that a second unit shows the exact same problem, I think something may have gone wrong with at least part of the production run.

Let's talk about some of the more interesting things here. The beam rifle and Hyper Bazooka have both lost paint operations. Besides their panel lining, also absent is the colored detail painting, such as barrel darkening and targeting sensors, the Hyper Bazooka's ammo clip even lost all of its paint, now appearing the same color as the dark blue parts of the bazooka. The Flying Armor itself also has no panel inking, and the body of the Mk II has lost a few lines. Having studied to some small degree the business side of toy making, I'm thinking that these omissions are to keep costs down, to compensate for other new paint applications on the new accessories. While the weapons end up looking a bit more bland, my biggest gripe is that the bazooka clip doesn't match the one I already have. And here I thought I'd finally have an extra clip for one of my Mk II's! Offhand I can't decide whether or not I think the Mk II lost its airbrushing as part of the cut down on paint apps, or as a way to make it more different from the last one as had been generally believed.

Paint and Deco: 8/10
Sculpt and Engineering (new figure parts only): 8/10


Accessories


-Beam Rifle
The same mold, though this time the foregrip on mine is mounted crooked. The only difference is the lack of detail painting as noted before.

-Hyper Bazooka
Once again the same as the previous version with exception of detail painting and the uncolored ammo clip.

-Shield
The shield at least keeps its small colored areas. Still the same mold, but now comes with an optional mouinting bracket to allow the shield to sit on the side of the arm instead of the back. Besides the sabre racks, I think this may be the most important change from the past versions. The new connector holds very securely to the hardpoint on the forearm, and the ball joint fits together prefectly. Naturally, the previously included arm connector as well as the shoulder mounting adapter are still included.

-Beam Sabres
These are virtually unchanged. Just the paint color and one panel line each removed.

-Flag
The first of the new accessories. While the Mk II never carried the flag while painted in these colors, an identical flag was carried by one of the Titan controlled Mk II's, as well as a Hi-Zack and the Zeta Gundam. The sculpting here I think is pretty good, considering it can be difficult to capture the appearance of a waving flag in a static form. The thick part of the flagpole doesn't fit very well in the Mk II's hand, and indeed does not fit the Hi-Zack or Zeta Gundam's hand without pushing it out of shape. It may be possible to have it grip by the thinner part, but it won't be secure. If you do go ahead and use the thicker part, be prepared for the hand to possibly get permanently widened too much to use the beam sabres. That's really the only failing point of this flag. It looks really nice, but it can't be executed correctly.

-Flying Armor and Stand
The Flying Armor is pretty much as you'd expect. It's light for its size, thanks to the large scale use of lightweight, rigid plastics. It essentially looks like a scaled up version of the HCM-Pro Flying Armor, though with some extra surface detailing. I find this to be one place that majorly suffers for a lack of panel lining. There's these giant areas of solid white that just need *something* to break them up. The HCM-Pro solved this with those big crazy lines all over everything, which I really find myself missing here. Had I a Gundam marker, I might even be inclined to ink these lines myself. It just looks so plain! Okay, setting that aside, the execution here is actually really good. The Mk II fits really well on this in the laying down re-entry position, and it's fairly secure. You can use the articulated stand to move this thing all over and once the figure is in, it's pretty much gonna stay put, within reasonable limits. The one component the HCM-Pro brought in that I'd have liked to see redone here is the foot lock that could be mounted on that Flying Armor and help to secure the figure in the standing "surfing" pose. You can stand the figure up, but just like every other such conveyance it's completely up to you to make it stay balanced, or it's taking a dive. Repeatedly.

The stand itself I'm quite impressed with. It looks and feels like a natural development of the smaller stands the Zeta figures have been including ever since the Asshimar. Likewise, this comes packaged as two pieces, easily assembled with a snap and a pop. Just be sure there's no crackle in there. The stand articulates at two places, one hinge at the base, and another up top where it connects to the Flying Armor. Both joints are strong, with the base being a ratcheting joint for much more sure hold of position. The top joint is very stiff, to the point where it probably won't move unless you have the Flying Armor mounted - you need the extra leverage to move it unless you're one of those guys who makes a living bending wrenches on a stage. The fit to the stand is secure, and the main joint goes far enough back to look almost like the angle the Flying Armor sits at upon launch from the Argama. Actually, let's talk about that... The ratcheting joint has three positions, all of them going to the back. The farthest forward position has the Flying Armor just short of sitting level. I'm gonna say it moves in roughly 20 degree increments finally stopping at somewhere around 60 or 70 degrees from horizontal. The upper joint has a theoretical 180 degree range, though with the Flying Armor attached, it's limited by whatever first runs into the stand, or surface it's resting on. Whichever happens to come first. If for whatever reason you have want or need for the Flying Armor to pitch down, you can always take the stand off and reattach it backwards, just know that it'll make balance issues past a certain point.

Some of the paint work on the bottom could be better. There's spots of paint overrun, and some areas with spots of no paint or faded coverage like with the black mask on the face. On the other hand, the top looks much better, and since you're more likely to spend more time looking at that side, I think this is pretty well okay. There's a big tab in the middle to mount the shield to, and fixed position handgrips in the front. The handset recommended for that by the instructions doesn't work well in my experience. More on that in coverage of the hands. The wings are of course hinged. The jointing is solid, so the wings shouldn't sag when you have them folded up, and obviously the figure fits fine with the wongs folded.

-Extra Hands
Five pairs this time. It's one of the larger numbers of hands to come with one figure, probably only equalling a few G Gundam figures. There's of course the basic fists, and the open hands for the beam sabres and arguably the flag, and the trigger finger hands. New to this set are the grasping hands, a more enragedly curled version of the sort you find with the likes of EMIA Freedom. These are seemingly intended to hold things like the rifle's extra e-pacs, though I'm not even sure those would fit. These are also the hands suggested for the Flying Armor, but I find the last couple fingers on either hand don't exactly fit around the grips correctly and more seem like they'd warp closed if the other fingers were pressed far enough to hold around the grips. Finally, there's the set of hands meant for catching falling Newtypes. They're shaped basically like if you cupped both hands together to hold something or scoop up water. The right hand has a small hole in it near the base of the thumb. This is meant for a tiny foot to fit into for a secure hold, more on that in a second. These hands are what I prefer for the Flying Armor. They don't exactly hold, but they fit into the space smoothly, and I think work satisfactorily for the purpose. If you have the figure placed right it's not going anywhere whether the hands hold the grips or not.

-Amuro Ray
Amuro is technically the first human accessory for an MSiA. Strictly speaking, there have been human pilots in the Guntank, the Dopp, and the Elmeth, if I'm not forgetting any others. The difference I find is that they are integrated pieces of those figures, and are neither meant to be, nor can tey be removed without damaging or destroying the figure. With all the justification out of the way...

Amuro is posed as having just landed in the Mk II's hand, crouching on one knee, with arms wide for balance. The figure has effectively no detail, as expected from a figure of this tiny size. The paint is as good as you can expect (and you know what to expect if you ever had a model train with pre-painted human figures), and it manages to get across the idea that it is Amuro, so long as you're familiar with the source material. Amuro's right foot is meant to squeeze into that one right hand of the Mk II, and once you get it in, stays there well. I'm really glad they did this, since being so small and dark colored, Amuro would be especially easy to lose to the floor if there was no way to try to secure him. I've pretty well determined that Amuro is not to scale with the Mk II, and his height kneeling is actually what I figure his height standing should be. But I guess this is better than a little part smaller than a grain of rice. So, shoot. Where's my tiny Quattro, Bandai-Namco?!

New Accessories get 9/10


Closing Remarks

This is kind of one of those things. It's all so conditional that it's difficult to give it a single rating. First off, it's a pretty high price. On the other hand, you get a major load of stuff for that price. Then you have the Gundam Mk II. And you probably do already have it from when it was released in 2005. In my opinion this figure's appearance is inferior, but there's also the matter of the improved backpack that should be taken into consideration, as well as the new shield connector which some people will find important. This set also has something I tend to favor, which is unique accessories, like Amuro. After the G-defenser, the Flying Armor is probably the most talked about among MSiA collectors as a wanted vehicle, and now you can get it. Like I said, you can't really draw one conclusive answer here. This set comes with every part the previous AEUG Mk II came with, but some of those parts as well as the figure loses some level of paint applications. You also get more stuff, but your price is also doubled compared to the by itself version, and that's something to consider if you already have the original. ...and I'm just kind of going in circles now, aren't I?

Okay, if you don't have the AEUG colors Mk II already, I would say there's very little question that this is the one to get. Under those circumstances, I rank this set as Excellent. If you do have the previous release, this is going to call for some thought about how important the new parts are, and how important the lost paint work is to you. If the lack of some paint doesn't bother you, this may not be a bad idea. And since you don't lose any parts between sets, you could potentially sell your original to offset your cost a little. That's up to you. But given that there are losses of paint, some of which I think are pretty important, I'm going to only call this release Good if you already have the other one. I'm happy with this, but I do think some things could have been done differently to make it even better.

-ExVeeBrawn