MSiA RMS-117 Galbaldy Beta

Articulation: 24 total points of articulation: Ball jointed neck; 6 points in each arm - double jointed shoulders; triple jointed elbows (swivel plus double hinge); ball jointed wrists; ball jointed waist; 5 points per leg - ball jointed hips; triple jointed knees; ball jointed ankles.

Accessories: 6 piece Ballute system; beam sabre with removeable blade; beam rifle; shield; extra hands x4.

Colors: Molded maroon, light grey, green, clear yellow; Painted brown, dark grey, maroon, pink, black, yellow.

Release Data: Released May 28th, 2005 in Japan at a price of ¥1500. This is still in production as of this review.

Author: ExVee

The Figure

As the Universal Century series go, I can say with clear certainty that Zeta Gundam is my favorite. Though there's a variety of reasons, one of them is the wide variety of Mobile Suit designs, most of which I like very much. Indeed, Zeta Gundam probably has the largest number of suits I like in a single series, UC or AU.

Among them, the Galbaldy Beta is one of my real favorites. Based on the Galbaldy Alpha from the MS-X variations series the year before, the design was overhauled and added to the roster of Zeonic Mobile Suits to be used by the Federation and Titans as the Galbaldy Beta. And overhauled is no understatement - there's little resemblance between the two. Where the Alpha favors the Gyan in appearance, the Beta is more visibly related to the Gelgoog. It's okay though, the Alpha is actually pretty bad looking.

Sadly, the animated performance is pretty minimal. It appeared early attached to the Bosnia out of Luna II and was operated by hot shot Federation pilot Lila Milla Rira. It would continue to appear in the early part of the series, and only got its real screentime once Jerid Messa used it. And kinda wrecked it. Sad.

The Head

There's a significant difference between the head of the Galbaldy and the heads of other monoeye-having figures we've gotten lately: The eye and track are a separate piece from the rest of the head. And this is really the way it should always be done. Unlike just about anything else, there's a real feel of the eye and track being set back in the head that can't be simulated with a single painted piece.

The design of the head is like the Gelgoog taken to extremes. The whole thing has been made more narrow, and taller, resembling more "normal" proportions. The "snout" is very long and thin, and the crest from the Gelgoog is beefed up so much as to effectively be the entire top of the head. Articulation could be better. There's cables molded in around the base of the neck, and while basic side to side articulation is unaffected, the cables and the shape of the head prevent any kind of up and down articulation except with the head facing straight forward.

Arms and Torso

The arms are actually something of a throwback. They have the current standard double jointed shoulders, which work to great effect (greater, naturally, if you take away the shoulder armor), but the armor just attaches by sliding over the joint rather than being separately connected. Besides that, the normal upper arm swivel has become part of the elbow joint like was done in the old Zaku, Dom, and Gelgoog figures. Both of these things are elements not seen used in MSiA for a while now, and it's somewhat odd to have them back like this.

There's no harm to the articulation, though, and I do sort of prefer the swivel in this way, since it does much better to conceal the joint. despite the forearm shape, the double elbow works very well, with the arm falling just short of folding back against itself. Perfectly good range, though if the beam sabres were stored in the shoulders as with the original design, this would end up a problem. The wrists are ball joints with pretty much average range. Hard to expect much more with the bulk of the Zeta hand style.

The torso itself has good molding, but with no moving parts, not much of interest. The waist joint, though, is the typical great range ball joint that can pose all over the place. I really do like that style of joint. There's all kinds of poses that call for this sort of flexibility in the waist.

Legs and Feet

First off, the front skirt panels are a little on the thin side. Not only will this make them tend to warp easier than usual, but it introduces the possibility of breaking as well, so you'll want to be extra careful when posing. Posing is quite easy, too. The hip sockets are cut a little wide around the edges, giving the legs space to turn a little bit extra.

The knees are the modern triple joint, but the shape of the knee on the lower leg really restricts movement of the ball joint at the base. The rest of the joint is fine, however. There's enough flexibility for the Galbaldy's heel to nearly touch the thruster pods on the back of the skirt armor.

Despite the close wrap-around shape of the bottom of the legs, the ankles have a surprisingly free range of motion, able to support a variety of poses you'd not think possible just looking at it.

Paint and Deco

The big thing I feel compelled to mention is color matching. You may notice sometimes where figures have the same color as molded plastic and as paint, there's usually some level of discrepancy. Be it in shade, or gloss value, or clean edges, there's almost always something that immediately gives away a part that's painted from a part that's naturally that color. While the main maroon color of the Galbaldy exists almost soley as a molded color, there are small areas where that color is applied with paint. And somehow, it matches almost flawlessly.

For example, on the hands you cannot immediately tell whether it's the maroon part of the hand that's painted, or if it's the grey part. Everything just matches exceptionally well. It's probably the best example of this sort of painting I've ever seen. Though not nearly so notable, the rest of the painting is top notch as well. An added benefit of the monoeye track being a separate piece is the ability to paint the eye more carefully, which shows well here. I'd say all told, this is probably the best painted MSiA to come by in quite a while, excluding EMIAs, of course. The single thing that would improve it would be the sorely missed panel lines.

Who would have thought that after years of being satisfied with US release figures that didn't have them, I'd end up missing panel lines now?

Sculpt and Articulation get 9/10

Paint and Deco get 9/10

The Accessories

-Ballue System

This is essentially the same as what the Marasai comes with. It's a set of chest, backpack, and leg thruster units, plus two cables to connect the torso pieces. The idea is that the BALLoon-parachUTE is contained in the backpack, so for re-entry, a Mobile Suit descends back-first. Then the Ballute opens to protect the suit from the heat. Once flight altitude is reached, the balloon bits detach and all the rockets kick in to slow the suit down before it turns into a scatering of debris on the ground.

Though the majority is the same, there have been changes from the Marasai's Ballute. Some of the pieces are colored slightly different, likely to coincide with the shades of plastic being used on the Galbaldy. Plus, the connectors have all been changed to some extent. Basically, you won't be able to use the Ballute from one figure on the other.

It's a cool accessory to have (especially since between the two figures, you can outfit some other figures with Ballutes), but there are issues. First, at least in the original TV version, the Galbaldy wasn't part of the Titans force that dropped to Jaburo, but maybe this isn't so for the movie version. If the Galbaldy still doesn't make the drop in the movie, then what we're left with is a ¥1200 figure with added bits to push the price up. That's the kind of thing that doesn't generally sit well with me. Speaking of not sitting well, the connector on the chest piece I got was glued on crooked. Very visibly crooked.

-Beam Rifle

This one kind of amuses me. It's a minor tweaking of the Gelgoog rifle design, making some of the details more modern to what else was seen in Zeta. But that's not really the source of my amusement. Due to a little wear or just poorly applied paint, I discovered that the rifle was not molded in the grey it appears to be, but actually the green plastic used for the shield. But considering the paint quality is otherwise just like on the figure, you'd never ever know without seeing the base plastic, so I'm not holding this against it.

-Shield

The shield is a sign of the times it was used. Where beam weapons are everywhere, and shields begin to be nothing more than dead weight. As evidence, this shield is on the narrow side, to make it lighter. And since a shield won't stop more than a couple beam shots at best, all it needs to do is make up for the Galbaldy's thin armor when faced with projectile weapons. Plus to give more function, it carries the secondary weapon, a pair of short range misiles, or maybe rocket propelled grenades. These were only used once that I saw, and that was when Jerid was operating it.

The shield is collapsable, done by the normal method of tabs and slots. Pop off the upper piece and put it back in a lower position. The mount for the shield is on the back of the arm. Fortunately, the shield bracket is made with two ball joints so you can place the shield on the side of the arm if you choose. The connection at all points is secure, but it's not a task to switch where the shield sits if you want to change it.

-Beam Sabre

Only one sabre. The blade is the more rigid plastic becoming standard in modern beam sabre blades, and it's great. The color of the grip doesn't appear to match any other color on the figure, oddly. The Galbaldy design has the beam sabre storing in the shoulder armor. Unfortunately, this was not reproduced for the MSiA, so you're stuck with a beam sabre rolling around wherever when you're not using it.

-Extra Hands

Typical set of hands. They all connect to the wrists easily and securely. The trigger finger hands fit the rifle very well, and the normal open hands hold the beam sabre grip nice and snug - no wobbling. They all share the great paint job so you can't easily distinguish between molded and painted plastic.

Accessories get 9/10

Closing Remarks

If you have the regular Gelgoog figure that came with the beam machinegun, try giving that to the Galbaldy. That rifle seems to fit the Galbaldy very nicely.

This is one of the best all around MSiAs I've gotten in a while. Great figure, nice range of accessories, not to mention a favorite design. I paid $25 shipped for mine, and I'm very happy with it. I'd suggest going for a lower price if you can, and if you find a good enough deal, you might consider getting two or three of these. I think it's a good enough figure to buy a team of.

True, I might not have readily spent so much if I didn't like the Galbaldy as I do, but that doesn't change the fact that this is simply a fantastic figure. Don't miss out on it. This is an Excellent figure if I ever saw one.

-ExVeeBrawn, The Zeta Project - 08/17/2005