MSiA AMX-004 Qubeley

Height: 11.5 cm

Articulation: 29 points total: 6 points in each arm - double jointed shoulder, pre-elbow swivel, single hinge elbow, forearm swivel, restricted ball joint wrist; triple jointed neck; mid-torso ball joint; hinged funnel rack; 6 points in each leg - ball jointed hip, double jointed knee, hinged knee armor, ball joint ankle, mid-foot hinge.

Accessories: Funnels x10; beam sabres x2 with removeable blades; Extra hands x4.

Colors: Molded pearlescent white, pink, purple, grey, clear yellow; Painted dark grey, blue, pink, gunmetal, purple, black.

Release Data: Released in Japan on July 26th, 2002 at a price of ¥1500. This item is no longer in production.

Gallery: 14 images.

Author: ExVee

The Figure

During the One Year War, the Principality of Zeon's Newtype exploitation ..er, I mean "research" outfit, the Flanagan Institute developed a system by which a Newtype pilot could control a number of wire guided and fully remote weapons using only the power of his or her mind. The Psycommu system opened the door to a range of Newtype exclusive Mobile Weapons that would change the nature of warfare for many years.

This system was applied to specially equipped Mobile Armors, the ultimate expression of which was the Elmeth, piloted by the powerful Newtype Lalah Sune. The many fully remote Bit weapons could strike at enemy targets over considerable distance, and this terrible machine may well have been a decisive element in the final stages of the One Year War, if not for Lalah sacrificing herself and her Mobile Armor to save Char Aznable from Amuro and the Gundam.

The war was lost for Zeon, and much of the Principality's surviving military forces would flee to the asteroid base Axis. Over the following years, the Psycommu system and its related technologies would be refined. Eight years after the war, the descendant of the Elmeth would be brought to the Earth Sphere with the returning Axis forces.

This Qubeley was a monster all its own, combining the versatility and agility of a Mobile Suit with the ability to launch a wireless all-range attack. In the hands of Axis regent Haman Karn, the Qubeley would play a major role in the end of Zeta Gundam's Gryps Conflict, and continue on into the first Neo Zeon war of Gundam ZZ, where it would lead to spinoffs, including attempted mass production.

The Head

Sitting on a combination of two hinges and swivel joint, the Qubeley has an unexpected range of mobility in the head. Unexpected since the head is designed to incorporate a thruster binder, which extends like a crest from the back of what would be seen as the "normal" head. The joint combination is not actually meant to free up movement for the head by compensating for the binder structure. Instead, it's to allow the Qubeley's head to face forward when in the "flight mode", which is actually little more than laying the Qubeley down, pointing the toes, and sort of tucking the arms into the oversized shoulder armor. Even without the hinge, the left to right range is pretty open, letting the head turn far enough to look reasonable.

The Torso

All I can say is that it's a mess. The inner half of the double shoulder joints include large plastic pieces that are somewhat heavy, to say nothing of the rest of the shoulders and arms they have to support. In short, this is really not the appropriate place for the ball joints employed. It may offer extra range in all directions, but it's more harmful than helpful.

Next, there's not a normal waist joint. Instead, the middle of the torso has a ball joint which allows the upper body to turn and bend all over the place. Now, refer back to the weight issues, and you can see that once more a ball joint is not appropriate. There's just too much hanging off the upper body to be properly supported by a single ball joint. A straight swivel would have worked better here, in my opinion.

On the back is mounted the funnel rack. Mounted crooked on mine, by the way. It's just a simple block made to hold the ten alarmingly tiny Funnels. Aside from my Qubeley having it crooked, I have no problem here. It's the first solid joint on the torso.

There is skirt armor, though quite departed from the usual styles. It doesn't really interfere with the hip joints much, though you will get stopped a little sooner than you think you really should. The central skirt panel is attached by a ball joint, which really does nothing except contribute to the number of things that'll easily get knocked out of alignment.

The Arms

From the elbows up, you have standard articulation. Plus the joints in the shoulder binders, though they serve little or no practical value for posing. Below the elbow hinge is a ball joint, which lets the forearm swivel. The problem though, is that the forearm joint is stronger than the pre-elbow swivel, and you end up turning the upper arm instead of the forearm. When you do manage to get the part of the arm you want turned, it's actually quite helpful for posing. It just would have been nice if the plastic tolerances had been worked out so it'd be easier to use.

The wrists are ball joints, but the shape of the hands limits that to just swiveling. Besides which, the design of the forearm restricts how far the hands can move.

Legs And Feet

The hips are kind of restricted, due to the age of the figure - the hip sockets are sunk pretty deep, so the legs do very little but go forward and backward. The knees themselves are double jointed, but the shape of the lower leg limits the effectiveness a good bit. The knee armor is articulated, because the armor is actually additional thrusters which you can see in the molded detail on the inside of the knee covers.

The ankles barely move at all. This is a result of a combination of factors, but the main cause is the heel being nearly as large as the interior of the ankle cavity. The toes can be made to point down, sort of. Really, the range is so limited that you can barely tell when they're pointed down or not.

Paint and Deco

Actually, this is the one area without any real problems. Though it may well be due to the fact that most of the figure is not painted. The paint that is present is basically just detailing, such as mechanisms on the insides of panels, and the various pink strips all over. Afterall, your chances of screwing up decrease greatly the less you actually do.

Sculpt gets 9/10

Articulation and Engineering get 6/10

Paint and Deco get 9/10

Accessories

-Funnels

This is crazy. There's te of these, and they're all about the size of a single piece of Rice Krispies. They store in the rack on the back, and I really, really think that youshould just leave them there and never, ever consider taking them out again.

These are packaged apart from the figure, so you have to mount them all yourself, and you will spend much time and many curses trying to pop them in. They have to go at a very specific angle, and since you have to apply pressure to the end that's more narrow than the shaft of an average nail, you're going to be feeling it more and more the longer it take to get it right.

The last thing you want to do, though, is try to spare yourself the trouble by leaving them loose, since you will lose these. It's not a matter of "if", it's a matter of "when". It will happen, period.

There's not much point keeping them off, anyway. Funnels are supposed to float around and stuff, and that doesn't really work with, y'know, gravity and stuff.

-Beam Sabres

Such an odd combination. At the time, it was the smallest sabre grips and biggest blades around. The grips store in the forearms (they double as beam cannons, you see...) quite securely, even though very little of them actually goes into the hole in the arms. The grips are so small, in fact, that they don't even fit well in the sabre hands. You have to push them down almost to where the grip disappears in the hand before they stop swinging loosely.

The blades are soft, of course, but the thickness offsets the problem that would result from the length. They fit snugly in the grips, and you can even plug them in when the grips are in the arms, which looks vaguely like a beam shot, kind of. Maybe.

-Extra Hands

The sabre hands are almost indistinguishable from the basic fists, except that there's a small opening in them. A result both of the overwhelming smallness of the grips, and of the big, long fingered hands. The second pair of extras are completely open, with outstretched fingers. These seem to be meant for use both with the beam cannons and posing for funnel deployment.

The hands hold tightly, which also results in being difficult to switch. The hands are a much harder plastic than usual. Combined with the odd shape of the forearms, it's just not that easy to pop the hands into place.

Accessories get 7/10

Closing Remarks

We may talk from time to time about how certain figures are in desperate, obvious need of remakes. But I think the Qubeley may be a less obvious case. The real problem I find is that it's simply too ambitious. It tried to do too many things when MSiAs had not progressed far enough. I think that with MSiA engineering as it is today, the Qubeley could be done remarkably well.

Sadly, this is not the case, and we are left with but this figure. While visually an excellent representation of the Qubeley, it has too many failings to be a playable toy. The worst part about it is that it's all because too much was done with it. Had it been even a little simpler, the worst problems would be eliminated.

The Qubeley gets an overall rating of Could Have Been Better.

-ExVeeBrawn, The Zeta Project - 08/21/2005