MSiA ZGMF-X88S Gaia Gundam

Height: 10.3 cm at head

Articulation: 34 total points, plus transformation and mobile armor specific articulation: 6 points in each arm - Double jointed shoulder, pre-elbow swivel, double jointed elbow, ball joint wrist; Ball joint neck; Double jointed wings; Ball joint waist; 7 joints in each leg - ball joint hip, triple jointed knee, double jointed ankle, hinged heel and sole.

Accessories: Beam Rifle; Shield; Beam Sabres x2 with removeable blades; Wing beam blades x2; Extra hands x4.

Colors: Molded black, grey, clear pink; Painted red, yellow, grey, black, green.

Release Data: Released December 21st in Japan at a price of ¥1500. This item is still in production as of this review (February 13th, 2005).

Gallery: 15 items.

Author: ExVee

The Figure

The SEED universe has delivered some interesting mobile suit design ideas, both animated and not. Among them was quadruped, animalistic mobile suits, the BuCUE and LaGOWE. Now, animal themed mecha are hardly an original concept. But animal themed mobile suits, on the other hand, that's a bit newer. As seems to be the case with most SEED designs, the BuCUE looked pretty bad as lineart, but it was not only extremely cool looking when animated, it was portrayed as a major land superiority model. It made a very strong first impression on me, the influence of which lasts even now.

Before Destiny began, the normal publicity art of the main mobile suits was released. Imagine my overwhelming delight when I saw that one of the Gundams transformed into a very BuCUE themed Mobile Armor mode! In some corner of my mind, I knew this was made just for me, and so came the waiting. Waiting until Destiny began, and I could see this wonderful thing in operation! And 16 episodes later, Gaia has been in combat all of four times. Way to advertise your headline machines!

To be fair, in the occasions Gaia has been used on the ground, it's shown great agility and respectable speed in Mobile Armor mode. And Phase 16 confirms it as a ground only model, lacking the ability to fly or propel itself through water. And yet somehow the Mobile Armor mode can maneuver handily across colony debris in open space. ...right.

Anyway, since SEED MSiAs were released last year, among my stronger levels of want have been a BuCUE. Thus far I've been denied in that regard. But I knew as soon as Gaia was shown, I'd have something in a similar theme before too long. Sure enough, come December Gaia was released, along with the other two stolen machines. My dreams were at least partly fulfilled. Was it a dream come true, or an engineering nightmare?

The Head

Fairly normal looking Gundam style head. The design makes it able to look upward pretty well, but it can't hardly point down at all. Plus, it's kind of tricky to get the head to turn more than 90 degrees to either side. Additionally, the neck joint is a bit tight, moreso than is required to hold the head in a given position. This actively fights you moving it.

The Torso

This pretty well has all notable features on the back, and even that's mostly just the wings. Though meant for the MA mode, they're perfectly accessible here, and with the little thruster slots on the bottom, I can see them being of at least some use in the MS mode. They're connected to the torso by way of two hinges, and have a range of 90 degrees up from their resting position, and then can swing outward another 90 degrees to take up a wingly position.

The other thing is the Mobile Armor head, which I only mention here because it doesn't sit in place very well, and so is bad to use for a gripping point when trying to pose the figure, plus the antenna on the MA head is right there where you'd naturally try to grab it, and it can be easily warped. Basically, consider this a warning to just not grab it this way.

The waist joint is pretty good, a little better than average, and offers decent movement in any direction. There's no front skirt panels, and the rear panel is ball jointed, with enough freedom to allow any reasonable pose that'd require one leg to go back for balance. This is mostly a consideration for the other mode, as the legs have to bend such a way that having skirt armor in front would be too much interference. The upside is that MS mode gets the benefit of unrestricted forward leg articulation. The side panels are also ball jointed, but those joints are a little on the loose side. That plus the large size of those pieces seem to lead to them being very easily knocked out of position, so that's another thing to keep in mind when posing.

The Arms

The way the shoulder armor is jointed, it can easily get out of the way of the arms, allowing them to raise almost straight out to the sides. The design of the shoulder armor is pretty open, and for most posing, you won't have to move it at all to let the arms be where you want them. Otherwise, the arms are pretty standard, with average articulation. The forearms can be a little difficult to deal with, since they contain more MA parts that have to hinge out, but that don't really secure in this mode.

The joints are adequately strong, they'll hold position even when lifting the rather massive beam rifle.

The Legs

This is where things begin to fall on their face. Pun intended.

Since a big part of the transformation occurs in the legs, there's lots of extra joints - especially in the feet - which have a really bad way of destabilizing the whole works. Even as I write this review, Gaia keeps sinking onto the "frame" portions of it's feet, because the hinges in the heels and soles lack the strength to support the weight of the figure. This is an inexcusable shortcoming. Even with transformation in mind, the strength of the feet should be the highest concern during design, if only the design of the merchandise. If the feet won't hold the figure up correctly, you lose alot of poseability potential, and therefore play value.

Plus, all the joints tend to conspire and make it difficult to have Gaia at its full height. According to the data card that the figure comes with, the MS mode height is 17.8 meters, putting it just slightly under Abyss, and about a half meter taller than Chaos. But in general practice, this figure is the shortest of the three. I don't believe it's a matter of scale differences, either. It simply cannot stand properly and so cannot reach full stature. Sad, sad, sad...

Oh, and the ankle armor keeps wanting to pop off. Whee!

Mobile Armor Mode

And so, this is what (at least is supposed to) make all the failings of the Mobile Suit mode worth it. And to be fair this actually holds together decently. This mode uses the shield to obscure the Gundam details from below, but it results is a kind of overly bulky, bloated appearance. A slimmer shield might have helped with this, though I'd probably just as soon leave the shield off altogether.

Now, this isn't free of problems, either. The rear legs and feet are fairly stable - they were clearly designed with this configuration in mind, but the front ankles and feet have loose hinges, and so provide all new stability issues. You can pose the MA mode just so and the weight will more or less hold the loose joints in place, but I don;t really think it should have to come to that.

In this mode, the wings on the back come into a more obviously useful purpose. With the beam blades in the wings, it's more than slightly evocative of the Blade Liger from Zoids. The skirt panels still suffer from their not tight enough joints here, and the butt plate ends up gaining a problem since it wants to go off to one side or the other, which bothers the tail, which amazingly is connected quite securely by what seems to be a simple hinge. Can't lose in every area, right?

The problem putting a rating here is that the sculpt itself is actually quite nice, and the articulation is nice in theory. The problem with the practical application seems to be lacking engineering, or maybe materials. Plus, the paint and decoration is done very well. So, instead of the typical rating that goes here, I'm gonna add something a little more...

Sculpt: 9/10

Articulation in Concept: 9/10

Articulation in Practice: 3/10

Engineering and Materials: 3/10

Paint/Deco: 9/10

Accessories

-Beam Rifle

This somehow seems very much larger than it's depicted in the show. Despite this, the figure is able to support its weight in MS mode. When transformed, the beam rifle is supposed to be mounted on Gaia's right shoulder, and unlike Saber, it'll aim straight forward since the part of the armor it attaches to is immobile.

-Shield

My big gripe here? There's no way to connect it directly to the arm. It only has a handgrip, which doesn't really fit well in the hand, meaning Gaia can't hold the shield in any natural looking way. In MA mode it attaches by a couple tabs to the torso, but it's not very strong. It'll dislodge at even slight pressure upward, and very easily with any kind of forward push. Plus as mentioned above, it makes the Mobile Armor look fat.

-Beam Sabres

These blades are the first really dark colored blades we've had since Bandai started using the stiff plastic for the beams. Nice to know Bandai knows how to make rigid blades that aren't really pale colored. The blades fit comfortably, but snugly into the grips, and the grips themselves slide securely into the tops of the skirt armor.

-Wing Blades

These are also rigid, but are more pale than the sabre blades. They are very secure in the wings, and as with Sword Impulse, it's a bit unsettling placing or removing the blades, for fear of accidentally snapping them. They seem to only fit in the wings one way.

-Extra Hands

Four extra hands are included, standard open hands, suitable for beam sabres and not-so-much the shield, and trigger finger hands for the beam rifle. They switch easily, but won;t come dislodged of their own accord. The size doesn't work with the shield, and whichever hand you have holding the shield may become warped or otherwise bent out of shape from having the stupid handgrip there.

Accessories get 5/10

Closing Remarks

To be honest, I don't really know what to say. I like Gaia's design, and I like what the Mobile Armor mode is based on. But this figure... I don't know if it's just a matter of being overly ambitious beyond what the materials will support, or if it's really just a half-baked engineering job. I can't tell, but any way you look at it, the outcome is atrocious.

At this point I usually assign what I feel to be a fair amount of money to spend on the figure based on the merits of the toy, but I just can't do that here, because I really don't think you should spend money on this. If you get it as an unsolicited gift, cool, but I can't advise you to pursue the figure yourself at all.

This figure, in my opinion, is Not Worth Owning.

-ExVeeBrawn, 02/13/2005