MSiA ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom

Height: 10.5cm to top of head, 11.5cm to top of antennae.

Articulation: 32 total points of articulation: Ball jointed neck; 6 points in arms- double-jointed shoulders, pre-elbow swivels, double-jointed elbow, ball-jointed wrists; ball-jointed waist; 6 joints in backpack for posing of wings; 6 points in each leg - ball jointed hip, triple-jointed knee, double-jointed ankle.

Accessories: MA-M21KF High-Energy Beam Rifles x2, Beam Sabers x2, MX2200 Beam Shield, Extra hands x4

Colors: Molded white, black, gold, medium gray, translucent blue, and translucent pink. Painted white, black, gold, blue, red, light purple (railguns), and yellow(eyes).

Release Data: Released July 28th, 2005 in Japan at a price of ¥1600. This item is no longer in production as of this review (September 27th, 2005).

Gallery: 10 images.

Author: RAC

The Figure

So, let's say you need to give the pilot of the Freedom Gundam a new midseason upgrade Suit. Problem is, the Freedom was itself a midseason upgrade, and those are always designed to be hard to top. Because of this, we got the Strike Freedom Gundam, which is pretty much a revised version of Freedom with a few new tricks.

However, the most notable of those tricks, the DRAGOON remote weapons which form the blue parts of Strike Freedom's wings, are not reproduced here. What that leaves is a lot of territory that's pretty much been covered before, and some gold joints.

The Head

Unsurprisingly, the Strike Freedom's head strongly resembles that of the Freedom Gundam. The biggest difference is that the secondary V-fin is longer and gold rather than yellow. In my opinion, it looks a bit on the insectoid side, and could've benefited from being a touch shorter. The gold doesn't look bad here, though.

The head has a fair amount of tilt and can swivel 360 degrees, though the helmet is longer in the back and may catch temporarily if you're inclined to turn the head in a complete circle.

The Arms

Outside of the gauntlets on the forearms, the arms are standard MSiA construction, which is of course quite good. The shoulder hinges have an excellent range, though the shoulder armor seems a bit wobbly. I suspect it's the leverage that the shape imposes on a plastic-on-plastic snap-on connection. The elbows have the maximum range possible, and the wrists hold firmly. The red part of each forearm is removable for installation of the active Beam Shield.

The Torso

I keep forgetting that even without its DRAGOONs, Strike Freedom's firepower is at least equal to Freedom's thanks to the cannon in the midsection. Equal, and now symmetrical.

The waist gets a fair amount of tilt, but not nearly as much as the superb ZAKUs. 360 degrees of swivel is possible, but since the railguns and Rifles attach to the upper torso you might well knock them off if you're inclined to turn the waist in a complete circle. Tiny, tiny ball-joints on the hips and back allow the attachment of the rifles and side skirt plates- the railguns can store in the back if you want to store the rifles on the hips. I'd have liked to see a hinged part for this, but it's so tiny I doubt it'd be stable enough. The railguns are the simplified two-part fold seen on the GuAIZ-R, which I like. The clamps for the Beam Sabers rotate- they hold reasonably well, but not as tightly as I'd prefer.

The backpack and wing assembly are fairly large, but as they're made of the same light and hard plastic as the larger accessories for the Impulse Gundams, they don't affect the figure's balance as badly as they could. In fact, I really wish they would reissue the original Freedom with wings made of this material- they'll never warp, and Freedom could really use lighter wings. The joints are up to the task of holding the wing up so far, with two swivel joints and a hinge for each wing. Personally, I don't like the wing design as much as the original Freedom's, but from the perspective of a toy, the simpler design makes things easier. Again, I'm disappointed by the lack of DRAGOONs here.

Technically, Strike Freedom only has front and rear skirt armor. They're the same soft plastic used on almost all skirts, and they do a fair enough job of getting out of the way of the legs, though the danger of warping is still there.

The Legs and Feet

The hips have a decent range side-to-side, and whichever set of guns you have mounted on Strike Freedom's hips do a fair enough job of getting out of the way of the legs. The knees are the Destiny-standard triple-joint, and have as good a range as they possibly can. The ankles also have excellent range, and the ankle armor is not restrictive in the least. To offset the wings, Strike Freedom has rather large feet- they seem to do a pretty good job of maintaining balance.

Paint and Decoration

Whether you love or hate the gold joints Strike Freedom sports, they pose a serious problem here. As with the unreleased Gundam Astray Gold Frame whose picture you may have seen around, the molded and painted gold parts don't match at all. So you have really bright hands and midsection, and muted, brown-looking elbow, knee, ankle and neck joints, and it looks pretty bad, I think. The paint is fair but not great, with a big chip out of the red part of the torso that looks pretty bad. As always, I assume that's unique to my Strike Freedom and so I won't deduct for it.

Articulation gets 9/10

Sculpt and Deco get 6/10

Accessories

-MA-M21KF High-Energy Beam Rifles

Strike Freedom sports a pair of Beam Rifles similar in appearance to that of the Freedom Gundam. They fit in the hands neatly, and they store on the hips well, though the fit to the ball-joint is unsettlingly tight. The handgrips fold shut for storage, but they pop off too easily, and the connection lends itself to unsightly drooping after it's popped loose a few times.

The Rifles also combine into one big gun- this is accomplished by sliding the barrel of the left-hand gun forward and swinging the stock down, and connecting the right-hand Rifle to the socket there while extending its own stock. It's kind of ugly, I think- if the white parts of the Rifles met up like they were supposed to, it might be another matter, but I'm still not too fond of the design. Also, there's no really good way for Strike Freedom to grip the combined gun with its left hand, and the droopiness of the folding handles is really pronounced here. All in all, a most unsatisfying gimmick in my opinion.

-Beam Sabers with removeable blades

Standard. Ever since Bandai discovered hard plastic, it's become rare to encounter a bad Beam Saber. The blades fit the grips, the grips fit the hands. Nothing out of the ordinary- including no way to join the Sabers. Freedom came with a separate grip to allow this, but Strike Freedom doesn't. In its defense, though, I haven't seen it combine the Sabers in the series yet, so this may be intentional.

-MX2200 Beam Shield

A clear-plastic shield with a gold mounting arm which plugs into the forearm, in place of the red blocks. The peg is almost square but not quite- I leave it up to you to discover which way will actually allow the shield to fit the arms, just as Bandai left it up to me. Once you find out, it's a pretty secure fit. Fortunately, the shield is mounted on a ball-joint, allowing for some posing and also allowing it to clear the shoulder armor.

And, you may have noticed already, but the shield is in the exact shape as the familiar RX-78 Gundam shield. Nice touch there.

-Extra Hands

You get six shiny gold hands. They all attach well, and hold their accessories well. Outside of being gold, pretty standard.

Accessories get 6/10. Please note that this score is as much for the accessories it lacks as the accessories it has.

Closing Remarks:

The base figure here is solid, with few to no flaws in the articulation, but due to the frustrating main weapons and the missing accessories, not to mention deco issues, Strike Freedom is all kinds of disappointing. I paid a paltry $16 for the figure, but on the whole I'd really rather not have bothered.

Even so, the wings are improved over the Freedom Gundam on a technical basis. That and the articulation would merit a Very Good otherwise. But taking into account the asthetic flaw, accessories problems, and viewing it as a representation of the Strike Freedom on the whole, it Could Have Been Better.

-RAC 09/27/2005