MSiA RX-78GP02A Gundam 'Physalis' Japanese Version

MSiA RX-78GP02A Gundam 'Physalis' (Japanese Version)

Height: 11.5cm to top of head, 12cm to top of boosters.

Articulation:  total points of articulation: double-jointed neck; 7 points in arms- ball-jointed shoulders, swivel and hinge joints in shoulder mounted boosters, pre-elbow swivels, double-jointed elbow, ball-jointed wrists; ball-jointed waist; 6 points in each leg - ball jointed hip, double-jointed knee, triple-jointed ankle.

Accessories: Shield, Nuclear Bazooka, Beam Sabers with removable blades x2, Extra Hands x3.

Colors: Molded off-white, red, medium gray, and transparent green. Painted blue, yellow, red, medium gray, dark blue, black, green (eyes and camera) and black ink(panel lines).

Release Data: Released in Japan at a price of ¥1700. This item is no longer in production as of this review (February 10th, 2006).

Gallery: 10 pictures.

Author: RAC

The Figure

The GP02A is an odd design- its enormous legs are offset not by the arms themselves, but by the boosters mounted on the shoulders, and the huge shield. (The shield with the vulnerable cooling systems- it says more than I ever could about the character of Nina Purpleton that she designed a Mobile Suit with serious vulnerabilities in its shield.) It's fitting that the design is fairly distinctive, as it serves a purpose otherwise untouched in the Universal Century- the use of nuclear weapons.

As a figure, its large accessories and smallish arms present a bit of a problem, a challenge which the US release was not up to. This version manages to meet those challenges. Mostly. At least, better than the domestic figure did...

The Head

The oddly shaped head is well-sculpted, and the neck has a very good range, sporting one of the earliest examples of the double ball-jointed neck that's now standard on EMiAs. Here, it has a greater effect on side-to-side tilt than is usually seen on the newer figures.

The Arms

The shoulders lack the hinges used on most Second Version and later figures, but this helps their stability for the purpose of holding the shield. The right shoulder armor has the hinged mount piece for the base of the bazooka, and doesn't seem to have any trouble bearing the weight. The shoulder joint is pretty stiff, and does a fair job with the shield, but the elbows and wrists are much more standard, leading to the inevitable droop. The elbows are very good otherwise, folding into a tight U- and seemingly gaining in strength when thus folded. The hands have a strangely coarse matte texture, to the point where I initially thought they were painted.

It's kind of disappointing, the more I play with the figure. While the joints were perfectly capable of supporting the shield at the beginning, it doesn't take long for them to get broken in and provide you with all the droop you'd expect from a figure holding a shield as large and wide as this. It's a pity.

The large booster assembly attaches to the shoulder armor via a strong hinge and swivel, and can turn pretty easily. The boosters swing out to the sides and unfold, with the inner thruster being linked to the one at the end, ensuring they turn in unison. Nice touch. The final thruster on the back of the booster swivels separately.

The Torso

The torso is more in scale with the legs than the arms are, and looks suitably heavy and heavily shielded for a machine designed to play with nukes. The figure technically has a waist joint, but it's mostly academic- the tilt is minimal, and turning the waist as little as is actually possible mainly serves to dislodge the Beam Sabers.

Yes, the GP02A's skirt Beam Saber storage is reproduced here, and relatively well. The Saber grips are freely removable, but as mentioned above the movement of the waist can disconnect them from the gray pipes they fit into- and sometimes they'll fall off for no reason at all. Surprisingly, the rear skirt armor is on a swivel, very similar to the ZAKU series' hinges. Of course, a swiveling rear skirt doesn't do much good, and the front skirt- which was obviously designed with such a connection in mind- is standard MSiA construction, sadly. Even so, the skirt doesn't really obstruct the legs unreasonably, outside of the possibility of dislodging the Beam Sabers.

The Legs and Feet

The hips have a pretty standard range and work fine. The knees are good and stiff, and will allow the massive lower legs to hold a position, even with the weight of the shield bearing down on them. In this case, a mere double-joint has an edge over the modern triple- or quadruple-joints. Unfortunately, the ankles are triple-jointed, and don't offer the same level of resistance as the knees, so you often have to pose the figure leaning into its steps to get it to stand reliably. Oddly, the top of the foot is a separate piece from the sole, for no reason I can figure out.

Paint and Decoration

It doesn't look bad at all. The paint is good overall, with the only points of sloppiness being a small greenish area where the blue and yellow parts of the shoulder booster meet, and a small spot of gray paint on the left leg. Like all Japanese MSiA before Gundam SEED Destiny, it has inked panel-lines, which are pretty even, but not quite perfect.

Articulation gets 7/10

Sculpt and Deco get 8/10
 

Accessories

-Nuclear Bazooka

A two part assembly: the rear is fixed to a small articulated arm on the figure's right shoulder, and the barrel is stored in the shield. Once assembled, it is indeed a large, imposing weapon. The grip is hinged and the hand fits it well, but the position of the arm is tricky. If the grip were further forward the GP02A could hold it straight-armed, which would make sense. But it's not, and so you have to struggle a bit to get an angle where grip successfully fits in hand and hand successfully fits to wrist. Less frustrating than the GP01's weapons, but more frustrating than it should be.

-Shield

And now we come to the big, impressive accessory that breaks the toy. The shield is 12 centimeters tall- about as tall as the figure itself, and holds a heavy bazooka barrel. The plate that mounts the handgrip can be removed to access the barrel- with the barrel removed poseability with the shield improves, but is still pretty bad.

The handgrip is the crowning touch of stupid to the shield design. The grip is perfectly round, ensuring droop no matter the strength of the arm. A tab or a square grip would at least allow a stable pose- though there's always the danger of having the entire hand falling off, I suppose. Either way, I don't expect a design like this to be too terribly nimble, but I would at least like it to be able to hold its damn shield up off the ground sometimes.

-Beam Sabers

The Sabers are of the old style, with softer plastic blades, but are fairly firm. They're not up to modern standards, but they are about the best example of the older style of Beam Sabers you'll see.

-Extra Hands

Five hands- fists, shield/Saber, and one trigger-finger hand for the bazooka. No problems here- it's exactly what the figure needs, since you can only use the bazooka right-handed. The wrists aren't as strong as I'd really like, especially in the case of the bazooka-hand. It's not as crippling as it could be, since the arm and wrist aren't bearing the weight of the weapon. They're not the best hands ever, but they work.

Accessories get 5/10

Closing Remarks:

Initially, I loved this figure- for the first couple days I owned it, its arms and ankles were stiff enough to deal with its outlandishly gargantuan shield. But joints, sadly, don't stay fresh-from-the-package-stiff forever, and the GP02A really lost it quickly. The sad part is that the increased joint tolerances at the shoulder and knee show that it's possible to make a figure that could handle this shield- couple these shoulders and a strong set of elbows with the deep-set wrists of a Rick Dias or Galbaldy Beta, make the handgrip of the shield square like any sane person would, and the problem is likely solved.

Rating this figure is particularly hard. Stripped of the shield and the issues it brings to the table, you have a Very Good figure, at minimum. However, the bazooka- and by extension, the shield- are the point of the design, and the articulation as it serves this design Could Have Been Better. I hate to cop out and say "If you like the design, you'll probably like this figure," but that's the truth as I see it. If you dislike the design, this figure probably won't change your mind, but it is superior in many ways to the American GP02A.

-RAC, 02/10/2006