Bandai 1/144 Scale Gundam L.O. Booster

One feature of the various Gundam universes unleashed upon us in the last twenty-four years is the wealth of alternate tales that occur 'outside' the normally seen animation. These are commonly referred to as 'Side Stories', and usually take the form of a manga (Japanese comic book) serialization. The Gundam Wing universe also has a side story in the form of the manga called 'G-Unit', which is known over here as 'Gundam Wing: The Last Outpost'.

Often the mecha that populate these side stories are a little more elaborate and tricked out than their TV contemporaries. This is certainly the case for the fanciful designs of the G-Unit mecha, one of which I'm reviewing here today. All the G-Unit kits are 1/144 High Grade (HG) models. The focus of this review is the Gundam L.O. Booster, which is an up-armoured and transformable version of the Gundam Geminass.

As far as 1/144 kits go, the L.O. is a fairly good offering. It has quite a few more parts than a typical 1/144 Wing kit, and is a little bigger overall. There are 4 racks of parts in the kit (plus one of polycaps, those cool little rubber washers), one of which is cast in multiple colours. Because most of the kit is based on new tooling, the detail is crisp and there is no flash to be found anywhere.

The model is entirely polystyrene, with no photoetch, resin or ABS components. There are two different kinds of decals in this kit: foil decals for doing a lot of the colouration on the maroon armour parts and clear plastic decals (which suck) for some of the insignia. I found the foil decals to be rather useful, actually. I used the decals to put the white tips on the ends of the binders on the L.O.'s back. The decals were white, which meant that they didn't need many coats to cover properly, and they allowed the white patches to be raised, so they could be outlined easier.

In terms of fit, the L.O. was more or less standard, although I wouldn't have said that the HG moniker really suited it. The level of detail was on par with other 1/144 Wing kits, although the clear pink beam saber (of which there were two) was a nice bonus. The shield was kind of boring, but the beam rifle was well detailed and originally coloured. There was very little in the way of build around, the only problem area being the binders on the back. The two split outer units were supposed to be finished before building the center core around them. However, I simply did a little cutting to rectify this, and thus was able to insert them afterwards.

The kit was painted using mostly Model Master acrylics, although the final coats of white are Tamiya Flat White mixed with tiny amounts of Badger Amtrak Blue and Tamiya Purple. The maroon is the same colour as on my 1/144 Queadluun Rau, which, I am sad to say, was completely used up by this kit. All painting was done by hand - I'm still trying to get the hang of the airbrush. The gloss is many coats of Future over one coat of heavily thinned Tamiya Clear Gloss. The bulk of the outlining was done using the smallest tip Gundammarker, although some of the smaller details, including the breather chevrons on the faceplate, were done using a filed down 0.7" mechanical pencil.

The L.O. Booster is fairly poseable, given the amount of junk on its back and the huge beam cannons on its shoulders (that's what those two claw-like things are, apparently). Unfortunately, the L.O. is also supposed to be transformable, like many G-Unit kits. Its alternate mode is a vaguely aircraft-ish mobile armour, hence the many fins and wings on the mech. However, this mode is kind of dumb, and doesn't look like much more than a mech lying on its face. The killer is a lot of the model is slaved to this half-arsed transform, resulting in more complexity than is required for some parts. I'll never transform it anyway, so I wish they had left that capability out.

Because G-Unit is a side story, the models won't get the same following or publicity as the mainstream Wing kits. This is really a shame, since this model is really very good. It is a bit challenging to build, and there are tricky spots in the painting (the face is detail heavy but quite small and the shoulders have lot of different colours in a small area), but it is a nice looking Mobile Suit that certainly makes a good addition to any arsenal.