Haven’t written on an unpainted straight-build kit in quite some time – as plain as my All Gundam Project may look, I assure you just about none of them are that color accurate straight out of the box.
This Acguy is only an exception to my paint-everything rule because it’s not my kit, though I confess I actually coveted this kit for a few years because I thought all of its little gimmicks were just so cool. Alas, the missus beat me to the punch and plowed through this in one night before I even finished a painted HG G-Self.
This being her first Master Grade barely slowed her down – it has a considerable parts count too, compared to smaller older stuff I’d normally recommend beginners start with.
Once more she chose the kit solely based on its cuteness appeal (which to be fair the Acguy sports in spades – there’s a reason why the design was made into the Bearguy).
I actually used to covet this kit quite a bit and I thought I was going to get it one day, since I used to really like the little gimmicks in the arms and the near-omni-directional mono-eye.
She got stuck during the clawed arm build though. Orientation is extremely important for this area in order for everything (especially the spring mechanism) to work properly so the claws slide smoothly in and pop out. I ended up helping her with it and even I had to take a few minutes to figure things out.
Nasty opaque pink sticker included to cover the clear mono-eye piece. I insisted on taking it off and painting the eye clear red.
Barely took a night – she had finished most of it within a few hours and only saved a few leftover bits for the next morning. Of course this is a by-the-book straight build though, so speed is expected, even though it surprises me every time.
In all of its straight-built shiny plastic cuddly-bear glory.
As stubby as the original design looks, this is certainly a Master Grade through and through – all the limbs extend at the sockets and joints, allowing for articulation that’s made more impressive because it doesn’t look apparent in its usual configuration.
One of the coolest poses it can do – just to note the HG certainly can’t pull this off. It involves pulling the legs out at the “hips” via an internal joint, allowing the Acguy to ball up in plastic despair.
The arms of course also have a similar feature, where it almost looks disjointed it comes out so far.
Small hatch in the middle of the chest opens as a cockpit, but the entire front torso drops open for a sort of ramp into the mobile suit. Like a lot of Zeon designs, it’s a two-seater.
The limbs are again, deceptively long. While the legs don’t quite “stretch,” they certainly bend quite far (moreso than a MG Zaku II, ironically).
The right claw hand has the spring mechanism that has all the claws pop out dramatically when the center button in the hand is pressed, but if anything it’s less of a cool factor gimmick and more of a practical way to get all the claws out at once rather than pick them out with your nails one at a time.
The Acguy carries a total missile payload of 12 projectiles. After that it just bashes silly Gundam Ground Types in with its arms.
As a kid I was fascinated with Zeek suits mostly for their unique mono eye design and how they could move in the models. Acguy doesn’t use the most practical system to do this (you have to take its entire head dome off) but it certainly ends up with a great range of movement.
One has to wonder why it even has head articulation when the eye can just rotate around.
The kit does come with a full hanger-base like stand, similar to the MG Strike Gundam’s.
While not meant to pose the Acguy as it’s flying, the stand fills the role of some underwater-like scenes.
It actually pegs into the tail end of the suit through a little concealed hatch – a nice addition to hide the connection point on Bandai’s part, but for some reason it’s never really locked in. It’s always loose and presses in if you have your hand over that section – I can’t tell if it was built wrong or just meant to be loose.
A good amount of clear effect parts are given to simulate the underwater action – four torpedo trails and two inserts for the water jets at the feet.
A pretty cool effect, especially when the propellers in the soles can actually spin.
The spring-loaded claws in the right arm were neat, but the left arm’s otherwise plain missiles now steal the show with the effect parts. They’re actually really well rendered to give that realistic just-let-off-the-chain look, even if you can only have four out of six missiles firing at once.
And of course, we can’t have our Acguy going on secret underwater missions to blow the Feddies to hell without a scuba escort. This little flesh-colored accessory just pegs right into its dedicated section on the action base thanks to a clear stand that impales him right in the chest.
But because scuba diving Zeon soldiers still aren’t enough for the Acguy to interact with, we’re given three neat little children figures attached to one clear base as they play on the war machine’s head. They look like they have thorns coming out of their bodies because the missus didn’t care enough to clean the nubs off of them.
Yet another Zeek soldier carrying a briefcase is given – I’m pretty sure this MG holds the record for most 1/100 scale human figures included.
All told I like this kit – it actually fulfills the articulation impediments I noticed when handling the HGBF Bearguy quite nicely. With how advanced High Grades are these days, I don’t really ever end up doing anything with them that only the Master Grade versions could accomplish. The Acguy comes in as an exception though, for just being that much better than its HG counterpart and being able to curl up into a ball in tough times like no other mobile suit can.
At this point I’ve gotten over the hype of all the little gimmicks like the cockpit ramp and quasi-omnidirectional mono-eye, but they’re neat features to have and compliment the overall suit’s rather simplistic design language well.
