Gundam Converge EX 28 : RX-9/A Narrative Gundam A-Packs

Now, here's a figure that has been out for a while. You may have thought that I have been purposely putting off this review and well... that assumption wouldn't be completely incorrect. The biggest hurdle however was actually finding the figure to begin with. It wasn't until late February that I actually had one in my hands.

The A-Packs variant of the Narrative Gundam was released in the end of October last year with a whopping MSRP of ¥6000. Let's put that into some context. Among the other recent EX figures the Neo Zeong II was ¥4200, the Pale Rider ¥2600 and the Rafflesia came in at ¥3200. This makes the A-packs figure a terrible purchase right out of the gate. So what exactly do you get for that money of yours? Well, there's an awful lot of bags in there, I'll give it that:

Hoh-boy... this looks tedious. You know what I like about the Zeonic mobile armor designs? They generally go for outlandish Space Ogre style with fewer but wildly coloured chunky soft plastic parts. See, that round hole there, that's a mega particle beam weapon! The Federation side mobile suits and armors on the other hand look like someone tried to explain the inner workings of even the most basic sci-fi concepts. Hence, these designs tend to make use of a lot of hard plastic, frustrating assembly and pieces falling off left and right. I think I know which of the two categories this figure is going to belong to.

Before I continue I just want to preface this review by pointing out that I know absolutely nothing about the whole Narrative A-Packs concept. So far I have only seen the free preview on gundaminfo and I didn't feel like spoiling the rest of it by reading too deeply into the Gundamwiki even though I had to do a bit of fact finding just to find out what in the world I was building.
 

Mode 1: Just cruisin'

The manual lays out a couple of different build modes and let me tell you, getting trough the first one was already testing my patience. While the assembly instructions are generally fine for the most part there's always the odd place where I cannot really work out exactly what it is they want to communicate with the illustrations. Let's just say it took a couple of iterations before I figured out how to put everything together and it ended up a rickety mess with pieces constantly falling off and I had some issues aligning everything properly. You can see that these long white beam cannon thingies are already sagging and the booster rockets didn't want to sit properly in their slots and I couldn't care less...

Okay, so I built this weird thing and slapped it on its base and just stared at it thinking "what the hell is this thing, it looks ridiculous!?" Sure, I like the colour scheme and it has some really nice detail but the overall presentation is a bit busy for my taste. The cannons and those weird triangular things kept falling off and then I noticed the colour differences between the soft and hard white plastic pieces. Here is where I kind of took a couple of weeks off the project and let it sit around while I cuddled and cared for the most recent MicroWars figures instead. Tough love...

Sure, it may look imposing and dynamic in its anime version but my figure looks like a shot down jet transported on a really large flatbed trailer. Seriously, what is it with these oversized bases we've been seeing lately in Converge and Mobile Suit Ensemble? They look absolutely horrific and have exactly zero playability. Even the old 1:72 fighter planes I used to build in my youth came with bases that allowed you to place them in interesting poses. Here the presentation is completely flat.
 

Mode 2: It's Psycho-Capture time!

Two weeks later... I decided to tackle the remaining modes of the A-Packs figure. Luckily this mode didn't require that much reassembly but you still have to disassemble those long cannon thingies and rebuild everything about them with some curious option parts. The end result is... umm... this:

Seriously, it looks absolutely ridiculous. Who would want to place their figure on the shelf like this? Notice by the way how the presentation can be improved by tilting the base by whatever means you have at your disposal. It suddenly looks more like actual flight and you can see more of the detail otherwise obscured by the cannons.

At first I thought the yellow triangles were missile pods of sorts but it didn't make sense to send them up front like oversized hands. Surely they aren't supposed to be grappling claws like some Bigro 2.0? I'd like to think that Gundam designs have evolved since 1979. So I went to the Gundamwiki and informed myself that these are actually emitters for some type of field that destabilizes psycho-waves for messing with newtype mobile suits like in this case, the Unicorn 03 Phenex. So you just have to chase it down and trap it within this little zone of control to catch your prey. Yeah sure, that seems easy, good luck with that...


Mode 3: Bare-bones

Those Psycho-Capture claws didn't stay on for longer than it took to snap a couple of photos. Next up is a really basic mode of the Narrative Gundam with its legs replaced with these high maneuverability type boosters, kind of like the Deep Striker or Hummingbird. You'll note that the pose is more upright this time around. FusionWorks actually provides a separate hip joint so you have to strip the figure down and rebuild everything below the waist. Even the base itself has received an extra component propping the figure a bit further up. Notice also the replacement hands.

This is fine. I like this mode a lot better; it is simple and even looks a bit aerodynamic. The base however doesn't work here at all. It is much too large and I'm not about to pose a ¥6000 figure like that anyway. Let's continue...
 

Mode 4: Yes, those cannons again

Here we just continue to deck out the Narrative Gundam with the full A-Packs gear that we have already seen. The only difference from when we started is that the figure's legs are now in a different pose and the action base has even more walls of clear plastic now. This time I even got the boosters to slide neatly into their assigned places. You can of course do the thing with the extended capture claws in this mode as well.

Okay, fine, I admit; this thing is starting to look really cool. I guess it helps that the legs get more room to show off their details and colours in this mode. The action base still gets in the way but if you remove the support underneath the guns it will look even better and unless you plan to park it on a shelf for an extended period of time it won't affect the figure too much.
   

Comparisons

Let's wrap this up with a couple of quick comparisons. At first we of course have the mandatory side-by-side with the Narrative Gundam rocking its B- and C-packs. Now ask yourself if you would prefer twelve figures like those instead of the A-packs figure...

Here is a size comparison with the Freedom+METEOR combo from Mobile Suit Ensemble that I happened to have nearby. Look at that drooping cannon on the Narrative Gundam, what a sorry sight.

I'll just finish this review with a nice ensemble shot of some of the recent Narrative Gundam figures that we saw in Converge last year. While this review was perhaps a bit more sarcastic in its tone than it needed to be I wasn't overly enthused with this figure. Its hefty price tag doesn't help but the overall flimsiness is what caused me the most headaches. I guess I just like my Converge figures simple. I would give this a definitive skip unless you are a die-hard fan of Narrative, Converge or both. Pick up the Neo Zeong II instead if you haven't yet, it is cheaper and just outperforms this figure in every regard.