Bandai Gasha Portraits Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny Hawke Sisters Set

Alright, today we are going to take a look at what will presumably be a one-off thing here on the blog. I did get the feeling though that the Bandai development lead kind of hinted that he was testing the waters with this release when they were first announced but I haven't heard anything about it since. Before we continue, let's begin with a quick introduction of the Gasha Portraits figure line.

The Gasha Portraits brand was introduced in the end of 2017 and consists of mid-range Gashapon figures typically priced at ¥500, which is where we also find other contemporary brands like Mobile Suit Ensemble as well as some Shokugan like Gundam Converge. The range seems to be mainly geared towards characters from the Love Live! Sunshine!! anime (which I know absolutely nothing about...) and also features guest appearances from other animes like One Piece, Girls und Panzer and now most recently Neon Genesis Evangelion (hell, yes!).

The figures are distributed both in traditional clear Gashapon capsules and individual cardboard boxes, just like the Mobile Suit Ensemble range. My very limited experience with these figures is that the capsule edition is terrible and will bend or warp thin components like arms and legs completely beyond repair. The boxed figures fare a bit better but even though pieces like legs come wrapped in additional cardboard protection you will most likely encounter some really nasty surprises. You are going to need more than a clear support piece to deal with a twisted ankle or legs bending in all sorts of alien proportions. :)

In September 2019 Bandai announced that Gasha Portraits would do a Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny special to celebrate its 15th anniversary (gee... what a nice idea, how about it Converge and Ensemble?). This special anniversary set would only feature two figures instead of the usual three however, and would be a Premium Bandai item (of course). I was really mystified when the price was announced to be ¥6600. Wait now, what? I just assumed that the price was going to be for a 10-box or something and wondered who in their right mind would need to purchase that many. Well, now I finally have the answer.

Yep, that's right. You are paying over six thousand yen for two Gashapon figurines. The Bandai development lead wrote that if these figures performed well they would definitely consider doing more. Yeah I'm sure, if you can sell Gashapons that normally cost ¥500 for six times as much who wouldn't? Now, it isn't just limitation that is bumping the price. The quality of these figures is admittedly higher than the retail figures but it is not like we haven't seen high quality Shokugan like STANDart before, is it? Specifically, this set introduces harder ABS plastic into the mix, presumably because Bandai are very aware that the regular Gasha Portraits PVC figures are a bit hit and miss in the quality department.

All the moaning about money aside, this box is really great. The figures come wrapped in plastic bags and sit in a specially designed inlay keeping them nice and safe so you won't have any issues with bent parts here. This was a huge relief to be honest.

Here we have older sis Lunamaria Hawke in her very odd custom red coat. I know that the elite Z.A.F.T. pilots get to have custom paint jobs on their ZAKU Warriors but I can't imagine that any adjutant would let an outfit like that slide... Joking aside, you can see that the figure is very carefully sculpted and features large expressive eyes and a very detailed insignia on the left shoulder. The figure has a base with two differently sized pegs and due to the harder plastic Bandai didn't think it necessary to include a support that clips around the leg which they would usually include for common Gashapons of this type.

We are not exactly short of SEED Destiny figurine series. Here you can see some of the many variants of Lunamaria from Bandai's different Gashapon assortments. From left to right we have the HGIF SEED Destiny line (2005), the SEED Destiny EF Collection (also 2005), the SEED Destiny Heroine History (Ver. Z.A.F.T.) from 2007, the new Gasha Portraits figure and lastly the 2006 appearance from the Cosmix Figure Collection.

Next up we have Meyrin Hawke, the character who has perhaps the most memorable arc in all of SEED Destiny. Man, Destiny is such a terrible fall from grace; SEED is without a doubt my favourite Mobile Suit Gundam show and I go on rewatch binges far too often, but with Destiny it is hard to just push the play button. i think the Gasha Portraits figure does a great job of capturing her personality and once again the attention to detail is stunning. the one thing I kind of noticed immediately is the somewhat odd gradient colour thing they have done to her hair, it is a bit over the top but I can look past it.

Meyrin's figure comes with a bonus head so you can choose which hairstyle you prefer. Bandai have done experiments with removable hair and different faces in the past and I am thankful that here they just decided to include an entire extra head, having to deal with faces that fall apart can be really annoying.

And here we have a slightly different line-up of Meyrin figures from Bandai's various SEED Destiny Gashapon series. I guess from a cost perspective it might be prudent to compare these figures to their bigger cousins in ranges such as MegaHouse RAH DX or Bandai's Voice-I-Dolls but it seemed more prudent to stick to Gashapons here. Anyway, from left to right we have HGIF SEED Destiny (2005), SEED Destiny Heroines (2006), SEED Destiny Heroine History (Ver. Z.A.F.T.) from 2007, Gasha Portraits and lastly the Cosmix Figure Collection figure from 2006.

This box set also includes an alternative base for both figures so that they can stand closely together in the pose appearing on the box cover. This may seem a bit superfluous but hey, they got to offer something for those six thousand six hundred yen, right?

So was this set a success? It beats me, but so far I have only come across it twice. I snatched this off Mandarake for ¥5000 so perhaps Bandai were a bit optimistic when they decided on the price or I was just really "lucky". What I can say though, is that this is a really nice figure set that should appeal to anyone collecting Gundam SEED Gashapon figurines but probably no one else. Next I am going to try and grab myself the Evangelion set, those are of the 500 yen PVC garden variety so it should hopefully be a bit easier.

Gundam Converge CORE : XM-XX Ghost Gundam Phantom Light Set

The Phantom Light Set is the most recent Converge CORE offering and is of course a Premium Bandai exclusive. The set began shipping in June this year and had a price of ¥3200, however, I had to fork out ¥5000 already in early July to secure a copy for my own collection. I wonder if this is going to be one of those releases that become very sought after or if the price will begin to drop if you wait for it a couple of years...

Technically I guess this offering is really CORE 021 - that is how Bandai refers to it on their website - but since they dropped the numbering on the CORE boxes a while back one can never really know. I moan about it from time to time but the CORE boxes just get more and more uninspired, you'd think they could at least put the digits on there somewhere. I've placed the box next to the retail Phantom Gundam figure box not only to stress how tiny this box is but also because to get the most out of the box you really need to get one of those green guys as well.

Man, the box is tiny but it is really stuffed full. This is mainly due to the fact that the Converge bags seem to get more and more clunky. I wonder if the bags have been standardized across different Bandai figure lines or if it is an attempt to better avoid bent components, something that crops up in Converge from time to time. My bet is on component standardization...

As you can see the box contains one new figure and a whole lot of option parts for it, as well as for the green Phantom Gundam retail figure, released as part of Gundam Converge #19 in June as well.
   

XM-XX Ghost Gundam

I don't really know a great deal about the Crossbone Gundam timeline except that I did a little reading on the Gundam Wiki and the entry for the Ghost Gundam isn't particularly thorough either. Basically it is the centerpiece of the Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Ghost manga and the suit itself is actually the green EMS-TC02 Phantom Gundam repaired, using parts from the XM-X0 Crossbone Gundam X-0 Ghost which I guess explains why it is all silver now (which seems kind of odd since I'm sure they haven't done away with custom pint jobs in the future).

Here is the basic form of the XM-XX Ghost Gundam mobile suit with empty hands and no Phantom Light effects applied. Notice that the suit has one yellow and one green eye (yeah the photos aren't making it that obvious). I like this clean appearance which also makes it easier to believe something like it could actually exist and have a genuine military application. I am not really into machines with flaming angel wings and the like.

Standing next to each other the Ghost Gundam and the Phantom Gundam figures are more or less identical. The main difference is that the Ghost Gundam has a different back pack which contains a set of cartridges reminiscent of a machine gun belt. These are apparently power packs used to fuel the Phantom Light system for extended use and is an improvement over the basic Phantom Gundam (the system is reminiscent of the energy packs stored on the back of the GAT-X105+AQM/E-YM1 Perfect Strike Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED HD Remaster).

Actually both the Phantom and the Ghost are capable of transforming into Mobile Armor modes. While this is obviously out of the capabilities of mere candy toys I sure wouldn't mind if Bandai were to offer these modes as separate figures in their own right because they look quite spectacular.

Here the Ghost poses with its V-Fin deployed (there are actually two variants of this accessory as you will see further below) and its regular equipment which I guess is its Butterfly Buster (a beam rifle that can also double as a beam saber) and what I believe is a Flame Rifle, a sword sheath that doubles as a beam rifle. Huh...? Colour me confused. Just give me a BOWA Beam Rifle and get rid of all this sword nonsense already... :)

The Ghost and the Phantom come with different accessories and since the two figures are variations of the same you can swap the hands around if you prefer. All weapons are directly molded onto hands however so you are stuck with using the right hands for the main weapons and the left hand for the Flame Rifle (and what I guess are the Flame Swords that you will see below).

The old Crossbone Gundam X-0 Ghost is still the coolest figure in this family with its crossbow. The figure is due to get an update with Converge #20 and due for release in September. I look forward to see how the new figure will turn out.

Alright so here we have the main event of the box, the Phantom Light Set applied to the Ghost Gundam. This actually involves a surprising number of parts swapping and you also have to disassemble the face to change its expression to what looks like the worst Monday morning mood ever. Notice also the Phantom Light version of the V-fin.

Oh dear, that evil grin, this thing is out for blood and a piece of your skull as a trophy. This is a marked improvement over the Open Face option parts we saw earlier with the previous Converge Crossbone Gundam figures. Converge has come a long way.

Here we see the last accessory for the Ghost Gundam, the Flame Sword (once again, that's how I interpret the information anyway...) which is available a left-hand item only. The figure also comes with a large and rather ugly clear plastic support that you can slide in underneath the Phantom Light wings to offer it additional support.
 

EMS-TC02 Phantom Gundam (Phantom Light Set)

The second part of this box is basically recycling all the cool Phantom Light equipment for the Ghost Gundam and repurposes it for the Phantom Gundam.

This comparison shot shows how you go about dismantling the Phantom and Ghost Gundam figures to apply the Phantom Light Set. Everything fits nicely together just like you expect it to; the designers have really done their homework.

Looking pretty good there Mr. Phantom Sir. If you want to you could switch the coloured parts around between the two suits but since most components are attached directly to the mobile suit frame (all except the wings in fact) you would have to end up painting those parts over anyway.

The Phantom Gundam also receives a Flame Sword of its own but gets none of the other weapons that the Ghost Gundam has. You can switch them around freely if you want to though.

The Crossbone Gundam family has grown rapidly over the last two years. As mentioned earlier we are due to get a new version of the X-0 Ghost with the next retail set, it remains to see if anything further will be released beyond that one.
   

Conclusion

I think it goes without saying that if you are a Crossbone/Ghost Gundam fan and can stomach the price this set is a fantastic addition to the XM-series line-up. I kind of wish that the XM-XX Ghost Gundam was available as a regular 500 yen figure because I would love to display it in both forms and I seriously doubt I would want to invest in a second box just for that luxury. I will definitely be picking up a second Phantom Gundam figure though, that should be real easy.

SD Gundam Full Color Stage 21

Stage 21 of the Gashapon SD Gundam Full Color series was released in November 2000 and is the second set dedicated to the War in the Pocket miniseries. The set contains five mobile suits to complement the five from Stage 18 and after that we only ever heard from them again in Stage 35 where the last two figures appeared. The series was then skipped over completely in the SD Full Color Custom range and since then we've only had a few sightings. The Alex and the Kämpfer appeared in Gashapon Warrior NEXT in 2014 and then the duo returned together with the Zaku Kai in Senshi Forte last year. For a series that produced so many nice looking mobile suits that is kind of heartbreaking.

As you can see from the component shot there is not a whole lot to mull over here as most of the figures are preassembled and good to go. The figures originally sold for ¥100 and a set that I picked up fairly recently from Mandarake cost me ¥1200 so they are still pretty affordable. Based on my own Gashapon hunting I'd say that the figures in this set are not very common, I have mostly encountered GM Command which is also the one I have the most duplicates of.
   

110 : RX-78NT-1 Gundam NT-1 "Alex" (Ver.1.0)

Of course the Gundam Alex is the first figure of this volume. It is a fairly basic figure that comes in a bit of an action pose, revealing one of its wrist-mounted Gatling cannons. I don't know how the Alex manages to conceal these weapons so effectively in its arms but they somehow fits inside...

My favourite figure variants of the Alex are those that feature the Gatlings as pieces separated from their blue protective casing, allowing you to choose to display the cannons concealed or in use. This is obviously outside of the capabilities of this very basic figure but I still think this looks a bit underwhelming. I would have preferred an Alex with Beam Rifle and Shield.

Even if I do find this version of the Alex a bit underwhelming the good news are that it also appears in two other variants, with Chobham Armor as the NT-1 ''Alex'' Full Armor Type in Stage 18 and with a Beam Rifle and Shield as version 2.0 in Stage 35. The revised figure is also larger than those of the previous generation.
   

111 : MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai

Next up we have Bernie Wiseman's Zaku II Kai, ready to dig into the Alex with its powered up Heat Hawk. We all know how that story ended up... Perhaps this is why the Zaku II Kai isn't seen nearly as often as I would have imagined even though it is a rather iconic design.

We have loads of nice colour applications on the Zaku figure, better than I would have expected actually. The only thing I am a little miffed about is that we only have the Zaku in SD form with a Heat Hawk. I sure would have enjoyed a V2.0 figure armed with the MMP Machine Gun for some more interesting army building. At least now we have both of those weapons available with the recently released Senshi Forte figure.
   

112 : MS-18E Kämpfer

The next combatant for the Alex to deal with is the Kämpfer, you know that bad-to-the-bone swift messenger of death that destroyed the entire E.F.S.F. Scarlet Team. It too comes in a bit of an action pose, with a clenched fist and a Chain Mine assembly in full swing.

I do find the paintjob on the Kämpfer figure decent but I it feels a bit barren with only two of the many thrusters lit up in yellow. This is pretty par for the course as far as Kämpfer figures are concerned though. My main disappointment with the figure is that out of all weapons available to it - shotguns, bazookas and rockets - we get a figure wielding an improvised string of mines. Making a squad of these would look a bit silly, I really wish that this figure had been armed with the shotgun instead,
   

113 : RGM-79G GM Command

The GM Command or Colony Type is a further improvement of the Cold District Type GM with increased performance and better maneuverability. It was developed in tandem with the RGM-79GS which is a zero gravity version while the RGM-79G is intended to operate under artificial gravity in a colony environment. It is seen mostly at the receiving end of Zeon punishment in the show (and the Space Version doesn't fare much better either).

Bandai sure went all melee weapons in this group but at least evens the odds against the Zaku Kai and the Kämpfer. Still, I'd take a machine gun and shield equipped figure over this any day. Check out the improved Gashapon version of the Space Type figure below to see what could have been.

War in the Pocket era GM's from left to right: RGM-79D GM Cold District Type (released in Stage 18), RGM-79G GM Command and RGM-79GS GM Command (Space Type) from Stage 35.
   

114 : MS-14Jg Gelgoog Jaeger

Not to be confused with Char Aznable's prototype red Gelgoog MS-14S the Gelgoog Jaeger is a highly advanced late type upgrade of the MS-14A through the Zeon United Maintenance Plan. Its single appearance in the Operation Rubicon space battle at Libot Colony gives me goose bumps every time I hear the distinct pulse of its wrist mounted Beam Spot Guns.

Hey, finally a figure in this set equipped with a beam rifle! These early Gashapon figures don't have elbow joints for the most part so the arm will be stretched out to the side but you can at least swivel the head to a direction of your liking. It seems all the figures in this set have really expressive poses.

All the twelve mobile suits from the SD Gashapon War in the Pocket range. The only major combatants missing here are the GM Sniper II and the Mass Production Type Guncannon but other than those they are all here.
   

115 : XXXG-01D2 Gundam Deathscythe Hell (EW)

The last figure in the set is an odd one out, ths time from Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz. I always get confused by the Gundams from Wing with their multiple variants and it doesn't help when the figure has a really basic paint scheme either. This figure however looks very reminiscent of the Deathscythe Hell as seen in the SD Gundam G Generation and Super Robot Wars games.

I dunno... this figure has a really convoluted pose. I get what they are going for but the arms on my figure just keep sliding up and blocking most of the face and that's not what it was supposed to look like according to the booklet.

Here the Deathscythe Hell (EW) poses with the basic XXXG-01D Gundam Deathscythe from the original television series, released as part of Stage 30. The basic Deathscythe Hell figure was also released in Stage 52 but I currently do not have it available for comparison. The version from this set was also reissued in the jubilee Stage 50 edition as version 1.5 which is pretty much the same figure.
   

Conclusion

Stage 21 is a great Gashapon set even if I am not entirely pleased with all the weapons choices. It is worth pointing out that four of the mobile suits were only released as part of this very set, so if you are into War in the Pocket this lot is pretty much a cornerstone of that collection.