Whenever Bandai finds itself with a successful design they sure aren't shy of milking it. We've seen it a couple of times in Mobile Suit Ensemble, most notably with the Hazel TR-1 and Nu Gundam families. First you release the figures in the retail line-up, add in a couple of parts variation possibilities and then do a "complete" EX figure. You can of course also revisit the popular figure with a 0.5 edition with a colour swap or the dubious "Special Markings ver." concept. Today's review focuses on one of these EX sets for a mobile suit that had already been out for a while.
The Assault-Buster Gundam set was released in February 2020 as a premium item with a price tag of ¥4400 which would place it somewhere in the medium to lower category as far as expensive EX-figures go. When you consider that most of the components in this box have been in the retail line before this of course makes the price point less impressive. The figure appears to have been very popular though and I had considerable difficulty finding one until late October at which point the price had risen to ¥6000. I imagine this kit would be quite popular with latecomers to Ensemble who may have missed out on it on its first time around in 2018.
The box is, as usual, crammed full of components and a decent enough instruction sheet going through the various Victory 2 variants you can build out of the box.
As you can see the focus with this box is the effects parts that take up a considerable amount of room in the box. In 2018 Bandai released a strict effects parts-set for the Ensemble Nu Gundam figure. At that time it was a simple option parts set but this time around they elected to include the mobile suit as well.
I recently covered both the Buster Gundam and the Assault Gundam variations of the Victory 2 Gundam in the reviews for the retail sets in which they first appeared. You can find parts to build the LM314V23 Victory 2 Buster Gundam in Ensemble Part 5 (see review here) and the LM314V24 Victory 2 Assault Gundam is covered in Ensemble Part 6 (review). If you gathered parts from both these sets you could assemble an LM314V23/24 V2 Assault-Buster Gundam figure very similar to the one in this box. Since I will not cover these various modes in this review I will put the assembly instructions up here so you can get an idea of the full features of the kit.
Here the EX 15 Assault-Buster poses with the Buster Gundam from Part 05 (left) and the Assault Gundam from Part 06 (right). Since I didn't have enough parts to build the original Assault-Buster figure without dismantling these I will not to a side by side comparison but will instead point out differences in the text part of the review. Considering how rare the original figures have become it might take quite some time to source the missing parts but if I do the review will be updated accordingly.
The Assault-Buster design is for those of us who don't like to choose option parts. Why build the Aile Strike Gundam or the Sword Strike when you can combine them with the Launcher Strike and create a Perfect Strike Gundam instead? The Assault-Buster follows this same philosophy marrying together parts from both the Assault and Buster modes of the Victory 2. This particular EX figure expands on the original figure in that it adds a lot of effect parts. The basic figure is unchanged but here you will find redesigned Minovsky Drive parts that now allow for Wings of Light effect parts supplied in both blue and red. You only get one set of drive components that you have to take apart every time you want to change type so I just decided to stick with red after photographing the blue ones although both are very nice.
Speaking of blue, you will notice that the EX figure has a deeper blue base colour on all its armor plating. A few parts are still modeled in the original brighter blue of the original retail figures, seen here for example on the Mega Beam Cannon. You can see further examples on the leg and skirt armor and I am not sure if this is actually by design or a cost cutting thing.
What a beautiful display piece this is. Next, we'll remove the blue effect parts and go red for the Wings of Light emissions. Notice the different blue colour used on the armor on the lower body of the figure.
Yeah, as nice as those blue effect parts are i would argue that it is the red wings that are not only iconic but also the most spectacular when paired with the blue and yellow armor. This just looks supercharged. You can also see that I have replaced the beam rifle in the left hand with a nice translucent red that beam saber that also comes with this figure. Nothing stops you from equipping either weapon in the right hand if you want to get rid of the iconic Mega Beam Rifle to create a rifle and saber combo for example.
This thing just looks so good. I wish that Bandai would have included coloured translucent beam sabers in their retail equipment sets. Had they done that we could have had a lot of red, blue, green or blue sabers to pick and choose from at this point instead of a lot of clear and rather useless ones.
We also get an optional Beam Saber mold which resembles a hand-held traditional fan. I am not sure if this is an alternate projection mode of the Beam Saber or if it is supposed to mimic a slashing action but they did the same with the base Victory Gundam figure in Converge so I wonder if this is in fact an alternate mode. Either way I am not a huge fan of it but it is there if you want to use it and it opens up the ability to wield dual red beam sabers which is also pretty wild.
Lastly we have the most obvious component from this entire box, that insanely large Beam Shield effect part. Notice how three projectors of sorts are removed from the shield and spread out in a triangle form which then emit a near indestructible energy wall of protection. I am not exactly sure how these emitters work. Do they float around in space like funnels or bits requiring some type of newtype ability to control or do they somehow ride atop the projected beam shield itself? No matter how you look at it, I think this effect part doesn't really work for the figure as it is just ridiculously large and looks incredibly non-energy. I guess Bandai wanted to throw n as many onus parts with this set as they could, in order to make it stand out enough from the retail version Assault-Buster figure.
We also have a large and sturdy display stand available for the figure. If you choose to project the beam shield it also has a little tripod of its own. I can't imagine that anyone would actually choose to display their figure in this form anyway but I guess at least Bandai has made it possible to do so.Conclusion
Overall I have a bit of mixed feelins for the Assault-Buster Gundam figure. Basically I think that there is not enough new things in this box to entice someone who already built their own retail Assault-Buster combo, but it is very helpful for poeple who missed out on the figure the first time around. It could also be handy for completionist collectors who do not have enough sets of the original retail figures to build and display all the Victory 2 modes in parallel.
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