Mobile Suit Ensemble EX : ZGMF-X10A Freedom Gundam (GCP Ver.)

The bells of last night still ring in your ears as you slowly and carefully open one eye. The room is dark and full of gloom. You momentarily contemplate remaining in bed for the rest of the day when a low humming noise draws your attention. Stumbling into the living room you find a heap of crashed metal spread out across the couch. You were pretty sure you managed to throw out all of last night's revelers (using the trusty beam-coated kitchen mop) but here a large gray silhouette rests motionless all across the fancy pillows. You can hear some high-pitched whining noises from hidden servos and a distant muffled alarm sound.

You drag the miserable figure into the kitchen, unplug the rice cooker and connect the Phase Shift batteries instead. While you continue pouring copious amounts of black coffee into its open jaw the machine slowly starts regaining some of its colours and the irritating alarm sound stops. Half an hour later you revisit the kitchen and the mobile suit has regained its fancy blue and white armour. The head slowly turns in your general direction and you begin to hear a jarring voice humming the first verse of mizu no akashi. 2022 promises more of the same it seems. "Oh, sod off back to Shanghai!" you reply.


Yesterday we examined the Gundam Converge version of the CCP Freedom and today the turn has come for its slightly bigger Ensemble brother. This figure was released already in July 2021 and I got my hands on one it that same month, but it has taken its sweet time to get here. There is actually an anecdote surrounding it which can be boiled down to our esteemed postal services failing to process the import correctly and instead returned it to Japan. When I questioned them they claimed that the customs declaration was out of order (which was clearly a lie since we are dealing with Mandarake here). After it returned to Japan it got stuck in processing with Japan Post due to the outrageous claims and it wasn't until December that the parcel could be re-sent to me again. If only Captain Hardy Steiner had been available to sort out processing to begin with.


Just like with the Converge figure I don't know if the GCP version is actually sold at the Gundam Base in Shanghai but I would certainly expect it. My copy coming from Japan has a small blurb in Chinese on the back cover and assembly instructions in Japanese only. I would expect any local sales to come with different packaging, perhaps stickers plastered all over the box or a completely different cover. If anyone knows feel free to point it out.


There is nothing new under the hood this time. You will find the same parts here as with the original Freedom Gundam figure, which was released as EX14A in December 2019. I think you will mostly find the two figures to be pretty similar.


Side-by-side comparison of the regular Ensemble edition and the Gundam China Project release. Notice the designation "X101" on the original box which is consistently printed across all sides of the box. The figures themselves also sport "101" in addition to their X10A designation, does anyone know the origin of this number, is it a reference to the Eternal perhaps?


Looking good, sir. Unlike the Converge GCP version the Ensemble machine does not feature any metallic paint but instead sports some different markings and some minor colour alterations here and there. It is also unique in having a different inner frame composition with slightly altered articulation although as a whole it performs most of the same twists and turns as your average figure.


The markings on the Ensemble machine are much cleaner than on my Converge figure (not pictured here) which was garbled beyond readability. Not sure if that was an issue unique to my particular figure or the entire batch of them.


The Freedom figure has a lot of neat gimmicks with a full range of options for its wings in particular. You can deploy its pair of Balaena Plasma Beam Cannons and Xiphias Railguns as well. I apologize for this review being a bit brief in this regard, take a look at the review of the original figure which goes into much more detail.


The Freedom comes with two Lacerta-type beam sabers. You can deploy them as two traditional single-blade sabers or use a combination piece to build the iconic dual bladed version. As with most Ensemble figures it is fully translucent without any colour pigment which is a real shame. You can attempt to paint it up neatly yourself or just sigh and look wistfully at the nice red saber that the Converge figure sports (and which I was able to deploy successfully on my GCP figure...).


I don't think that the two Freedom figures are different enough to warrant a purchase of both variants but since I already have my old figure hooked up to the METEOR system the new figure can serve as a useful variant without having to fiddle with all the parts transformation needed to switch between the two modes. There are as you can see very small differences between the two figures (and some are actually painted on by yours truly).


Here is a side by side of the two GCP machines from the Gundam Converge and Mobile Suit Ensemble lines respectively. Both figures are really well painted.

So, should you upgrade your existing EX14A Freedom figure to the GCP form? Frankly I see no reason to do so unless you really, really feel that you want those markings on the wings. The new figure however does offer a second chance at obtaining a pretty rare Ensemble figure and I think that price-wise they should be roughly the same anyway. Now, if only I could get my hands on that Justice too...