MegaHouse Chess Piece Collection : Gundam Ace Magazine Promo (2003)

We recently looked at a Gundam Ace Magazine promo item from 2005 containing two special MegaHouse Chess Piece figures. Here is a similar product promoted through the very same magazine except in 2003. I believe these are the only two magazine promo-style items out there.


There is not a whole lot of information to be gathered from the box itself. Besides a pair of nice looking logos and the year 2003 we just have some basic consumer information. Unlike the later box we looked at these figures are branded as part of the Chess Piece Collection DX-line. I've seen this branding used on some of the regular Chess Piece figures containing figures from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED but this branding seems to have been discontinued shortly afterwards. To confuse things further an EX-lineup was created once the SEED Destiny figures arrived in 2005. Regardless of which Chess Piece figures you go for however their size and feel will be quite similar, the later figures being a bit nicer in finish and detail but that's about it.


The figures sit side by side in the box separated by a cardboard divider and having the arms in separate plastic bags. It doesn't look like the main figures were bagged or wrapped but since this is a second-hand item I cannot be sure.



RX-78-02 Gundam (The Origin ver.)


The Gundam from the Origin storyline is the first of our two kings. As such tey have the tallest type of bases with a little bit of felt underneath but I doubt anyone has ever attempted to actually play a game of chess with these things. The finish and panel lining is great on these things and the figure has a bit of weathering for good measure. Like every other Origin-type Gundam out there the shield is held upside down and we have a really beefy type of shoulder cannon attached. I do have some reservations about the enormous right hand however. Like the other chess piece figures by MegaHouse the figure is not easily removable from neither its scenic base nor the pedestal so if you are thinking about converting these for use with other similarly sized figures be aware that this will require quite the effort.


Posing together with the Origin version of Char's Zaku II which appeared in the second Gundam Ace Magazine promo in 2005. As mentioned above the Chess Piece DX branding was not used for that figure although they are clearly similar in design.





MBF-P02 Gundam Astray Red Frame


The evergreen Astray red Frame figure comes in a very dynamic pose that will be a nightmare to pose convincingly with the other figures. Once again the colouring and detailed panel-lining is really spectacular for such a small figure. The Chess Piece range contains many beautiful figures but it is hard to make something interesting out of them due to those pedestal type bases. While not valid for the Red Frame this line contains many interesting mobile suit choices which are hard to come by in the other prepainted lines.


The Astray Red Frame appeared again in November 2004 in the Mobile Suit Gundam SEED MSV set which contains other interesting obscurities like the Strike Rouge IWSP, Hyperion Gundam and Elijah Kiel's Custom GINN. Notice the way the colours stand out clearly on the promo figure compared to the later retail figure.




As with the other Chess Piece figures, you either like the concept or you don't. If you do, this is an obvious purchase and if you don't, you will find nothing new to convince you here. Sadly, Chess Piece figures are very hard to find on the online secondary market and if you find them in the local shops they are often incomplete. This is one of the hardest mini-figure ranges to collect in my opinion.

Gundam Converge SB : Argama

The Mobile Suit Gundam franchise has this really troubled approach to spaceships and mobile suit combat. Your average episode will see the heroes onboard their white-coloured carrier of choice, endowed with so much plot-armor that nothing even manages to scratch the paint, whereas enemy fleets are gunned down more or less unopposed by some psychotic kid with a beam rifle. It is all pretty frustrating to watch at the best of times.


Left: The Minerva and the Archangel fail to hit each other at point blank range... again. The only things they should be firing are their gunners. Right: Dozle Zabi shows how it is done, taking down four Salamis with one volley. Anyway, I got off on a tangent there... I think we are meant to review the second space battleship in the Converge SB line.


These things sure take their time to develop. The first vessel - the White Base - was released in August 2021 and now the Argama followed with its launch in July 2022. If you are hoping for a Converge SB03 you better set your sights for next summer at the earliest. Still, it seemed that Converge was on a roll not that long ago but now if we look into the pipeline it is looking a bit empty. We have the Zeong and the Perfect Gundam out in October and then the third and last(?) of the 10-year specials is following in December (and there is that fan club special RX-93 variant) but after that... schedule is still looking very empty.


Damnit, I am getting off track again. Not so surprisingly however as the future is looking pretty shrouded in mystery for all the current lines. Has anyone seen any announcements for Converge #23? Ensemble wave 23 hits in October and Senshi Forte 16 is scheduled for December but I haven't seen any word on further releases. Maybe this whole Bandai-Namco rebranding (and company restructuring?) is having current projects in a bit of a lull.


Ok, I am going to let all that go now and focus on the figure at hand. Perhaps it is wrong to classify this thing as a figure as it feels more like a very easy-assembly plastic model kit, since we are once again forgoing the soft plastic for the type you can expect to find in actual kits (or the Mobility Joint figures but at least these are properly painted). There is no assembly instruction included in the box but you won't have any problems figuring out where everything is supposed to go. Even the two antennas that go on the bridge have differently sized pegs.


As you can see this is a really nice looking model of the Argama in a slightly deformed and chunkier state. The four beam cannons look quite large compared to the ship itself but I don't mind that they stay a bit sturdy since this type of accessory is often a nightmare and prone to get damaged. The ship sits on, or rather lies atop, two simple stands that offer no connecting pegs so if you nudge the ship ever so slightly it will fall off. This means you put this sucker on a high shelf at your own risk. It is not a particularly nice looking stand either and offers no interesting posing options.


There is a lot of nice detail all around the vessel including the underside. The hard plastic keeps everything straight and crisp at the expense of being more fragile and somehow losing that lovable Converge character. Note the use of metallic colour on certain details such as the shackles of the mobile suit catapults.


The main gimmick of this model is the extendable crew quarters. As you can see from the image changing the set-up is a simple affair. You pull the ship in two and then replace the middle section and attach the crew pods to it. The pegs are shaped to aid you with the positioning. The whole assembly can be made to rotate and out of the box the joint is firm enough not to move by itself.


Here we have the ship with the crew compartments stowed and ready for battle. The Argama model can also extend and retract its bridge by gently pulling it diagonally upwards. This extends the bridge section about 7-8 millimeters or so and is a neat touch.


The design of the Argama mimics that of the Trojan Horse by hiding gun emplacement behind yellow circular doors to port and starboard. These components can be switched out for option parts (if you manage to grab the tiny peg sticking out at the top of the part) with the two Mega Particle Cannons extended.


The only part where the Argama comes off a bit lacking is perhaps in its size. At roughly 16 centimeters length and that fixed stand it almost disappears behind the mobile suits. With a bit of creative display you could make it look more interesting if you replace that stand and bring it up a bit and then lean it in towards the suits in front. On the plus-side however, just like the White Base it (only just) manages to fit inside its box in assembled condition. Let's see how the ship compares to some other super-deformed figures.


Even the old Gashapon Full Color figures seem quite large in comparison but I think they work quite well together, especially since there is no SD variant of the Argama available.


Posing together with more modern SD figures, here a gang of Senshi Forte A.E.U.G.-units. Gashapon NEXT and DASH figures are roughly the same size, the NEXT figures being slightly smaller. I think this is a really good stylistic match too.


When you reach Mobile Suit Ensemble size you are starting to push it a bit far although I guess it is still doable. Continuing up the sizes with MicroWars and Mobility Joint figures would be even worse but those lines are devoid of any Zeta presence anyway.


There are some variants of the Argama out there already. Here is a match-up with the MegaHouse CosmoFleet Argama from 2009 and a really old Argama-class ship from the Gashapon HG Mecha Selection era (Part 3, released in 2002). The latter figure is not complete and has a host of small parts that you can expect to be missing if you happen to scout it in your local flea market.


Here is a comparison also with the big-daddy Argama from MegaHouse's short but sweet CosmoFleet Special range, released in 2016. The CosmoFleet figure is a bit barren because I only took out the main hull from the box (reviewing that thing is a day's work) but it should give you an overall idea of the two. The Converge figure is doing a really good job of getting the detail in, although a lot of it is modifications in the sculpt rather than colour applications as seen on the MegaHouse figure.



Overall, the Argama is another really solid entry in the Converge SB-family. The only real downside to it is its prize. It was sold through the P-Bandai program at ¥4500 and is currently trading on the secondary market for almost double. I have yet to see any announcement of possible future SB-releases and in the current financial climate it might look a bit grim (Converge Plus seems to be in a similar spot). However, even in the best of worlds I wouldn't really predict a very long lifetime for this series but would love to be proven wrong as the models are great.

Mobile Suit Ensemble EX 39 : XM-X1 Crossbone Gundam X-1 Full Cloth

I have been burning through Ensemble EX figures lately and today the turn has come to the recently released Crossbone X-1 in its Full Cloth configuration. This was a Premium Bandai release that delivered to customers in July 2022 and it came with a price tag of ¥5500. Not as steep as some of the EX figures out there but still ten times the price you would pay for the retail figure. So far this figure is hovering around the ¥6000 mark on the secondary market and so hasn't seen any nasty price-hike thus far.


Good looking box there, still haven't figured out why we have both the classical Bandai logotype and the new ugly Bandai Namco one on there. As far as I understand it, this is a software division so maybe it is some sort of cross-promotion to have different divisions get in on the fun of funding these products? If anyone has any insights I'd be curious to know.


The box contents honestly aren't as overwhelming as the EX-releases tend to be. We have six bags in here where a typical figure would have three.


Once you look into the components you will quickly see that there are a lot of option parts in here. Plenty of nice translucent red components are also included.


The style of this review will be a little bit different because what we are looking at is basically a regular Ensemble figure with a boatload of accessories. Figures like these tend to give me a lot of headache because ultimately I will select a configuration and then never bother with the other gear options again. I prefer multiple gear choices for mass-production type figures and for signature machines like this one (or the dreaded Gundam Converge Anchor) to stick to one main gimmick but this is subject to taste of course.


On the left we have the new EX39 figure and on the right the basic XM-X1 Crossbone X-1 figure from Mobile Suit Ensemble Part 20. As you can see, these are the same with a slight colour change in the black areas but this might just be a manufacturing variation rather than intention.


This should give you a better idea of all the funky gear choices that come with the Full Cloth figure. Some of these weapons are modular as well, giving you multiple little accessories to keep from disappearing.


You are not going to see every gear option in use in this review, because they require quite a bit of parts swapping. Here is the most obvious example. You get two different skirt components. One is the standard Ensemble skirt and the other has optional front skirts that let you either swivel the front sides of the skirts forward (which is an interesting concept for Ensemble figure articulation but also flimsy) as well as having these optional claw-style weapons shoot out from there. These claws are made from softer plastic and come with two special stands to help keep them upright, firmly in the uninspiring style of Ensemble bases being completely horizontal, not encouraging any dynamic posing whatsoever.


This figure gets really busy with all the weird stuff going on. You have multiple knuckle-style choices where the wrist guard on the back of the arms can be handheld and used to wield different types of melee weapons. Notice also the two bladed weapons that can shoot out from the underside of the feet. I am assuming that these are the primary reason for Bandai designing the optional skirt armor with loose front skirts to allow for a forward facing kick. The chain-linked weapon you see here in the right hand also has one of those clear stands we saw earlier but I can't imagine why anyone would want to display a figure like that.


I much prefer a good old saber and beam shield look than all the weird Ninja-style shenanigans going on with the Crossbone figures. By the way, notice the optional open face plate here (which could have benefitted from some painting but I am afraid I will mess it up) as well as the different head which features an antenna on the left side. Notice also the weird hooked shield attached to the left arm which features two positions for the hook; extended as here, or retracted.


The Full Cloth figure has these strange fanged skulls hanging from its shoulder armor and they are designed to be removed and linked up to handlebars that lets the figure wield them. These are extremely flimsy and not only will the teeth fall out very easily, the whole skulls tend to come off the shoulder if you touch them because the beg that attaches them there is very small. The big blade looks really nice though and comes with two differently sized beam emitters up front. Notice also the different torso armors with different insignia, you can either use the skull and crossbones or this more stylized shield in red and gold.


Here the large beam saber uses the bigger beam emitter up front. The length is the same but this one wraps around the edge in an attempt to link it with the saw-tooth sides of the blade. It looks a little bit funky because you can see through the component and so I prefer the smaller saber tip. The beam shield itself can either be attached to the back of the arm or wielded n hand using a special grip-component.


Like most EX-figures the Full Cloth figure comes with a unique stand designed specifically for it. Tis one is pretty simple and mainly focuses on giving support for all those chain-style weapons shooting out in front of it. And as usual, I never bother with these.


Here is the main selling point of the figure, the blue and red cloak armor attached. The rear sections have a ball joint-attachment to a larger black frame that helps keep lock in place with the figure's back and the X-shaped Core Fighter is then attached to this frame rather than the figure's backside directly. As already mentioned, the skulls attached to the sides of the shoulders are kind of loose and you will not get a whole lot of interesting articulation out of this mode, especially if you want to mess around with those large accessories. Notice also the different frontal armor that sits on top of the cockpit, yet another parts swap accessory.


The Converge Full Cloth figure (EX 25, released in January 2019) is a worthy competitor to the more recent Ensemble figure and features more paint applications at the expense of less accessories. Still, Ensemble cannot even begin to try to compete with Converge which now features a crazy range of Crossbone-figures (including the X-0 Ghost, X-3, Phantom and Phantom V2 and the Anchor and several army builder types of the Crossbone Vanguard).


Posing together with the regular X-1 and the X-2 from the Mobile Suit Ensemble Part 20 wave, released in February this year. Coming in at 500 yen these figures also feature capes as accessories and so I got two of each of those retail figures.




Conclusion

Overall the Full Cloth figure is a well-executed design but hardly the most exciting EX-offering to be found in the Ensemble family. Unless you are a real X-1 fan the retail figures should serve you more than well and you won't be missing much if you save up this money for the benefit of something more interesting. I doubt we will see the more extravagantly silver-, green- or orange-painted cousins of this figure in Ensemble form but you never know.