It is becoming hard work keeping up with the Ensemble premium range kits and by that I don't mean trying to spend unreasonable amounts of money to buy the damned things but actually just staying current with the release plan. At the time of writing about half a dozen sets should be just about to or having just been shipped to customers. It certainly doesn't help that you need a VPN to even access the P-Bandai website and so my coverage of these items continues to slip due to lack of interest and justification for the buy-in. However, sometimes you have to make an exception...
As Bandai has been recycling the Stardust Memory-theme through its recent Gashapon and Shokugan releases as well as larger action figures and model kits it should not be seen as a great surprise that there would come a couple of EX kits out of it. What I had not expected however, was the sheer size and asking price of a pair of mobile armors in the Dendrobium and Neue Ziel. Shipped in the autumn of 2022 these came with a P-Bandai price tag of ¥14300... each. Granted, the box is enormous but this is counter-intuitive to the whole concept of a Gashapon range of figures is supposed to be. However, I have harped on about this enough times already but it is safe to say that it takes a special kind of crazy to venture down this very rabbit hole.
There was no way I would be able to fit all the bags in one picture so here they come in some kind of semi-organized fashion with the commonly recognizable bags of a retail mobile suit figure first.
That's right - the Neue Ziel box actually contains two different figures... or does it? Besides the obvious mobile armor itself Bandai are also including a High Mobility Type Zaku figure in Anavel Gato's colours. I could care less about the Neue Ziel figure as such, the Converge figure is already one of my favourites, but there was no way I would pass up a figure painted as Gato's Custom. I guess the joke is on me if Bandai introduce it as an alternate colour figure somewhere down the retail range because this is the thing that triggered the whole purchase.
The parts for the mobile suit itself split up by colours. As you can see most of the green parts are single colour although a few pieces also feature some black detail. Among the black components we have some nicely painted thrusters to break up the monotony but you'll definitely want to break out some panel-lining tools for this one if you can.
Let's start by taking a look at the Zaku figure itself. The MS-06R-1A is a high performance variant of the Zaku II with a very limited production run. This machine does not actually appear in 0083 Stardust Memory (where Gato is briefly seen piloting a custom colour Gelgoog in the opening scene) and instead belongs to lore of the Mobile Suit Variation type. I thought it was really cool for Bandai to include this machine in the package (it certainly roped me in) and I suspect the recent release of it in Gundam Converge has a lot to do with it. And speaking of which...
Here we can see the Ensemble figure next to the smaller Gundam Converge premium CORE release with 302nd Patrol insignia. These days figures are often released more or less in parallel in the various brands which feels a bit unexciting and is just something we have to deal with in this era of Gundam toys.
Gato's Zaku II is a repaint of the Black Tri-Stars custom figure from Mobile Suit Ensemble Part 12with the minor modification that it does not feature a commander antenna. Seen here also is the MS-06RD-4 Zaku High Mobility Test Type from Part 9 (a variant of whch is also included inside the Apsaras II mobile armor). Gato's figure gets two of the additional weapon options from wave 12's equipment pack but the third accessory - the Heat Hawk - is not included. Overall this figure is your average Ensemble retail figure and just as great as the ones that came before it. I am really digging it which is why what follows is so absurd.
Just like the designers made a gimmick out of sticking a Zaku II in the Apsarus II mobile armor, they also built the entire Neue Ziel figure around the idea of having the Zaku II as its core. Just as you have finished building this figure the manual next expects you to pick it apart again and replace its head with that of the Neue Ziel itself. I had hoped that this was just a bit of a plaything gimmick, and that you would be able to field the Neue Ziel without it, in order to pose the two together, but no dice. You can assemble the entire mobile armor without the mobile suit figure, except there is no place for the head to attach.
At this point in the review I took a break to consider my options. There is no way I would hide away this precious special colour figure inside the mobile armor and how ridiculous would it look to have blue and white arms and legs sticking out of it? Pondering my next move I thought about Mobile Suit Ensemble Part 24 which releases in March. That set will actually have a neutral green mass-production variant of the High Mobility Zaku figure which might be a good replacement. However, I didn't feel like waiting for another couple of months and knowing the scarcity of mass-production figures it might not be that easy to actually get hold of (and the ones I do manage to find I would much rather like to army build). In the end I chose to sacrifice one of my Grazes and just built up its torso and waist section, letting it take place at the core of the blasted mobile armor.
I think I made the correct decision here. The Graze's shoulders can be seen peeking out when viewing the mobile armor from the back. While the colour is a bit different it certainly beats having two differently shaped blue colour shoulders peeking out. I honestly don't know what Bandai was thinking here. On the plus-side, the armor plating does a good job of covering up the mobile suit inside, you won't really notice any gaps unless you know they are there. Overall this is a really lame design idea that I would perhaps be a bit more forgiving towards it if Bandai had bothered to include two mobile suits instead of just the one. Knowing how brittle the groin peg area can be on Ensemble figures I do not recommend removing the mobile suit figure once it sits in place; damage to the connector peg will be a very difficult thing to recover from.
Moving on, here we see the beast in all its glory. Sitting on its podium the mobile armor towers approximately 22 centimeters tall. The base is reasonably sturdy but I still don't feel entirely confident holding on to the figure when moving it around. The body is made from hard plastic, there are only a few softer type components that are made from classic Ensemble material. That means you are trading away the risk of bent components for something more brittle that will likely not survive a fall to the floor.
We have two gear options for the Neue Ziel. The first involves removing the under arms and attaching them to the body with two short tubes. I did not want to bother with this as picking these figures apart is never a good idea but you can get an idea of how they are supposed to be posed thanks to these two ugly supporting stands. Ugly as ever...
Significantly cooler are the figure's total of four sub-arms. These would be hidden away inside the enormous shoulder armor but the Ensemble figure has no such provisioning. Instead, the shoulders hide two additional elbow joints of the type you find on the regular figures for these components to attach to. If you are familiar with Ensemble you can guess exactly how frustrating it can be to try to attach these mid-flight, it is easier to take these joints out and attach them to the sub-arms first, and then fiddle around with inserting them back into the shoulder sections. As always, these joints can wear out fast so avoid excessive play.
The sub-arms have attachments for four optional translucent beam saber effect parts that do look really nice. The already unwieldy figure will now consume a lot of additional space however, so you'll need a bit of extra space for it to spread out.
The Neue Ziel posing with its benchmark Gundam Converge counterpart (which for all intents and purposes is definitely fit for posing with Ensemble figures itself) as well as a smaller variant from the old Gashapon Warrior NEXT line. There will not be a comparison with the Ensemble Dendrobium because I will not be purchasing it (perhaps if Bandai had duped me with tossing in Cima's Gelgoog with it but they slept on that opportunity...). Notice again that you will not be able to pose Gato's Zaku together with the Neue Ziel unless you sacrifice another mobile suit to take its place inside the mobile armor, or come up with your own modification.
To give you an even further idea of its ludicrous size, here we have a couple extra comparisons with the behemoth Neo Zeong II from Gundam Converge and the really tall Alpha Azieru from the Gashapon Senshi Forte SD line. All in all the Neue Ziel figure is pretty cool and the Gato Zaku is awesome but you'd have to be insane to spend what Bandai is asking for this figure, there are much better ways to expand your Ensemble collection as far as I am concerned. And as pointed out above, if you really want to add the Neue Ziel to your line-up; consider if the old Converge figure can do the job just as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment