Gundam Converge #29

So, we are finally getting around to Converge #29 just as volume 30 hit is about to hit shelves in Japan on the 19th. Volume 29 has been kicking around since mid-May and I was actually quite fast on the ball to acquire them, at least most of them. The lone holdout turned out be - somewhat surprisingly - the Reborns Gundam. The set has several high-profile machines, in fact the entire set is full of them, and so I would have expected other figures to be in higher demand. Yet for some reason, the Reborns kept selling out the minute it hit the Mandarake webshop, I think I missed out on it three or four times before I managed to poach one of them. Price-wise however, only one figure was selling at an inflated ¥1000 and that was the Messer, the others remained at a MSRP-adjacent price of ¥600.


Look at this beautiful line-up! I can't remember when last a set reveal impressed me this much, there are only bangers in here. As far as reissues go, there are also five fresh faces in here, and save for the GFreD which has been plastered everywhere lately the rest of the gang are quite rare sights in the figure world. I am really looking forward to dig deeper into this lot, let's dig in!


Here are the bags as they come out of the boxes and there is nothing particularly interesting about them. As usual, the cardboard sheets that are meant to protect fragile components like V-fins continue to do a poor job since they are much smaller than the pockets they are inserted into. Luckily, I had no damaged components and that is a very rare thing in my experience.



316 : GNT-0000 00 Qan[T]


There is only one recycled mobile suit in this set and of course it gets to lead this wave. Having said that it is a very pretty thing and I can well see why Bandai chooses to bring it forward again, maybe it scored well in the last survey that they did too. While it has a pretty colour scheme with different types of translucent and metallic greens applied someone really gave me a figure that shouldn't have passed through quality control. The paint applications are a little bit messy in the chest area and the machine someone forgot to paint one of the vents in yellow. I haven't yet decided if it bothers me enough that I should seek out a replacement figure or not.


The Qan[T] is one of those suit designs with tiny feet, hence Bandai did not want to drill a peg hole into one of its feet. Instead we get a translucent clip that supports the foot by wrapping around it. These work fine I guess but are also a bit annoying because you cannot pick up the figure without the base falling off. Luckily you don't really need to use the base and the large GN Sword can act as its third supporting leg if you need it to.


The original Qan[T] figure on the left there is already twelve years old at this point, released in Converge volume 14 in April 2014. The two look remarkably similar, at least when you compare to other #Sharp reissues where the figure is often taller and sports different bodily proportions. There is definitely no need to "upgrade" your original figure with the new sculpt. I also threw in the Qan[T] Full Saber there on the right, which is one of the early CORE figures from 2016.






317 : gMS-K GFreD


GQuuuuuuX is Mobile Suit Gundam in its Evangelion-era and the GFreD is probably the best example of this; the body shape, head design and colour scheme are all very reminiscent of the EVA-01. While I am not generally impressed by the concept behind GQuuuuuuX there is no denying that the figures all look great and I would put the GFreD on top of their internal ranking list. Unlike the Qan[T] above the paint apps are really crisp on this figure, down to the little red lines on the front skirt.


The GFreD comes with a classic armament set of rifle and shield. You also have a detachable mobility backpack which apparently also doubles as a core fighter. The oddly shaped feet have high heels and so you get a clear plastic support which doesn't clip around the entire foot but instead just the heel. This type of support can be a bit flimsy, again you can use the beam rifle as additional support if you keep the figure off the base.






318 : RX-124 Gundam TR-6 [Woundwort]


The Advance of Zeta project produced some of the most weird and alien-looking mobile suit designs in the entire Gundam franchise. While Mobile Suit Ensemble has been drinking heavily from the AOZ-fountain we have only seen a handful of appearances in Converge, the last of which was ten years ago! Here now at least comes the TR-6 in two different configurations and first up is the experimental Woundwort.

If this is your first encounter with AOZ you might wonder what the hell is going on. While much of the torso resembles your traditional mobile suit it has a completely different idea about what the body should look like. Those backward facing legs take a bit of getting used to for example, and much of its face is hidden underneath a huge brow. Notice how Bandai decided to give it expressive hands rather than your average closed fists, perhaps they wanted to make it seem more relatable?


While the Woundwort is not a strictly space-only machine this particular form presents some challenges to the figure sculptors. The team decided to stick with the tiny lower legs and feet and instead made a clear support that not only clips around the "foot" but also over it, so that the foot slots inside very tightly. This is a surprisingly sturdy fit but I think that a design utilizing a clear base inserted into the groin area might have been a more dependable solution (just like how Mobile Suit Ensemble does it). I also had a surprising amount of trouble getting that large back skirt in place. The huge peg hole was partially filled up with excess plastic that I had to carve out with a knife for it to finally fit. The blue figure exhibited no such issue.


For such an obscure unit, there is a surprisingly large amount of Woundwort figures out there. The tiniest figure here is from the failed FW SD Gundam Neo-line which showed up in 2017, one step up we have an entry from Gashapon Warrior NEXT 02 released in 2011 and to the right the large Woundwort from Mobile Suit Ensemble Part 04 originally released in 2017. Not included here is the fully translucent version of the NEXT 02 figure which was released in 2012 as part of one of the large premium boxset in the NEXT range.






319 : RX-124 Gundam TR-6 [Hazel II]


The Hazel II figure might at first be mistaken for a simple colour swap but there are a lot of tweaks to the design. Apart from the eye-catching Titans-blue colour scheme we can also spot several new features. The mobile suit/armor now sports the traditional beam rifle and shield combo and has doubled its amount of long range-beam rifle/sword thingies. Rather than being attached to the arm these now also sit on a rack attached to the rear booster. I'm not going to pretend that I know which components are unique to either mode or if they are simply chosen as different representatives of what a loadout could look like. The intimidating range of variations to the RX-124 can only be equalled by that of the F90/F91-family.


Notice how the rear booster section is completely redesigned compared to the component attached to the Woundwort figure. The two weapons are attached to round pegs which enables you to swivel them forward a bit but the proportions of the figure limits their movement a great deal.


Just like there is no attachment point for a shield on the Woundwort's left arm there is no way to hang one of the big rifles on the Hazel II's right arm. I like how this duo is represented but I would be even more curious to see what a figure would look like with its legs retracted and sitting on a clear base similar to how the Ensemble figure does it.


Mobile Suit Ensemble released the Woundwort in official Titans colours when they reissued Ensemble Part 04 as the Part 4.5 colour variation set in 2020, but only as a direct colour swap. Thus, it isn't really a counterpart to the Hazel II. Since I had a leftover figure I confiscated its long range-rifle and made my own mock-up above. The Ensemble figure unfortunately does not have a way to attach rifles to the back and so I made this abomination instead.






320 : Me-02R-F02 Messer Type F02


Out of all the cool figures in volume 29, none captured my interest as much as the Messer. Ever since I first saw it in SD figure form in 2017 (has it been that long already...) I kept hoping for an appearance in Converge or Ensemble. The new Hathaway's Flash movie helped push the suit to the forefront of Bandai's mind and it also enjoyed excellent representation in the Gundam Card Game last winter. Finally we have one of its versions hit Converge and I am drooling all over it.

The Messer has a bit of Dom- or Gelgoog-presence with massive extremities and a vibrant colour scheme. The mono-eye however is so tiny that it almost disappears, a result of the modernized design of the Messer compared to the older cartoonish style used for Zeon. The beam rifle (which looks remarkably similar to the one sported by the Hazel II, is there a canonical development heritage there?) has a slightly different colour to the beige used on the mobile suit which I do think is accurate but will no doubt bother some. All in all though, I think it looks tremendous.


Amusingly, the Messer is the outlier in Converge #29 being the only mobile suit that doesn't require any additional support to stand upright, the ratio is usually the other way around. Beyond that it is a bog-standard Converge figure with the traditional equipment loadout in place.


I mentioned a 2017 appearance earlier, the figure in question is the Me-02R Messer you see here, which hails from Gashapon Warrior Senshi Forte Part 02. That figure was also reissued as a "recolour version" in Part 2.5 in 2019 in a darker palette with the yellowy-beige sections more akin to chocolate milk. Even though the two figure families look very different you can recognize most of the features between them.






321 : CB-0000G/C Reborns Gundam


Last face on the line then, and I was really happy to see a rare glimpse of something from MSG00 that is not a Celestial Being mainstay. There are so many fascinating and unique looking suits from this era that I would really like to collect in Converge form. I imagine the spindly and sleek designs are difficult to transform into the Converge format but there are still many other candidates like the GN-X family for example. Still, for now I am pleased to see this very uniquely painted machine with its red framing of white and gold. The posture is a bit unusual in that the legs are spread very far apart - I'm not sure I like this but I grant that this is a common appearance of the machine itself. More troubling is the soft plastic in the fins which bend all over the place, perhaps these could have been manufactured in the same hard plastic as used for the beam rifle.


The Reborns is another high-heel adopter and as such gets one of those smaller supports that surround the heel itself, making the general stability a bit weaker. Especially as these friction-based joints tend to wear out over time.


Here is a close-up of the beam rifle assembly, the red handlebar is kept in place by two pegs on the sleeve and the rifle itself. I expected this to be really flimsy but so far it has held up well. I have considered gluing it in place for additional peace of mind as this is a typical candidate for a piece that you may find missing on second-hand purchases a couple of years down the line.


We actually have a prior release of the Reborns Gundam in the Gashapon Warrior NEXT line where it appeared in volume 14 in the summer of 2013. Interestingly, that set also featured the 00 Gundam and the RX-121 Gundam TR-1 Hazel Custom in two different colours, while not exactly the same line-up as Converge #29 it feels to be more than just a peculiar coincidence. Notice also the widely spread legs on the smaller figure, this is definitely a trait the designers had in mind when they sculpted it.






Conclusion

So, there you have it. Converge #29 is a fantastic entry into a figure line that sometimes feels like it is running out of steam - only to come back in and take my breath away with a release like this. Sadly, the upcoming Converge #30 will be almost the complete opposite; four of the six figures are Gundams you have seen before and two of them are "revive" reissues at that. Good job to kill the excitement there.