First of all, how do you call his name? :-) For me, it's "He-rai [ri as in rising] -roo [roo as in Rooney]". Although he can take MS form, Hrairoo certainly looks awkward with his huge attachments on the shoulders, spiky waist armors, long blade rifle, as well as the double forearm mounted beam cannons, directly inherited from its predecessor Gaplant.
However, the strangest part for me is actually the V-fin on Hrairoo's head. As Hrairoo is a mono-eye mecha, the V-fin is like forcefully embedding the feature of Gundam onto him. To make things more 'interesting', there are two extra sensors at the edge of the helmet near the face, which might be used to deceive enemies to think that they are facing a Gundam-type MS when they are battling Hrairoo.
The mono-eye camera (not shown here) and the two sensors at the edge of the helmets makes Hrairoo three-eyed.
Read more about Hrairoo on Mahq.net.
As for the model, it's very easy to tell that it's the previously released Gaplant bundled with extra parts to convert it into Hrairoo. Most of the parts of the original Gaplant are included, even though the huge booster is no more. Anyway, I do believe that the extra parts of Hrairoo can be detached, and he can convert to Gaplant - Titans Test Team's color scheme.
Convertibility is one thing, but the most important feature of Hrairoo is its ability to transform into MA mode. Very similar to that of Gaplant, Hrairoo does feature some extra nifty functions for its shoulders and well as a 'third arm' - its tail which can be used to grab the beam rifle. A display stand is included to mount either the MS or the MA mode, which is nothing new actually, as it's from Gaplant.
Hrairoo's box is so much bigger than Advanced Hazel's.
Lining Hrairoo together with MG Char's Zaku II doesn't seem too awkward at all due to his size.
Another attraction of this model is the size. As the setting for Hrairoo is 25.2 meters, in 1/144 scale, he will be about 17.5 meters, which is around the height of a 1/100 scale model. Plus, parts like Hrairoo's legs, the shoulder cannons, and the shoulder attachments are really big, and together with other delicate parts that come along in this model, the assembly process will be fun ^_^
But then again, if you think Hrairoo is the biggest in terms of size in his family, you might want to look at the Advanced Hrairoo, and his ultimate form, Fiver.
And now onto the paint work...
...or maybe I should call it 'pain' work instead ^^; because there are just so many parts to paint if you want your Hrairoo to resemble how it looks like as the completed model. Most of the paint work is yellow on black parts, which is unbelievably hard, for both you and your Gundam marker ^^; Several layers of yellow are needed to completely cover the black areas.
All the parts that need to be painted o_0
The yellow part of the waist armors is extremely hard to paint x_x
Some more parts painted.
Painting the grey surface of the thrusters.
All the thrusters for Hrairoo: three for the backpack, one for the groin, three for each leg, and two for each of the double beam cannons.
For detailing, a huge slide of foil sticker is included. As a lazy folk, I used most of them so that I don't have to paint so much for all the parts ^^
Hrairoo's unique clear sticker is a bunny with huge wings stabbing a long spear through a duckling, not sure what that means though.
Also, painting the beam saber is also a pain in the ass XD
Painting beam-saber kind of red on black parts? This is how I did it: first, use masking tape/paper tape to wrap the handles to avoid the paint to split onto them.
Paint a layer of silver onto the beam saber portion as the base color.
Paint a layer of pink onto of the silver when it's dried completely. Any marker will do. I used the ordinary one students use for drawing posters etc.
But be CAUTIOUS: the pink layer will require a longer time to dry off since it's being painted on an oil-based silver base.
Anyway, all the work is done now, and right now I'm just giving all the parts a little more time to dry up, and a little more time for indulgence into MG Destiny XD
The display stand for Hrairoo, and the extra part for mounting the beam rifle.
The unused parts from the kit. Most of them are from the booster backpack of the original Gaplant.
