Destiny Extreme Oops!

The construction manual for MG Destiny Extreme Blast Mode, spotted on Dalong.net.


I don't mean to be too picky here, but isn't Athrun's Infinite Justice the real fight for Destiny, instead of Strike Freedom?


Oops!! This isn't the first time for Bandai's typo. I heard they did the same mistake before for HG 1/100 Akatsuki. Poor Cagalli ^^;
Just for your laughter XD anyway. I also did the mistake of calling this special edition of Destiny as "Extreme Burst" in my previous posting. Sorry about that ^^;

But guess what, I'm not the only one who made the same mistake ^^;


(Click to enlarge)
Oops!! I most sincerely hope that HLJ's mistake is not due to that posting of mine ^^;
Go to the search page for SEED and SEED Destiny products and you might see it for yourself before they correct it.

New Sangokuden Characters

More new characters have just being introduced into the interesting world of Sangokuden.


An updated map of the Sangokuden world from the official website.
The next time you visit the website, I'm sure it will be even more crowded ^^
From the map above, you can see that the different forces are getting more clearly defined. When I visited the website when it was initially launched, the characters look more like wanderers in an online game XD. Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei occupy the North East, and the Rebellion of Huang Jin resides on the West. Dong Zhuo (董卓) occupies the West side of the map, while most of the characters seem to be concentrated on the East and South East portion: Cao Cao sits in the East, while Sun Quan's kingdom of Wu in South East.

The new characters this time are mainly from Sun Quan's camp ^^ Even though its Gunpla is out, but Sun Quan seems to be still missing from the story.


From left to right, Sun Jian (孙坚 - I seriously can't recognize which Gundam he is ^^;), Zu Mao (祖茂) Powered GM, Cheng Pu (程普) GM Custom, Han Dang (韩当) Guncannon II, and Huang Gai (黄盖) Gouf.
Image from SRW Hotnews.
In the original novel of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sun Jian is Sun Quan and Sun Ce's (孙策) father. Before the establishment of the Kingdom of Wu, Sun Jian served under Yuan Shu (袁术). He was killed in one sortie against Liu Biao (刘表), and was succeeded by Sun Quan.

The other four characters in the picture are among the many powerful warriors of Sun Quan. Some of them even served under Sun Ce before continuing their service to his son. Except for Huang Gai, their roles are neither sophisticated nor significant to the overall story, as they only saw action in combat. Huang Gai on the other hand, is a more interesting character. Besides his 'Oscar-winning' XD act to deceive Cao Cao before the grand battle of Chi Bi (赤壁), he was also one of the five Tiger Warriors after switching allegiance to Liu Bei.

The Kingdom of Wu in Sangokuden seems to be characterized heavily on tiger. You can see each of the three characters above have 'some tigers in them' :-D like tiger stripes on Sun Jian's body, and tiger head ornament on the helmets of the other characters.


(Left) Sun ShangXiang (孙尚香) GP04 Gerbera is Sun Quan's younger sister.
(Right) Dian Wei (典韦) Asshimar is Cao Cao's warrior.
Image from Sangokuden's official website
The very cute female character seen during Plamo Radicon Show this year is Sun ShangXiang, Sun Quan's younger sister. Although she seems to be quite cute in her Sangokuden design, she was like a female warrior in the novel. Although not directly involved in any combat, her stern characteristics did have some influence between his brother's diplomacy with Liu Bei. It was said that even Sun Quan feared her as well ^^

Dian Wei on the other hand, was among the many warriors of Cao Cao, one of the best in fact, at the beginning of the story. Anyone not being able to see him as Asshimar in disguise, I mean design? XD

More and more characters are coming to the Sangokuden world, but there are still so many important figures yet to be unveiled. Plus, the total number of Gunpla released so far is still less than 10. So you can be sure that it's going to get better and beyond.

PLAMO Review 26: HGUC Hrairoo Part 1

My current Gunpla work is HGUC Gaplant TR-5 [Hrairoo], which is the second AOZ for me after Advanced Hazel.

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.

MG Destiny Unleashed

Three postings from me today ^^; and this one is definitely the most sensational one:

MG Destiny is Out!!
You can check out all the parts, as well as the construction manual from Hobby Search.

If you're waiting to be surprised and amazed at the content of Destiny if you had pre-ordered yours from somewhere, you might want to stop right here and read something else, because I'm going to break out the spoilers of the content here (a bad habit I always commit ^^;). Sorry!



Extra delicious box side details XD


Confirmed: fang-like splits on both sides of the face are molded.


This is the same type of polycap set for MG Strike Freedom, but it seems like Destiny uses even less polycaps, judging from the number of 'X' marks on this part tree.


The shoulder joints of Destiny are brand new designs, built for the action of the beam boomerangs and the anti-ship beam sword no doubt.


The wing unit for Destiny is surprisingly easy to assemble, and a lot less parts involved as well. For me, this is a great design, as it reduces the weight of the wings and allow the backpack to be more durable even for a lot of wing actions.


The joints of the wing unit can be pulled out from the backpack so that the wings will not collide with the backpack :-)


More pull-out ability: the legs' joints can be pulled out at the groin, for a more exaggerated pose with the display stand maybe?


The manual also explicitly instructs users to bend the beam boomerang for a more curvy appearance. I don't think I will follow that step though ^^
Also, there seems to be some nifty stuff you can do with the parts for the display stand as well. Cool!


Looks like the beam shield generators need to be shared by the two sets of hands, so when you want to switch between the 'normal' MG hand to the spread palm, there's a bit of work transferring the shield generator as well.
Best if Bandai can just throw in another set of generators for the spread palms, then Destiny will be perfect ^^
All images from Hobby Search.

Revoltech Patlabor Mecha

Three Revoltech Patlabor (OVA series) goodies are coming out this December. Each of them is 1,900 Yen.

Are you a fan of Patlabor? I watched Patlabor the TV series when I was in primary school, and always felt that the story is more light-hearted (as compared to Gundam) and sometimes, quite funny as well. I remembered there were a few episodes where the Patlabors were deployed to fight monster in the jungle, dragon in the sewers of Japan, and even ghosts in abandoned buildings. Giant robots against the spiritual world, trust me, you will love Patlabor for sure ^^

There's some connection between Patlabor and the world of Gundam actually, in terms of their voice actors: Ryunosuke Ohbayashi who voiced for Captain Kiichi Goto is also Rakan Dakaran in ZZ Gundam, Yoshiko Sakakibara who voiced for Captain Shinobu Nagumo is actually Haman Kahn, yes, Haman-sama (my favorite ^^), and You Inoue who pass away in February this year voiced for both Clancy Kanuka in Patlabor and Sayla Mass in the original Gundam.

ARL-99 Helldiver



Type-7B/2B Brocken (OVA version)




Type-7B/2B Brocken (TV version)



All images from Amiami.

Tiny-Biny Updates on MG Unicorn & Others

A little bit of updates on the upcoming MG Unicorn from SRW Hotnews:

At least this time we get to see the backpack of Unicorn ^^;


Isn't this the same plain prototype we see many moons ago?


When are we going to see the final prototype? I buey-ta-han-liaw XD (can't wait any longer)
Also, HGUC ReGZ scheduled for January 2008 release is already in its final prototype form. It looks way better than the original ReGZ in 1994. Not only do you get way cooler articulation from this redesigned HGUC version, the BWS is also included, which means ReGZ itself will have the ability for transformation to dock with the BWS. Not sure if there's any special display stand to mount ReGZ's Waverider as seen in the MG version though.


The shield can now be mounted on the side of the forearm, something extra from the MG version.
On the other hand, time really flies. We are now looking at Gunpla coming in 2008. Plus, today is the official release date for MG Destiny in Japan, which happens to be the second last MG this year. After Destiny, we'll be looking towards the release of MG Unicorn, and then we are off for the new year. Pretty scary eh~ o_0

And now off to more Gundam 00 stuff, specifically the "revitalized" Mobile Suit in Action line. For your information, the previous release was Akatsuki Shiranui Pack, which was in July. As compared to the previous MSIAs, the Gundam 00 mecha are quit expensive: Exia is 2,000 Yen, Dynames and Kyrios are 2,500 Yen each, an Virtue is 3,000 Yen. For comparison, look at Aile Strike and Force Impulse Gundam are 1,500 Yen each; while Destiny and Strike Freedom are 1,600 Yen each. However, the quality of the new MSIA is really high. Plus, the paint work and the panel-lines are very detailed as well. Definitely better than the four mentioned earlier on. Is the quality high enough and worthwhile for your extra expenditure? I never bought any MSIA before actually ^^;

All images from Amiami.


Somehow I feel that the sword mounted on Exia's hip is longer than the Gunpla version.


Even the yellow interior on both sides of his helmet is nicely painted :-) and all the designated weapons are included.


Nice articulation of the shoulders and the arms.


Look at the ankles :-)



Some nice poses with the weapons.




Kyrios's beam sabers can change into the shorter beam daggers, while Exia needs four for all of them.




All the GN Particle Generators are expendable, and just look at the twin cannons 0_0
Also, this is actually the first time I know that Virtue has beam sabers/daggers.