Review: HG AMS-123X-X Moon Gundam

Intro:

I built the HG Moon Gundam over the course of a few building sessions. The first chunk (about 3 hours) is captured here on my 10/6 live stream. Apologies in advance for the late posting this kit late! Sometimes life happens!

During the live stream, I described the build of the Moon Gundam as 'a snowball rolling downhill'. What I meant was that this kit builds momentum as you work through it. It started pretty 'meh' with a rather bland an boring torso and eventually moved onto more interesting, better, and cooler designs.

The HG Moon Gundam comes with 17 runners including while, light grey, yellow, red, green, clear, blue, psycho frame red and dark grey parts.

Most of the exterior armor of this kit is molded in a light grey color that sets it apart from other many other Gundams. It's a nice color and it complements the bright blue and white very well.

This isn't a perfect kit, but it does some interesting things with the HG formula and sets a nice precedent for future designs.

Things like:

• Unlike most HG kits, the Moon Gundam doesn't feature any polycaps. Joints are always plastic on plastic.
• The legs feature a pretty decent inner frame. It's not current MG or even RG quality. But, it's nice to have it included. 
• The inner frame in the leg actually does stuff! The knees feature a fantastic double separation at the knee.
• Bandai included interchangeable eye lenses. You can use an opaque green piece, or swap it out for a clear piece and modify it to include a LED. 
• Upgraded Translucent pieces. I know some people didn't care for the translucent beam effect pieces with the RG Sazabi, but I liked how substantial and detailed they looked. Bandai has brought that back in the form of the psycho material used in the funnels, and they look great in my opinion!  

If you'd like to get a HG Moon Gundam of your very own, check out JoJoHobbynStuff. Use coupon code GoodGunpla to save 10% off this, and just about anything else they have!

Let's dive in!



Torso & Waist:

As mentioned previously the kit starts on a rather bland note. The torso is well detailed and solid. But, due to the large set of funnels, it will need to lug around Bandai had to sacrifice mobility in the chest. All we're really left with is this interesting chest to shoulder joint.

The joint can either swing up or down in the standard position, or the joint can be pulled out slightly and swung up much higher for extended mobility.

The waist is fairly simple, but it does feature some nice cut-outs for the grey frame. The design of the waist allows both legs to move on a track up and down. Unfortunately, both legs can only move together; so don't expect to pull off any kneeling poses. The front, rear and side skirts are all able to swing out of the way to provide more posability to the legs.

Head:

The head is well proportioned and detailed.

It features a second set of horns towards the back of the head that are very reminiscent of the Sazabi.

Unlike many HG Gundam models, the red chin and the green eyes are different pieces. This isn't a huge change, but I appreciate the attention to detail and Bandai's inclusion of the swappable eyepieces.

Arms and Shoulders:

The shoulders are designed to fully hide the seam lines and include three separate colors. Like the Sazabi and Sinanju, the shoulders have this little flap thingy covering the joint.

The arms are interesting, I really like the bulky design of the forearms. The 'blade' part of the forearms feature a set of detachable psycommu 'boomerangs' that can also be used as close combat weapon or beam jitte.

The mobility of the forearms is pretty good. There it features a double joint that allows for just over a 90-degree bend.

Five interchangeable hands are included with this kit. Two closed grasping hands for beam sabers, one hand for the beam rifle and two open hands.

Legs:

They start our inauspiciously with a pair or narrow solid feet.  On top of the ankle joint, you will start to build the internal frame of the leg. The frame of the leg extends from the ankle up to the waist. This is definitely one of the best features of this kit!

The frame of the leg is designed in such a way as to allow the knee to split at two points for an awesome effect. The frame also includes three sets of hinges for moving armor on the front, outer side and back of the leg.

The overall detail of the legs is also very good. There are plenty of scribed panel lines, recessed details, and cutouts to reveal the inner frame.

I really like the legs, they're definitely my favorite part of this build.

Back Pack and weapons:

Let's start with the 'boring' part of the backpack:

This little gray pack fits two equipment racks that look strikingly similar to the Sazabi.

The arms fold out at several different points and have a wide range of articulation.

These racks are designed to mount the funnel/psycho plate system. And, believe it or not, they have no issue support that huge slab of plastic.

I think it's truly remarkable that this kit is able to hold the weight of the backpack unassisted.

An Action Base 5 in transparent smoke black is included with this kit to support the backpack and pull off those cool flying poses if desired.

The individual funnels of the psycho plate can be separated and mounted on the backpack or forearms. The funnels connect to each other using a hook and latch type system. You can hear a reassurning 'snap' when fitting the plates to each other. The overall funnel is very sturdy.

On the forearms, the funnels can create a makeshift shield. I think this looks somewhat funny, and it's not my first choice.

Also included is the tomahawk sword. Strangely the manual mentions that this sword can be used as a tomahawk, but no effect parts to replicate it are provided. When not in use the handle is stored in the backpack.

The beam rifle is a smaller version of the Sazabi's beam shot rifle. The mold of this weapon was very well designed, and there are minimal seamlines visible. I was really impressed with this gun, normally HG weapons are covered in seamlines.

Conclusion:

The Moon Gundam isn't a perfect kit for me. But, a lot of the problems that I have with it are subjective. I love the design of the mobile suit, but I think the psycho plate funnels just look silly. I think this kit would look a lot better with the smaller funnel racks from the Varguil. However, I think it would be a safe bet to say that the Varguil will likely be a future P-Bandai Release.

The Moon Gundam has an interesting design, it's clearly a predecessor to the Sazabi, yet it has it's own blockier and more compact style.

This kit is an easy recommendation if you like the design of the MS and the funnel system. Even if you care for the design of the funnel system, I would still recommend purchasing this kit. I feel like this is going to a popular kit, even if it's mostly just used for kitbashing.

If anything, this kit has shown me that Bandai has a lot of exciting new changes coming to the HG line in the near future.

If you'd like to get a HG Moon Gundam of your very own, check out JoJoHobbynStuff. Use coupon code GoodGunpla to save 10% off this, and just about anything else they have!