MG Gundam F91

Hello hello, readers! It's Friday, and that means another update! Today we've got another special guest gunpla making its appearance: the MG Gundam F91, the main Gundam of the Gundam F91 movie. This specific gunpla was bought by a friend of mine from college after I re-acquainted him with the wonderful world of Gundam model kits, and during the building process I showed him some of the things I picked up from /toy/. This is the result of his hard work, and to be honest, it turned out pretty darn well!!

The MG F91 is one of Bandai's older MG kits, so you'll notice there are some differences between this one and, say, Exia. Take the hands, for example: the last three fingers are not as defined as they are on newer kits, and pretty much come as a block. And instead of the ball joint attachment, it's more of a swivel-deal. You'll see.

Anyway, F91 is a pretty snazzy looking kit. Before I matte-coated it, it really didn't look all that different except that the blue parts all had a shine to them.

Posability-wise, the F91 is totally covered. From the top down, the head is on a ball, the waist is ball jointed in 2 spots and can swivel, the cockpit opens up, and the rifles on its back can swing down and extend [more on that later]. The arms can move forward; they pretty much have a full range of motion. The skirt armor does hinder the leg movement a little bit, specifically the front armor, but they all can move up to some degree except for the butt plate. The legs are on a swivel ball joint and can rotate at the hip, and the knees are double jointed. The feet are also really articulated and have a cool piston gimmick. 

I've got a few gripes with the way they designed the F91 kit. Instead of drolling on about the negatives, I'm just gonna list them really quickly:

-No polycaps. At all.

-The shoulders are independent of the arm connection, and they're stiff when I move them.

-The side skirts don't like moving anywhere.

-I had to superglue the knees on because of how they're attached.

-The head is kinda restricted by the collar.

-VSBRs are hindered by the side skirts.

Once you get past those things, though, this is really a fantastic kit. I love the design of the F91 and Bandai did a great job recreating it.

I'm also going to include my schpeal on the VSBR weapons in this main section, because they're not accessories. They're part of the Gundam! Anyway, for the F91 to use the rifles, you need to swing them down and extend them, and then bring the handles down. They look absolutely fantastic, and seem like they could've inspired Freedom Gundam's hip-mounted cannons...

~*~ACCESSORIES~*~

Alrighty, F91's got quite a few awesome accessories, so I'm gonna start with the beam shield first! The beam shield is on F91's left forearm, and how it works is simple: the little hexagonal plate folds out and the shield comes out of it. It looks awesome, and it's definitely nice to see something besides a regular physical shield!

Next up is Gundam F91's beam rifle!

I really like the beam rifle's design: it's simple but still has a level of complexity to it. Like all MG kits, the hand has a peg that pegs into the groove on the handle, and you just wrap the fingers around it and voila! :D

Following that, we have F91's beam launcher, which is just a bazooka-sized beam rifle I guess o.o

You can get some pretty awesome dynamic poses with this weapon, but due to the way the armor can be fiddly and obnoxious sometimes you might have trouble having the legs support the rest of the awesome pose.

The beam launcher can be stored on F91's butt plate. There's a little claw you can pull out and the launcher fits perfectly in. It took me a few minutes to figure out how it worked though...

And, of course, what Gundam would be complete without some good ol' beam sabers?

~*~GIMMICKS~*~

Just like in the Gundam F91 movie, this fella can change to his full burst awesome explosion super fantastic mode. So let's do that...

Fins, extend!!

Thrusters, open!

Reveal your true face, Gundam F91!!

/chuckle

This is Gundam F91's full burst awesome whatever form. When I saw it in the movie, I commented on how the face looked goofy, and to be honest the face still does look goofy. I guess nothing's perfect though~

Also included is a stand for the F91 that looks similar to the Rafflesia. Personally, I don't think I'd attach the wires and all of that jazz, but to each his own. It looks pretty awesome on the stand, either way!

As a final section, I thought it'd be fun to compare the F91 to Unicorn Gundam. When I was taking these pictures, it felt like F91 was definitely one of the smaller MGs in existence, but I really didn't see it until I took these:

Now let's take a look at the size comparison when Unicorn is in Destroy Mode!

As you can see, F91 is quite small, and it gets a lot of crap for being small. It's still lovable though~

~*~FINAL VERDICT~*~

The MG Gundam F91 is a fantastic Master Grade kit. Some of its construction steps are a little frustrating, but with a little elbow grease [and some superglue if you use too much elbow grease] it'll look fantastic. The F91 pictured above only had a few decals, some panel lining, and a matte top coat done to it, and it still looks great! If you were a fan of the [painfully abridged] Gundam F91 movie, just like the way it looks, or want to spend ~$40 on another MG kit, then consider the F91. It does get a lot of negative remarks because of its shortcomings, but most of them are simple fixes!

And I'll leave it at that. Have a good day, everyone, and I'll see you next Friday! :D