Baby TheEnd's Gunpla and Toy Review: 1/60 Real Detail Freedom Gundam

Hey hey, everyone! It's Friday, and that means another review!! Today we've got a kit from the same fellow who owns the MG F91. This is the 1/60 Real Detail Freedom Gundam, from the Gundam SEED line. The Real Detail line was something that Bandai only did for SEED/SEED Destiny, but flashy title aside they're pretty much no-grade 1/60 scale kits. The Freedom Gundam belongs to Kira Yamato, the protagonist of Gundam SEED. Onto the review~!!

Boy howdy is the Freedom big!! This is my first time working with a 1/60 scale kit of any kind, and I was surprised at the size difference between a MG and a 1/60 scale. My friend didn't feel comfortable moving the Freedom from his room, though, so all of the pictures were taken at his place.

It's really got the majestic angelic figure that Freedom Gundam shows off in the show. It can be a bit tricky to get the Freedom to stand up straight sometimes, due to the heaviness of its wings and the slightly-loose polycap joints at the hips.

Moving on to articulation, the 1/60 Freedom Gundam is pretty much a HUGE HG kit. Articulation is pretty average. You get about 90˚ from the elbow joints, the shoulders can go 360˚, and the wrists and fingers are fully articulated. The wings are on a hinge/swivel joint and can unfold too. The torso gets some turning action, but that's it. The legs can only move so far before the skirt armor gets in the way, and the ankle armor seems to enjoy falling off D: . The head is on a single ball joint, and the skirt armor is pretty much stuck in place, so it's kind of limiting.

Another cool little feature that the Freedom has is that the cockpit can open up and you can see a little Kira inside. I think the cockpit looks a bit shallow though... :|

Like I said before, it's a big HG kit so posability is way limited. It still looks fantastic in any pose you put it in. It really just needs a stand of some sort, and then it'd be perfect!

~*~GIMMICK~*~

Freedom has a few cool gimmicks, so I'm just gonna list 'em off! First up is most important: the Freedom's wings fully unfolded!! They're pretty easy to unfold, but they're pretty limited in how you can display them.

And next up we have Freedom's hip cannons. They unfold in a similar fashion to how they do in the anime, and they've got little handles for Freedom to loosely hold on to! :D

~*~ACCESSORIES~*~

Freedom Gundam also has a few accessories, and I'm going to start with the beam sabers. They're stored on the hip armor above the cannons. Gotta say, they're kinda frustrating to keep in place because they like to pop out of their pegs quite often. The beams themselves are ENORMOUS and easily dwarf the average MG kit.

And, just like in the anime, you can COMBINE the beam sabers! I apologize for the blurry picture, but it was incredibly tough to get the entire thing into one shot D:

Following that, we've got Freedom's rifle. Nothing out of the ordinary here. And once again, it's absolutely enormous! There's a little peg that can rotate out of the handle to either side so Freedom can hold the rifle in either hand.

The rifle also has a big ol' square peg that plugs into the butt plate :D

And finally, we come to Freedom Gundam's shield. It's a pretty basic shield; it pegs into the forearm and there's a handle that can move up and down to allow for it to be used in some dynamic-ish poses. My gripe with the shield, though, is that it gets in the way and heavily hinders the movement of the left arm D:

~*~FULL BLAST~*~

READY WITH THE BEAM-SPAMMING. AIM... FIRE!!!!

~*~COMPARISON~*~

I felt it was absolutely necessary to have a comparison between the MG F91 and the 1/60 Freedom Gundam. Yes, I'm aware that the F91 is one of the smaller MG kits, but my point remains the same:

1/60 scale kits are surprisingly large, and I'm honestly still taken aback by Freedom's size.

~*~FINAL VERDICT~*~

Personally, I think that for what it is, the 1/60 Freedom Gundam is a pretty nifty kit. It just needs some sort of gigantic action base and then it'd be perfect. I can forgive its shortcomings [hindered articulation] because, well... it's the Freedom Gundam. Instead of continuing on about a kit that I had no hand in assembling, though, I set up a little interview with my friend, who I will refer to as J. His responses are pretty lengthy, so just bear with me.

Baby TheEnd: What was your initial reaction after laying all of the runners out in front of you?

J: When I first laid out the runners, it took up like 90% of my desk. But I figured that was normal since this was a 1/60 scale I was about to build. Had it been MG quality... probably would've been more runners.

Baby TheEnd: About how long did assembly take? And what about panel lining?

J: I believe it took me under 20 hours to build, so about 2 and a half days. It probably would've have gone quicker if I hadn't messed up a couple times. That contributed to about 2-4 extra hours.

And panel lining was awesome. The Freedom's body was easy and quick in general, lining it was like any other kit [the usual linings on legs, hands chest etc.]. The Wings, Shield, and Xiphias rail guns... were a different story.While fun, they did take about 5~10 mins each. Although the wings were pretty big, it didn't help that it had a bunch of lines running all around. Plus it had small holes/dents that required slow lines. You had to do both sides of each of the 3 pieces that made up the wing. The front blade, small middle blade and back blade, all had lining on both sides. That meant 6 x 2 = 12 sides of lining for both wings. Oh, and the cannons on the wings added another 4 sides. Grand total of 16 sides for panel lining just the wings! The shield had a lot of lining on the inside where the grip is. Seriously, since the shield was about as tall as my F91, think of it as running down the F91 from head to toe with panel lining. It wasn't hard lining all of this, I just thought it'd be good to take my time.

Baby TheEnd: What was something that frustrated you during construction?

J: Apart from the fact that this is my second kit since I started gunpla again after a 7 year hiatus, my frustrations came when I would overlook a step after snapping the pieces together, because it would mean that in trying to open it via the hobby knife into the sides, it would risk me damaging any inside things resulting in broken pegs meaning really loose piece connections. The second frustration was the like the first, except that instead of missing a step, I'd put it on the wrong way/direction. That would also cause me to open up the parts and once again run the risk of damaging the part. With the Freedom this happened with the legs, and rail guns. The legs [well, the thighs] were the opposite way, meaning the left thigh was on the right and the right was on the left, making the Freedom's legs looked swapped. With the rail guns, the back part of the gun when extended has a piece sticking out of the bottom, so when its folded, the piece sticks on the other part of the gun resulting in the fully folded rail gun. When I finished the first rail gun I noticed the plastic part stuck out from the top, meaning I had the piece upside down. This resulted in me spending about an hour trying to pry the skirt piece holding the rail gun open so that I could flip it around. Novice builder mistakes aside, it was great.

Baby TheEnd: Is there a specific aspect about this kit that you really like?

J: It's a PG sized Freedom Gundam, what more do you need? In all seriousness, I'd have to say the wings. Those things were fantastic, great detail and they were the hardest part of the kit.

Baby TheEnd: Is there anything that upsets you about the finished kit?

J: The only thing that upsets me is that... well, it's just an oversized HG model. Also it could use a little more posability. I suppose lack of a frame contributed to this, but I knew what I was getting when I ordered, so It's not that upsetting.

Baby TheEnd: Alright, awesome! Any final thoughts?

J: All in all I think this was a great kit. While it did not have any earth shattering additions or MG level building, it's still a big Freedom that looks awesome on your desk. It can hold various poses in terms of weapons drawn; anywhere from pointing his beam rifle at you to holding his dual beam sabers in one hand with shield in the other to holding its MEGA BEAMSPAMMER pose without falling over due to the weight of its wings. If it doesn't appeal to you, no worries. I think I happen to like it a lot because I really liked the SEED and SEED Destiny series, so I could be a matter of personal tastes.

So there you have it, folks! Straight from J himself: this is a pretty great kit for what it's worth, especially if you like Gundam SEED!