HG Jesta

Hello hello everyone, Baby TheEnd here with the first of many long overdue reviews! We're gonna take a look at the High Grade Jesta from Gundam Unicorn. The Jesta's job in combat is to escort the Unicorn Gundam into the battlefield, and then keep the lowly grunt suits off of it while Unicorn goes NT-D Mode and takes on whatever Newtype opponents there are! Unfortunately they don't see too much screen time in episode 5 of Gundam Unicorn, but hopefully the "Black Tri-Stars" Jesta squad will have more of a presence in episode 6. Enough rambling though, onto the review!

The Jesta's articulation is pretty standard for HG kits these days, but there are even some instances where it's better!

• Head is on the regular HG polycap neck and has no problem moving wherever you want it to
• Torso has a ball polycap which allows it to bed slightly at the stomach
• Unfortunately, the cockpit hatch bumps into the front skirts and limits movement a bit
• Backpack has no moving parts
• One attachment point on either side of the top where you can plug in the shield arm piece [either extended or retracted] or the small spike-looking part
• Extended shield arm piece can swivel a tiny amount from the backpack, and the shield attaches via a polycap and can rotate and swing up and down
• Shoulders are ball-jointed into the torso with polycaps and can move around quite well
• Arms can move independently of the shoulder armor and can rotate at the attachment point to the shoulder
• Elbows bend a bit more than 90˚, maybe around 110˚ or something
• Right arm has molded-together clips for the beam carbine, while the left arm has a removable beam saber
• Hands are pretty standard HG hands, though thankfully a lot of options are included
• Front and sideskirts can move independently [you need to cut the frontskirts apart though]
• Legs connect to the waist with polycaps, and can rotate just below that connection point
• Knees can bend... maybe 130˚ or so
• Ankles can swing forward or backward to allow for a better stance

Hoo boy, hopefully that didn't bore you too much! The Jesta's pretty neat though; it's definitely got a special operations kind of feel to it with all of the dark blues and streamlined look, and I love the minimal splashes of orange on the visor. It's sturdy too, so don't worry about parts falling off on you for no reason~. The shield arm can be a bit limiting at times, but if you can work with that then you can get some sweet poses with this guy! I decided to give my Jesta a little more of a Katoki feel and slapped on a bunch of extra decals not originally from the kit.

~*~ACCESSORIES~*~

I certainly wouldn't expect the Jesta to have a full arsenal of weapons, would you? As a specialized mobile suit, it just needs two weapons to get the job done, the first being the beam saber.

The other one is, in my opinion, one of the coolest guns in the Gundam multiverse: the beam carbine. It's got a blocky-but-sleek look that really compliments the Jesta, and I think any other beam rifle would just not look as good.

~*~FINAL VERDICT~*~

I'll make this plain and simple: the HG Jesta is a beautiful kit, and if you're a fan of Gundam Unicorn or unique grunt suits then the Jesta is definitely for you. Assembly is super-straightforward, and because of the already simple color scheme it really doesn't require painting to make it look nice [though painting it certainly does help~!]. The HG Jesta will retail for around $20 USD, but saying it's money well spent would be an understatement!

See you next time, everyone, and thank you for reading!