While the 0 Raiser is still on the way, the 00 itself is finished. Overall I’m pleased with what I got out of this kit though I think in terms of engineering I prefer the detail and look of the Exia. The 00 is just very…plain. While the S1 kits weren’t as detailed as something like the Gundam OYW they did have a little bit of panel lining to spice things up. As you’ll see there isn’t much of that going on here with the 00.
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Side by side with the Exia. Normally these two kits would be the same color-wise but after painting the 00 it wound up darker. Gotta say though, I’m kind of partial to how it turned out, though the parts I painted at first like the chest and shoulders are a bit sloppy when compared to the GN drives and the plates over the drive daggers. I used Tamiya flat blue/flat red for the body and feet, gold leaf for the v-fin and gunmetal for the joints. As you can see the Exia is an older kit I did, parts of it looking kind of sloppy now. If there’s one disappointment to be found with the 00′s design it’s the very anorexic legs and the lack of a chest orb. I found the orb to give all of the S1 suits a little bit of extra flavor that set them apart from other suits that we’ve seen recently and the S2 suits seem to be back to business as usual.
If there’s one thing that I did that turned out better on the Exia, it’s definitely the GN condensers. The gunmetal color I used (Model Master) definitely lent itself better to enhancing the shine of the metallic green gundam marker than the Tamiya brand did. Either that or it’s time to replace the metallic green as it’s not doing the ‘metallic’ part of it’s job any more. In this picture you can really see how tiny the 00′s legs are compared to Exia’s. They also lack the joint near the middle of the foot, something that I can’t figure out why they would get rid of.
GN Sword II. Simple weapons (Didn’t bother with rifle mode pictures, sorry) but they don’t look all that bad. This is about as dynamic as poses get with the 00 since the torso doesn’t turn much and the legs are somewhat restricted by the side skirt armor. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though since it prevents the splits problem the Exia and Astraea kits had and as you can see it can still get in to some good positions.
00 also packs two beam sabers. Oddly the beams are now your standard UC kit beams instead of the small flat beams the original 00 kits were. They don’t really go in to the slots for the beams all that easily, so they’ll probably be staying on the back..
The twin drive system! The blades under the drives can pop off and be used as forearm mounted daggers or put together for a bladed shield. Personally I think they look better on the back but we’ll see if I can still use them once the 0 Raiser gets here.
Speaking of the twin drives, they have a good range of motion and are able to move up and down on the mounts as well as around so they’ll rarely if ever get in the way of posing.
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All in all I’m okay with the kit itself, minor gripes aside. Were more parts available to me I’d be inclined to try to kitbash something together for some better waist movement and to spice up the legs a bit..but that’s something for farther down the line. As I mentioned in a comment on Rob’s blog, the lack of the GN Sword 3 and all of the different variations of this kit (I think there’s 3 or 4 now?) kind of bother me…but if we get an MG of the 00 or Exia I’ll probably pick either (or both!) up. I could count this little project as finished but since the 0 Raiser is still on the way this gets marked up as a WIP post.
Up next after the 00-Raiser is the RX-78-2 Gundam Ver. OYW, which I’ll be recoloring (by hand..again. Maybe I should buy an airbrush?) as my final practice run before I lay in to my big project. I thought about just leaving it be then realized I accidentally got the Game Color Ver., which has a more pastel color scheme than the animation version and I do not like it at all…so it’s off to the races.
You can expect me to start it some time next week.
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