hey everybody adam and norm from tested here with
a really fun build um i have been hearing free this is a first for me i've been hearing for years
how much fun it is to build a gundam how beautiful the mechanics are and the internals and the
aesthetics and that you need no glue that's right it's not fit people have been asking for it and
boy do we have one for you to jump into yeah in conjunction with gundam online expo 2021 bandai
has sent us this gundam to build the rx 78-2 i i'm like looking at the interim parts of this
build and i cannot believe how many stages it goes through like we consider you know high grade
real grade master grade but this is perfect grade unleashed i've heard so much about how elegant
this build is and of course very known for all the interim steps internal structures i think we can
get it done in in like a one-day build time frame we're gonna need some help so we're bringing in
sean charlesworth and kate sabbager come on in guys yes regular tested viewers know these two
uh with this quartet i think we can get this done in a day funnily enough i had a friend here
last night we walked through and he saw this and he went oh my god i love building these with my
son we love these models we can't believe how beautiful the mechanics are and then they get
hidden underneath the beautiful fascia well you can take the armor off it's articulating lots of
show but we'll be showing each step of the way the big milestones of the build you want to pop open
the box and take a quick look yeah okay oh my god oh my god this is so just these sprue trees
are like gigantic so tons of runner sheets you can already tell lots of different finishes
there are chrome ones there are different colors like we said all we need are a pair of nippers
uh it's all snap fit you know sean kate and i have had a bunch of experience putting these
together and we couldn't be more excited to get your impressions as you get to assemble this
dude i am so psyched all right let's get into it okay here come the eyes um i have to say you
know like every build every model build is like a little bit of a solitary exercise and wrapping
your head around the instructions and the philosophy of the instructions and while
these parts are surpassingly complicated and it's often feels a little like difficult to get
your bearings once you have your bearings these instructions are surpassingly clear uh there's
this nice satisfying spatial thing that happens once you reorient the physical object to the
render and look even in this little sub head you're talking about different translucencies
there's gray clear red oh that looks so cool also the neck joint right there because feel this
right there's even softer durometers for where oh that's what the neck joint is it's gonna so he'll
be able to be poseable but stiff oh my gosh yeah yeah um this is this is lovely this is clearly
made by people who love making things for the pro the process that we're describing that
is satisfying this is built to engender that process that's awesome and it says right in
the instructions at this point when the head is done this runner sheet is all clear and so
that's a it's a your first cleared runner sheet i love it i love it and there it looks like wow
so i just want to point something out here um this is a process called co-molding in which
these different colors are shot into the same tool uh and this means that the tool's been designed
to take the the dark gray and then they they actually open another port and allow in the yellow
they open a port low in the clear yellow this isn't paint these are actually separate pellets of
abs or styrene injection molded into a multi-color tool that's amazing technology yeah and real
metal parts too on yeah and then that'll really help sell it man that is lovely i can't stop
doing this i just want to look them in the eyes all right let's carry on okay do we're up to the legs right now for the uh the
leg frame assembly i think you're gonna like this piece you've said there's something
special about this i was working on this one i was working on the other one and
i cut mine out i was like what okay well there's yeah so and
you'll notice then wait yeah i had the same reaction and i've built i've built
quite a few of these and i've never seen this uh up to this point so i was blown
away what the oh my god this is crazy maybe maybe you can tell us here's what it is so
i earlier i talked about the yellow sprue having multiple colors on it and then each of those was a
separate shot in a tool a tool being two pieces of hardened steel that they put plastic under high
pressure to make models like this that's called co-molding this seems to be co-molded mechanically
i.e this part was put in right come here see this this part was molded in one shot and then this
part was molded in a second shot and they're it's engaging i don't understand i don't know
how they did it this is basically like they're able to injection mold a mechanical part without
having to put it together after they've injection molded they do it while they're doing it i
mean i guess they could be doing it with two different temperature set plat thermosets so you
do your first one at a high temperature thermoset and then you shoot your second one at a lower
temperature thermostat that didn't melt the first one with some mold release in there maybe for our
follicle they can give us a tour of the factory i am quite positive in the comments will be the
explanation i hope so but this is blowing my mind yeah pivots flattens okay so that's
straightened down here we go and whoops oh wait it even pivots like this i know wow oh
my god okay so i did a little pre-assembly just for that shock for you on that so
okay so the shot goes under here right so then this pivots
this way and this clamps in here and then oh i see and then this
clamps in there and now that yeah wow there's a thing to note about injection molded
model parts is that whenever you have something that is like a nice tight fit we're not talking
about an accuracy of plus or minus a thou or half a thou we're talking in the ten thousandths of
the multi-micron range in terms of precision yeah in all my years of model building these i've
i've never had kits like quite like this yeah my hands feel big and dumb right
they're they're so detailed and there there are some very tiny parts and
that and that and the bottom one over here goes through there and they go there yep yep
yep i mean each time you're like in the zone you can see when you've got it right like
it's super clear okay that's that step now i think norm brought this up already too but
the the fact that they indicate to you when your sprue is done that's really nice there's
been so many times where's that little tiny little tiny tiny tiny piece that you totally
missed you're like oh i'm done with this like i every stage of it is beautiful
oh my god it's like you didn't have to do that but secondary motion oh my
god look at this i i've spent my whole life i'm never gonna make anything this precise or
pretty these little press fits are just so sweet i cannot believe the beautiful resistance of
these as they move i i don't know about this cold molding thing it's blowing my mind
not that i'm advocating for it but with some dry brush and a little bit of extra effort
yeah i love just you could shoot these things for scale yeah i would just love to to do like
the exposed exo skeleton yeah no armor even and it's got all of this extra functionality look at
that i mean and the amount of resistance is like this will be able to hold up power oh yeah yeah
and it's it's just all snap fit and then uh this is the particular thing that i liked was the uh
this articulation of the heel look at that wow and then we got the pistons i didn't know what worlds
awaited me here yeah it's fantastic all right so actually each of these details because they
make them in a slightly different color it actually makes the complexity more visible
which is a lovely choice to make and we have these lovely matte finish he's kind of satin
see this like don't you want to be making spaceships out of this right away so
these are stick on photo etch parts okay so no no cutting them out or
bending them right so i think that's on yeah there yep there's one for each side so
let's see the second one here yeah yeah yeah my god i feel like i'm a giant and we have
finished another sprue right ah yay yeah those are some healthy looking calves on
this guy oh you've already got one nice day yeah dude pretty pretty pretty cool look at i
mean you could get some crazy poses with this the the way the knees articulate and the fact that
everything will move in it's i mean yeah epic that's absolutely beautiful i'm
really blown away all right next step this is going really really well uh at this
point we've got uh waist down with the legs amazing we have actually all the body parts yeah
the whole frame assembly is coming together um this is awesome arm torso backpack we're
putting on these metal parts which are so pretty i'm really oh right i've got some left
to do here on the on the uh on the left arm yeah wait a second oh wow the whole thing goes
in upside down oh fascinating okay now i see okay so then there's something that goes
on top of that it makes it look pretty oh these are very satisfying parts to put on
aren't they um it's kind of cool because it's sort of like the little bit bits of icing you get
to do right right yeah it really is like icing okay and then we had that right i
got all those and now it's time for these guys 14 and 15.
Yeah from s4
11 is on the left it goes like this okay oh my goodness i know look at that i love
the mohawk the mohawk here let's um oh yeah all your base are belong to
us okay it's time to assemble um torso uh that's the front yes
okay so this goes like this yeah wow wow um wow these things there's
all this stuff that slides in later pieces okay so uh here you want to do some arms it's a very manageable size
too yeah it's not overly large or too small although my hands do feel like i am a giant oh look at it i know look at that
neck this one's so satisfying because it literally looks like a wall plug you know you can't get
anything yeah right literal than that oh dude um right away it's like really clear like just like
one of those um just like a super high-end action figure how much expressive actual posing you can
get out of this so many action shots yeah i mean it's really beautiful i can't believe we're going
to continue to cover all this stuff up to make the rest of it it's like i'd be happy to stop
here and put this on my put this on my shelf wow well you you've mentioned before too that when
you do a build you kind of like to sit with it for a while and put it somewhere where you can
look at it so something cool about a project like this is that you can pause at any given stage
you're totally right and live with it for a little while until you're ready to move on the level of
detail is just so i mean just having looked at hundreds and thousands of model kits over the life
it's just like there's so many lovely castings in here so many lovely shapes to play with such
greblys oh god this is a greebly paradise hey guys before we continue with this build i
wanted to let you know that this collaboration was made possible by bandai spirits and gundam online
expo 2021 a festival for north american gundam fans gundam online expo 2021 is being held from
august 26th to september 6th there will be many special edition items as well as special events
happening throughout the event for example there's going to be over a hundred hard to get gundam
base exclusives and other convention exclusives and special content to celebrate and showcase the
over 40 years of this amazing gunpla hobby the winners of the gun club builders world cup are
going to be in attendance and showing off their world-class techniques and their processes so we
can get better that's the content that i'm going to be following all the links you need are in the
comments below so check it out and get building unbelievable i mean it's like they had meetings and we're like
yeah we've got three layers but can we add four more this is crazy oh my gosh oh i can really see
why some friends of mine are totally into this and there's so much narrative going on there
is so much precision i can't even conceive of what it's like to project manage something like
this i also really appreciate their use of like two different reds like not quite the same red
those are the little things i talk about with weathering that just like make everything
pop some good looking calves on this guy glorious i'd like metal
grates underneath my pec vents i can't believe i'm covering
over all this pretty stuff but then right it's all about the journey
isn't it oh wow oh wow that's awesome oh my god we got this little chevron amazing oh i can't believe look at that look
at the action and the pistons on the neck there oh satisfying clicks all around same i mean there is a certain type of like real
pose ability that like as you bring the machine in you can just feel it like wanting to
settle look at that that's freaking crazy oh oh you did something wrong battle
damage hold on uh okay let's see all right i think we got it what
is that that's a metal peg that magnet attachments go to accessories i
would like such a thing in my own arm yeah okay this business is this really
the end after all this beautiful work i'm actually sad they've made the
build experience so pleasurable okay dude dude dude amazing here let's get a let's
get a full a full range of motion look at that dude this would have occupied at least like a a a
solid year of my mental energy not to build this to like continue to play with it when i was
like eight years old i would have just been like all about every single panel on this spend half an
hour posing it in the perfect pose he is beautiful oh adam you finished your first perfect grade
unleashed gundam i'm really blown away by this um having built you know thousands of models
over my lifetime snap fit is almost always uh a harbinger of middling quality uh at best
uh and this is totally the opposite of that uh these castings are absolutely beautiful
everything is really crisp it's a greebly paradise but in addition to all of that once
together it has a posability and a playability that i find really amazing the aesthetics
of the inlays we were talking about multiple grays right because they can multiple reds next
to each other the gray on the inside popping out even on the arm the thing that brushed aluminum
is that frame when we got to that phase three that's probably how i would want to display it
but even then you can see it kind of poking out peeking out and that and that layering it's really
it seems clear to me at least that it is done to make the build pleasurable for the maker yeah so
it's funny because model kits so often feel like a challenge to work against the specifics of the
genre in order to get something that looks amazing this is taking a totally different approach
it's not like take a bunch of plastic and turn it into a pirate ship it's like have fun every
step of the way with each part that you apply because each step is beautiful and there's
all these layers in between it's like been it's been prioritized for the pleasure of
building and you can kind of discover which part of that process is going to resonate with
you is it about the mechanics is it about posing is it is it painting right that we
haven't even dipped our toes into the a whole world of aestheticizing oh my gosh there's
a whole gundam painting thing yes oh wow right i mean the the very consciousness of how many
of the subtle difference between the grays here already speaks to a deep understanding of bringing
out detail bringing out scale but also giving so much pleasure no matter at what range you're
looking at it what a way to dip in this is dude incredible i want to thank of course bandai
spirits and the gundam online expo 2021 running august 26th to september 6.
we'll have those links
below so you can check it out we'll be watching it but i could see some gundam in in our future
oh yeah we've broken the seal this is amazing.
