Kit Review : HG 1/144 MS-06 "Zaku II"

Hey guys here's another kit review..so..I've always been making a big fuss about the RX-78-02..but..what's a Gundam without a Zaku?as we all know..there have always been grunts in the Gundam series..and Zakus have played the biggest parts having titular enemies as "souped-up" Zaku's such as Char's Zaku, Johnny Ridden's Zaku and so on..






Here I will be reviewing a standard MS-06 Zaku II..for a brief history of this MS:

The MS-06C Zaku II Early Production Type was the successor to the MS-06A Zaku II First Mass Production Type. Deemed a success, the suit was put into mass production for the Zeon Military Forces. It was deployed in January U.C. 0078 and was the Zeon's main mobile suit at the outbreak of the One Year War. The C-Type, and later Zaku and non-Zaku mobile suits, typically used a 120 mm drum-fed machine gun or a 280 mm bazooka. Later, a 90 mm machine gun became a common weapon among Zeon mobile suits. Zakus, prior to the Antarctic Treaty, were also issued nuclear bazookas (which bear a remakable similarity to the design later used for the Federation's Gundam GP-02) and lightweight nerve gas guns, which they used to devastating effect in the One Week War. These Zaku II's were later upgraded after the following years. Some other officers of the Zeon, has their own personal Zaku II custom unit.

Several pilots became famous for their actions inside the cockpit of the MS-06C Zaku II. In the Battle of Loum, Lieutenant Jr. GradeChar Aznable destroyed 5 of the Earth Federation's Magellan-class battleships in his red-painted C-Type Zaku II, earning him the nickname "Red Comet". The Black Tri-Stars: Gaia, Ortega, and Mash, used their C-Type Zaku II's to capture the Federation's General Revil after crippling his Magellan Battleship Ananke during the Battle of Loum. Chief Petty Officer Johnny Ridden, earned his nickname "Crimson Lighting" after sinking 3 Magellan-class battleship. Lastly, The "White Wolf of Solomon" Private 1st Class Shin Matsunaga was promoted to Lieutenant Jr. Grade after destroying a Magellan-class battleship and 5 Salamis-class cruisers.

(taken from http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/MS-06C_Zaku_II)

so here goes the main dish..the kit review!

To start, here is the box..a very standard HGUC box great box art to boot.

Also included is a very traditional HGUC manual

All in all..there are 3 plastic runners and 1 polycap runner

This is the A runner..notice that the energy pipes look straight..however..they are grooved/notched so that it would be possible to bend them..

This is the B runner..

And the C runner..

 Polycaps..

Here we have the completed kit with all its armaments..

This is the front view of the bare kit..the kit comes with 2 sets of hands..closed hands and trigger hands..no open hands are included..

Side view..notice the shield mounted on the shoulder..this is movable and i will discuss this later on in this review..

Rear view..there is a weapons mount located at the rear skirt just like the Gundam's..this can hold the hyper rifle or the bazooka..

Side view..

Here are the weapons included with the kit..a bazooka, hyper rifle, heat hawk and two (2) leg mounted 3-missile launcher..i was very happy with the leg mounted missile launcher because the missiles can be removed and they have good detail..just a side note..i plan on modifying my stark jegan in the future because i really like it and i would use these missile launchers and would mount it on the legs of the stark jegan for better effects..my only qualm is that the missiles tend to fall..

Here's the view where i removed the shoulder mounted shield..notice that there is a ball on the shoulder..the socket is a polycap at the back of the shield..this allows better positioning and posing of the shoulder if you plan to display the kit..really good gimmick..but kinda outdated compared to the newer kits..

The shoulders can move outward to an angle close to 45 degrees..very nice for an old kit..

the arms mount the shoulder in a peg..this allows full vertical rotation..

initially..the energy pipes located at the waist to the backpack of the zaku is straight..as i said earlier..there are notches in the pipe so we can bend it..however..much care is needed because we may break it in the process of bending..front skirts can be moved only a bit..

side skirts can move that far and can limit the sideward movement of the legs..the zaku by the way..has no hip rotation given that the torso and waist is just one part..a let down for me..however..this is the traditional engineering of the kit..

this is as far as the legs can go sideways..

forward movement of the legs..the legs can possibly go further..however..the front skirts limit the movement..

this is the extent of the backward motion of the legs..the rear skirt does not move..thus..limits the backward extension..

knees can bend close to 90 degrees..if forced to go further..the knee separates..

here we see the leg mounted missiles..to put it on..we must first separate the upper leg from the lower leg and energy pipes..then slip the leg mounted missiles in the leg..finally..reassemble the whole leg..the missile launcher..though well contoured..tends to move around and is not that securely fastened..

side view of the leg with missile launcher..

here..we see a mount on the side skirt for the holster of the heat hawk..

this is how we mount the heat hawk..it is fairly stable and holds the hawk in place..

all in all..i think this is a good kit given its age..not much poseability though..a good kit for beginners..i intend to use this kit with my hg rx-78-02 for a fight diorama sometime in the future..also..i will be getting the missile launchers for my stark jegan because it looks similar to the shoulder mounted missile pods of the stark jegan..this is relatively a fast build and can have good potential in the hands of a model kit meister..

that's it for now guys! til next review! thanks for dropping by!