HGIBO Tekkadan 3rd Group Gundam Frame ASW-G-08 "Gundam Barbatos Adapt"
After many years, I'm returning to the HGIBO line with the new HGIBO Barbatos Adapt. I've never been the biggest fan of the HGIBO line, due to the reliative weakness of the polycaps used (especially with the narrow-waisted Gundam Frame kits) and the poor colour correction with heavy sticker usage. While this allowed the kits to be very simple, interchangeable, and cheap, I always felt that this made the build experience less enjoyable as compared to the follow up HGWFM series. This new kit is a total reimagining of the line however. There's still a lot of stickers, but the build experience is significantly more modern.
The Barbatos Adapt is an intermediary form between the 6th form destroyed in the Battle of Edmonton at the end of Season 1 of Iron Blooded Orphans, and the Barbatos Lupus that was built offscreen between seasons and debuts in the first episode of Season 2. Most of the damanged nanolaminate armour is stripped off, replaced with sections of unpainted chassis or exposed frame, and you can still see the missing section of the V-fin that was broken off during the Battle of Edmonton. There's a new set of boosters (reminiscent of the 5th form) and some new shoulder armour pieces as well.
Unlike many of the earlier HGIBO kits, the colour correction is significantly more tolerable. There's a new head mould that separates the grey details on the faceplate, and there's a lot of decent parts choices and re-moulds that help give the kit better separation and an overall more polished look. You can really see the difference in level of detail when you directly compare this build to the older HGIBO Barbatos (although some of the improvement is also due to my better Gunpla skills). I did end up cutting off all of the safety nubs to help accentuate the sharper design of the various fins (as IBO has always had a very angular style).
There's still a reliance on stickers, including some white ones for the upper arms that I ended up keeping (as working with white paint sucks). There's several grey sections on the boosters, waist, and arms that I painted, along with the exposed V-fin frame and some smaller details on the head that don't have corrective stickers. You also need to correct some of the yellow vent details on the leg boosters and a brown detail on one of the neck armour "fins".
There's a small detail sticker for the Tekkadan logo on the left shoulder, but given that it's a rather ugly foil sticker, I elected to use spare stickers from my MGSD Barbatos instead. I supplemented a lot of spare stickers to help give the kit a nice amount of extra detail. I also ended up painting the Gundam Frame logos on this kit with my fluorescent orange marker, rather than using the foil stickers, as the provided stickers are not metallic and look very flat.
The kit is overall a lot more poseable, owing to a complete rework of the HGIBO Gundam Frame. The shoulders , torso, and waist have been completely redone with extra parts giving the kit the ability to flex laterally as well as forwards and backwards. There's even a few parts that give the illusion of articulating pistons just like the ones present on the MG and MGSD versions. There's new hip parts that let the legs swing much further forwards, and there's a new shoulder design that lets the arms articulate to a much wider degree of motion.
In terms of weaponry, the Barbatos Adapt is very limited. There's a redesigned large katana, similar to the version wielded by the 4th form but much larger in size, paired with a small wakizashi-style blade intended for additional defense, both supplied byt Teiwaz and initially intended for purely cermonial use. In the short video in which the Adapt appears, both of these blades break very easily, hence the much more robust sword eventualyl developed for the Lupus. Both of these swords are neatly stored on the boosters.
This was a really fun build to put together. It looks a lot sharper and more impressive than the older HGIBO kits, and I really hope that we see the new HGIBO Gundam Frame used for some HGIBO revives, especially with the 10th anniversary having just passed. Until then, I'll keep patiently waiting for Bandai to make a MG Barbatos Lupus Rex.
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