I'm building another weird, obscure kit this week... It's the HGUC DRA-C (Unicorn Ver.) from P-Bandai.
This is basically a recolor of the DRA-C that featured in Stardust Memory. But, if I'm being honest, I don't remember it from either show. I just bought this thing because I'm a sucker for pink/purple mecha.
This is my first normal (?) P-Bandai kit. The other couple P-Bandai kits I built were actually Gundam Base exclusives that just happened to be sold through P-Bandai for a limited time, which meant that they got full-color boxes. This one's just got a monochromatic box in a very striking pink.
Since this is just basically a recolor of the Stardust Memory DRA-C, that's the instructions we get. And it's kind of neat to see the rest of the Stardust Memory kits advertised in here.
This P-Bandai recolor gets its own single-sheet addition to the instructions. It's not purely a recolor - there's a couple different/new parts.
We get a bunch of foil stickers... Some of them, like the eye/camera/lens, are absolutely expected in an HG kit. And there's some Sleeves markings that aren't too bad. They actually look pretty decent once they're all debossed onto the parts. And then there's some pretty terrible color-correcting grey stickers. I guess I appreciate that they didn't leave it completely wrong... But these stickers don't work great.
There's also a sheet of marking stickers that I'm not going to use. I don't know enough about this suit to care what unit number it displays and I kind of hate these sticker-style decals.
Still... It is a decent selection of stickers. They could certainly be handy.
As I mentioned - the Sleeves markings don't look terrible. I used a wooden cuticle-pusher to deboss them and they look pretty decent.
I love the head. It's weird. You've basically got the typical Zeon monoeye... But the overall design is anything but typical.
There's also a couple sticker options for the eye. There's a fixed eye or an alternative/combination of a blank black piece and a separate eye sticker. There's nothing you'll be able to easily move around - but you do get an option.
There's no legs - just these big thruster (?) bits. They're very simple... There's a nice bit of surface detail. Some panel-lines. But they're really pretty plain and uninteresting. It makes me realize how much typically goes into the legs in one of these kits.
And then there's the arms with those big thruster pods on the shoulders. I love this design. It's very alien. Very eye-catching. But, unfortunately, this is where those color-correcting stickers are...
Again - I appreciate the attempt, but it doesn't work well. You need to kind of fold/bend the stickers into those recesses and it just doesn't work great. You can clearly see where some of the stickers aren't lying flat. It probably won't look terrible from a few feet away... But I'm not thrilled.
There's not a lot to this kit - no alternate hands or equipment or anything. There's an optional shield with a built-in beam-saber, but that's about it. And the effects parts for the beam-saber are the weird, old, short ones.
Clearly there's no way this thing is going to be standing on its own, so there's a stand included in the box. It's a weird, old stand though... Complete with screws. I don't think I've seen one of these before? At least not this specific design? And I'm not sure how compatible this kit would be with a modern ACB5 or ACB7 - it's got a slot in its crotch instead of the more-typical peg-hole.
The posability of this kit is somewhat limited... Not because there's anything wrong with it, but just due to the simplicity of its design. There's no legs to pose and those thrusters on the bottom are awfully large. There's not a ton you can do with them.
Despite the simplicity of the design, it's very striking. Both the color and the general shapes really make this stand out. I don't have anything else on my shelf like this. It's truly unique.
Clearly a P-Bandai kit like this isn't going to be super-readily available... And I can't say that the Stardust Memory version of the kit is nearly as appealing to me... But I think I'd recommend this. It's a relatively quick, easy build that really stands-out on the shelf.
Since this suit was created from junk parts I took that idea a step further and made him a sort of wasteland scavenger. The propellant tanks have obviously seen better days and have been patched up with extra armor to protect the thrusters. This was my first try using the Vallejo rust set. I also gave him a harder punching, longer range weapon, so he can make kills from cover.
