XXXG-01L2 Gundam Livelance Heaven
This was an oddly hard model to photograph. When taking photos, you don’t want there to be a ton of negative space, and that can be an issue when what you’re photographing is long and slender. Pole arms fall into that category, and the fact that the Livelance comes with a very long beam effect doesn’t help. I only photographed it at full length four times (three of which were in Scythe Mode), and ended up cutting off the end of it in three of those to keep a balanced composition, with the only exception being held incorrectly in order to fit it in frame. I suppose I could have had it lancing another unit to fill that space in, but that might have also taken focus away from the Livelance. Tricky business, it is.
The Good: This is a fairly posable kit, with a lot of extra joints; a sliding shoulder joint, an extra waist joint, and the knees are detachable to increase their range. That extra range is very helpful since it’s using a two-handed weapon, and can achieve a decent number of poses that utilize it effectively. It also has bent-wrist holding-things-hands to help with that as well.
Also, while the Helios had a ton of new parts, the Livelance is a good example of reuse of old parts, with very few extra parts in comparison. It even took me a day or so after its reveal to figure out what it was based on, and the pun in the name, which is a sign of a good revision.
The Bad: One of the advertised gimmicks is swapping parts between kits, but since the Freedom and Deathscythe are from different lines, there’s some looseness that makes it not really work. Also, since it reuses parts, there’s some stickered detail that isn’t sculpted.
Biggest issue is the pearlescent white isn’t great. Especially on the head, I had several issues of marring, staining, and cracks formed just by piecing things together, so be very careful when assembling specifically the head.
Also, would have liked it if the cape had a lock when not active.
The Details: Apart from the black panel lines and fill, I added a number of metallic blue details (some of which replaced stickers) to the head, shoulders, scythe, and the front of the cape, as well as under the translucent blue on the forearms to embolden the color choice while retaining the details, unlike what I did with the Helios where it was directly under the plastic. I also added some yellow paint to the front and back of the back skirt, and to the inside of the cape (where the aforementioned missing detail was).
Overall, I like this kit, and if the other recent Wing kits are anything like it, I might have to try them out. But it’s also very creative in its own right, and makes me excited for the other Breakers kits I plan on building in the future.
