I'm continuing my Iron-Blooded Orphans kick with the HGIBO Man Rodi this week.
I was certainly a little surprised when I opened this box. I didn't expect to see so much purple in there.
The only stickers in this kit are for the eye. There's a single, centered eye or you can combine a blank background with a separate eye sticker to make it look off to one side. Since there's no raised detail for the eye and I don't trust myself to paint those tiny triangles - I'll be using the centered sticker for this build.
This is a very chonky kit. Everything is big and bulky. Lots of rounded parts. There's a good bit of surface detail to panel-line, but some of the gates were a pain to remove. The parts generally fit pretty well... But one of the polycaps in the chest is a little loose and it's making thee torso a little floppy. Still - it's a lot more solid than the Gundam frame kits are.
This kit is a little light on accessories - just a gun and the cleaver. No extra hands or anything. That kind of stuff was all sold in the expansion sets back in the day... But those are almost impossible to buy today.
My wife says it looks like a frog. I'm seeing a turtle. All the green, bulky, rounded parts definitely give it something of an organic feel. I could definitely see this thing slinking through a swamp somewhere.
It's absolutely capable of standing on its own two feet... But, also, clearly not designed to do that. There's very limited articulation in the legs and feet. All the standing poses look stiff and wooden. I guess I'm kind of surprised they didn't include a runnerless stand in this kit.
It looks much better up on a stand - which makes sense, since this suit was clearly designed to operate in space.
I really like how you can store an accessory around on the back skirting... There isn't just a peg or a hole or something - a section pops out to hold it. That's a level of detail you don't typically see in an HG kit.
Yet another really solid HGIBO grunt kit. So far, I'm liking the grunt kits better than the hero kits. Those Gundam frame kits all seem to have issues. Which is not to say that this build is perfect... The chest is a little loose... But it's so much better than the hero kits I've built.
