RX-77 Guncannon

RX-77 Guncannon
Bandai’s Best Mecha Collection of Gundam model kits from 1979 was an incredibly innovative model kit line for its day for not only releasing screen accurate model kits from Mobile Suit Gundam but also gave the Japanese modeling manufacturing community a new focus on more accurate kits for other anime as well. After these kits were released, gone were the days of toy like model kits of the ’60s and ’70s and enter the days of screen accurate model kits that are still being produced today.

As much as I praise the Best Mecha Collection Gundam releases, there are a few kits in the line that do not exactly hit the mark like the others and while not entirely a disaster, still could have used some better refinement earlier in the prototype phase.

One such kit is the 1/144 Guncannon. The Guncannon is one of the three major mechas based on assault carrier White Base, which also included Gundam and the Guntank. Guncannon is the close support heavy weaponry when the three mobile suits are in combat.

1/144 Guncannon comes boxed with 2x red sprue & 1x Color Instructions. Options are two types of right hands, one with a laser rifle and one without. A little background on this kit, this was the first Best Mecha Collection kit I build since the 1980s. I built this in 2010 and had it on the backburner for review until I built the Gundam and Guntank kits first. This is also an original kit and not a current reissue.

Guncannon is a fairly simple build, but some painting needs to be done early on. This includes the grey elbow section. This part should be assembled and painted, masked and then assembled into the arm. The red should be painted then finally the grey shoulder painted last. Thankfully the fists can be snapped into the wrist after painting.

The shoulder cannons can be assembled in after painting as with the arms. It is very difficult to get the pegs to snap into the arms into the body but it can be done with some tweezers, patience and time.

Legs should be assembled first then the body snapped and glued around them. Like my Gundam kit, the disk that holds the head into the body can trimmed down so one can easily snap it into the body after the body is painted. This is a good suggestion as the head is white and could easily get overspray when painting the red body.

This is the kit I realized that Tamiya paints just did not work for me when it came to anime kits. I believe Tamiya red is way to dark and opaque and painting it over the bright red plastic of the kit took numerous coats and still feel it did not cover properly. Tamiya unfortunately has no other flat red options so I was stuck with this very dark red. I was not very happy with this finish and next time I will paint the kit with one of Gunze’s many reds they have in their line.

Finally, my big problem with the kit is the sculpting of the kit itself. Most obvious is that the feet are too darn big! Everything below the waist seems a bit off, being bottomed out with some very big feel. I feel Guncannon, like the VF-1 Valkyrie/Battroid, is one of the most difficult designs to put into a real tangible item. While this Guncannon has some obvious scaling and engineering issues, I believe Guncannon was finally managed better in its HG and MG grade kit releases.

If you build the Best Mecha Collection 1/144 Guntank and Gundam, one is somewhat obligated to build the Guncannon to complete the trilogy for display. But if you decide to tackle one of these Best Mecha Collection kits, I would suggest passing Guncannon up for one of the many other great kits in the line.

©2014 Photos and Review by Leonardo Flores and CollectionDX