RG Exia - WIP 5

Plated parts finally revealed

 

With the work for the MS completed in the previous post, this post will be about the weapons and the highly anticipated plated weapons.

Since there is no inner frame to work with, the first work to be done with this kit is to panel line the pieces and start the decaling process after cleaning the excess panel line.

 

Left: Pieces after panel lining

Right: Excess panel line cleaned and  pieces decaled

Since the work for all the parts are now officially completed, I will show the pilot or the 1/144 scale Setsuna F. Seiei.

1/144 scale Setsuna

I'll be leaving Setsuna the way/color he is moulded in. He is way too small for me to do a proper paint job. I think if I were to paint him, by the time I complete I will need the same spectacles as Donatello from the 2014 TMNT movie.

Image taken from Movie wallpapers

 

Instead of assembling the MS inner frame, I will first start to assemble the weapons for the Exia. The first weapon to start off the assembling process will be the GN Sword.

 

The GN Sword is split into 2 different sections. I shall call the first section the GN Sword mechanism and the second section is the blade.

 

Pieces of the first section

 

From what I can see, the GN Sword mechanism has the most detail for the entire RG kit. You can see the pipes running along the base. It is too bad that at this point, I have gotten a bit lazy to detail the parts. I guess no harm not detailing it because the armor will be covering them.

Front and back view of the completed GN Sword mechanism

 

The second part will be the blade where the plated weapon will be first used.

Pieces of the blade before assembly

The end result for the blade section is very nice especially with the chrome parts. 

;

Left and right view of the completed blade section

In order to attach both the sword and GN Sword mechanism sections together, a very small and important piece is required. If you were to lose this piece, the only way is to order a replacement piece (if you are in Japan) or make a battle damage GN Sword instead.

VIP (Very Important Piece)

All you have to do is attach the VIP to the hole on the blade section and clip the other end to the mechanism part. Once that is done, you will have the completed GN Sword.

Some articulation can be found on the GN Sword.

Original position

From the original position, the mechanism part can be rotated 270°. It will then be stopped by a peg.

 

Rotation of the mechanism section

 

Notice that only the mechanism section has moved? If you compare with the picture above with the picture of the blade section, you can still see that the peg is still attached.

 

Another articulation for the GN Sword is for the entire blade to rotate a complete 180°. In order to achieve this, just flip the blue part on the blade which indirectly moves the entire section.

Rotation of the entire section

GN Sword fully deployed

 

Now that the GN Sword is done, the next weapon is the GN Long and Short Blade. Since both have the same hilt assembly, doing both together would be more sensible.

Pieces of the GN Blade Long and Short

Completed of both GN Long and Short Blade

The next weapon to be assembled is the shield.
 

Pieces of the shield before assembly

The shield has an interesting feature. There is a piece which is for handle of the shield. There are a few holes at the back of the shield which allows you to attach the handle to the shield. The interesting feature is that you are able to attach the handle at different heights.
 

Shield and handle

 

There are a total of 3 different positions where you can attach the handle to the shield.

Position 1

Position 2

Position 3

The last weapon to wrap up this post are the beam sabers. Interestingly this kit comes with 2 different beam saber lengths. BanDai was also generous enough to provide 2 sets each means we have a tatal of 4 beam sabers: 2 short and 2 long.

 

Beam sabers for the RG Exia

 

There is nothing much to say about the beam sabers. The handle comes in one piece. All you have to do if decide if you want the long or short beam sabers and attach it to the handle.

 

With the weapons done, the next part will be assembling the inner frame for the Exia and followed by the assembling of the armor.