PG 00 Raiser Gundam WIP and Review (Part 6)

by Joseph Lim

I’m sure some of you don’t like putting the decals on your model kits. Honestly, the 00 Raiser looked great already even without any decals but I always like those little details on my kits. It is sometimes quite a tedious and delicate process but the result is always good.

These are some pictures before adding the decals and flat topcoat.

The PG kits comes with dry transfer decals and I like them because it’s easy to use and leaves a very small trace of the borders (almost invisible if you spray a layer of topcoat over it). You can use masking tapes to hold the sheet into place or use them as guidelines before you scratch them on. What I hate about dry transfers is that if you make a mistake, you can’t really fix it. Water slides are more forgiving and you can move them around before you put them into place.

The stickers provided have large borders around it. Ugly. I reduced the visibility of the borders by cutting as close as I can from the picture/text of the sticker.

I’m a bit disappointed that the PG kit came with these uncolored clear parts (6 total, 2 for each GN Sword II & 2 on each thigh). The 1/100 kit also had these parts uncolored so I thought they would at least provide colored ones for the PG version considering the expensive price tag.

So these are the arms and legs after adding the decals and topcoat. Looks kinda simplistic eh? I think I’ll be drilling some holes to some parts to add a bit of detail but I won’t overdo it.

Final Verdict
As my first PG kit, the 00 Raiser is certainly very unique both in its design and gimmicks. I especially liked the circular frame inside the chest unit and the special GN Condensers on the joints. The mechanism is great but sometimes it is a bit troublesome (especially the one on the shoulder) when you want to move it. I also forgot to mention that there’s a swing mechanism for the hip joint, which allows you to freely pose the legs. Cool feature, but I don’t think I’ll be posing it a lot.

Pros:
- Solid inner frame which allows a wide variety of movement
- Great mechanism for the joints
- Highly detailed 0 Raiser
- LED Gimmick for GN Drives
- Plenty of detail for the weapons

Cons:
- Parts are too simplistic and feels like a supersized MG kit
- Weak waist unit
- GN Condensers can sometimes be troublesome
- Some parts can’t be removed after placing them

The only concern I had was the weakness of the waist unit. When you combine the 0 Raiser on the back of the Gundam, the chest tends to fall backwards because of the weight. What I did was to actually add another layer of plastic inside the waist to stop the movement and increase the stability. You have to make sure the plastic is as thick as the gap as shown in the picture above (scans courtesy of Dalong.net).

Overall, it was a really interesting build for me and I spent quite sometime in it. I hope to get an airbrush in the future so I can play around with the color schemes. There were no hiccups when building this kit and I guess you’ll only need to make sure that the GN Condensers are screwed in correctly. Besides my concern with the waist and the lack of detail, I highly recommend it to anyone as a first PG kit and anyone who likes the 00 Gundam franchise. I’ll definitely be picking up more PG kits when I improve my skills and when I save up more $$. PG Strike or Zaku? For now, PG 00 Raiser = Win.

In the next post, I’ll add a gallery of the photos I’ve taken with the 00 Raiser.

You are viewing part 6, to view previous parts:
PG 00 Raiser Gundam WIP and Review (Part 5)
PG 00 Raiser Gundam WIP and Review (Part 4)
PG 00 Raiser Gundam WIP and Review (Part 3)
PG 00 Raiser Gundam WIP and Review (Part 2)
PG 00 Raiser Gundam WIP and Review (Part 1)
PG 00 Raiser Gundam WIP and Review (Part 0)

View the PG 00 Raiser Gundam Gallery.