1/44 Real Grade Tallgeese

Mobile Suit: OZ-00MS Tallgeese
Release Date: April 2018
Series: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

Start Date: May 25, 2019
Finish Date: May 16, 2025

This was the main antagonist suit for the first half-ish in Gundam Wing, and in-universe is the first true mobile suit invented for combat. It's piloted by the After Colony universe's Char clone, Zechs Marquise.

My friend Zack took a trip to Japan in 2019 and asked if I wanted him to bring back any gunpla - I asked for this one. I was really interested in trying the Real Grade line and as an American Gundam fan the Tallgeese is one of my favorite mobile suit designs. The centurion look is such a great representation of the After Colony universe - its aesthetics are much more unrealistic than UC's, but there's refinement and elegance as well. Kitwise, this is technically a Ver. Ka design - it's not fully accurate to the anime - but the only major differences are in proportion and coloration. This kit has more of an emphasis on white parts with yellow accents, whereas the anime had more black coloration, particularly in the backpack and waist.

This was an unpainted build - only the interior of the thrusters were painted metallic copper, which I've done on the MG GM Custom and HG Leo. I still like this color a lot so I'll probably continue with it. I purchased third-party waterslide decals from D.L. Model Decal - these match the included stickers almost exactly, and I applied them per the manual. My only slight complaint was that the red and black ink were slightly off in alignment, but I don't even know if you can tell in the photos - it's very, very close. Panel lining was with Tamiya dark gray, and topcoat was with matte Tamiya spray.

Since this was a modern (at the time) RG, no seamline removal was necessary - parts were all undergated or had panel line gaps built into their joins. The build for this was quite fun - at this point in the RG line, Bandai had pivoted away from the full pre-built inner frames that earlier RG's were defined by, so you get a much fuller build experience here. The way that the knees and elbows adust the armor positoning is great here, and really makes the articulation shine.

I took a large break in the middle of this - I think I was thrown off by some moving and then never returned to it - but was happy to finally finish this out.

I did have trouble posing this kit. The RG joints are very stiff - great for holding poses, but not so great for finding them. Additionally, the rifle gimmick of mounting to the shoulder armor is really, really troublesome as you have to negotiate 5-6 different joints to try to pose the arm - I could never quite find a satisfactory shooting pose. Nevertheless, I got enough that I was happy with, and liked the finished result a lot.

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