Note: This video was previously a Patreon Exclusive video. As I am no longer doing Patreon, it has been released publicly.
This model is a Gundam from the Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans anime. I’d watched the series, and thought this design was one of the cooler ones. Most of the mobile suits from that series had ridiculous looking “rock and roll boots”, having an almost 70s glam rocker look to them. This one caught my eye, in part, because it didn’t have such a severe case of “Kiss-itis”.
{You can read my blog entries for the Bael in these older posts from 2019.)
What I did like about this kit, and all of them from the IBO series, was the design of the kits themselves. Bandai labeled these “Full Frame Mechanics” kits. They are in 1/100 scale, but they are neither Master Grade, RE/100, or even High Grade types. (For some “help” on what those terms are, read this. 😉 )
The IBO 1/100 scale kits hit a sweet spot between all of them. While they did have a full frame, it wasn’t composed of approximately 47,000 bazillionty parts. And the kits were designed so that the full frame could be built in its entirety, and then the armor added on. And the armor was generally designed in such a way that there were no seam lines.
So regardless of whether you chose to snap them up in bare plastic, or decided to paint and weather them, the whole process was made fun by the wonderful engineering.
Of course, as so often happens, when I enjoy something, that sends some secret signal to manufacturers to stop producing it. (Pollyscale acrylics, Future floor polish, and the McDLT being some others…)
Now when a kit says “Full Frame Mechanics”, that actually means “Yet another kit Jon will buy in vain hopes it will be like the IBO FFM kits but really won’t be”.
Thankfully the 1/100 IBO kits can still be found on Ebay. You just have to be fairly Iron Blooded to shell out the dollars that these ever decreasing quantities of kits demand!
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