[GIS] Where to buy?

[What is a "Gundam"?][The Different Grades of Gundam][Basic Tools]

I just realized while I did link to some places to buy Gundam in previous entry, I didn't specifically tell you what online sites are great for buying Gundam when you do not have a local place to buy kits. I myself have not bought a kit since my local shop temporarily closed (they're opening back up in March so I'm sure I'll be getting my Gundam buying fix soon after). You can also get kits on sites like Ebay, Amazon and any other bidding site but I'm going to show you official sites.

[go to site][Gundam]

Price Range:

¥100-7800+

$1-85+

HobbyLinkJapan is really good if you want to be able to preorder kits and buy directly from Japan without having to go through a 3rd party service. The prices are very good and the kits are packaged very well when being shipped- basically they come in tact and if you have a problem you can contact customer service. HLJ is very good about fixing problems such as a kit getting squished. I put this site first because they are good for more than just Gundam kits- you can get shirts, supplies and other things that aren't Gundam related.

 

 [go to site]

Price Range:

$30-$80+

You can get more than just Gundam kits here. There are even ones of the ship from One Piece. I myself have never used this site so I don't know if they ship their products well but I have had people recommend I order from here... so maybe one day I will!

 [go to site]

 Price Range:

$1-80+

The website promises a "110%" savings on price. That doesn't mean you get things for free though (as cool as that would be), but it just means they are set on giving you a good price which it seems they do. I have a friend who has build over 100 Gundam kits and he's bought a pretty good amount from here.

 [go to site]

HobbyWave is one of the more well known sites (after HLJ) to buy Gundam, but the advantage is this site is mainly Gundam with a few other series and divideds the products by grade and scale which is pretty convenient when you aren't ready for the high grades. I've gone to websites and seen really nice looking kits only to find out they were perfect grades or master grades when I had just started building Gundam and would get sad knowing my skill level was no where near where it needed to be for PG/MG. It's nice not getting my hopes up.

 [go to site][Gundam]

Price Range:

$2-85+

J-list is not the best for actual kits (I did a search today and did not find any but sometimes they do have kits listed) but for the magazine's that either focus exclusively on Gundam or feature Gundam. You can also get things like this figure:

 

[GIS] Basic Tools

 [What is a "Gundam"?][The Different Grades of Gundam]

Now that you know what a Gundam is and have chosen a grade/scale to work on, time to get some basic tools (and optional ones that can make the building process much easier). A lot of these tools can be bought locally at either a craft store such as Micheal's or Hobby Lobby; or at super market places such as Walmart and Target. You may also be able to get some of these at Walgreens or some other drug store, but not always. Just check the office supply isle at any store you go to.

These tools are for snap together kits!

These are also known as "wire cutters".

Price Range:  $3-$10

I've seen people build kits without these. Side cutters are used mainly to get the kit pieces off of the runners (also known as trays) without splitting a piece in half or breaking it into pieces. I really recommend getting a pair of these if you're building a kit with thin or really long pieces. I made the mistake of building the following kit without using clippers... let's just say I got a few cuts and one of the four pieces used to make the main part of the kits board split.

I would say this tool and the X-acto knife are the two most important tools you'll need even though you could in all technicality build many Gundam kits without them; but not very well. I've built kits with and without these tools. The one's I built without tend to have pieces fall off and stubs left over after pulling a piece off the runners.

 Price Range: $5-$10 

(for a good starter handle/blade)

Blades: $3+ 

(for a pack of 5)

Most people know this type of knife as an X-acto knife because that brand is really popular. Walmart has a brand of their own (even though some carry X-acto), and various other hobby stores don't always carry X-acto brand. Any hobby knife will due as long as it isn't old and rusted. You will need to replace the blades every so often, but blades are only about $3 for a pack of 5. There are different shapes of blades. I've only ever really used the classic #11 shape which most of the standard handles come with. Seems to work for any grade of kit.

 This type of cutting mat is also known as "self healing cutting mat" because the material is hard to cut through and can heal itself... really hard to explain the science behind it.

Price Range: $10-$40

(magazine's vary in price)

I haven't had the money to get a new cutting mat (the one I had warped from leaving in my car too long); instead I've been using a magazine and sometimes a plastic place mat (the kind that kids usually use when eating). All work, but I do recommend getting a self healing mat if you plan to build a lot of kits. This allows you to build kits almost any where without ruining tables, counters and other furniture. It also helps keep little pieces you'll shave off with the hobby knife from escaping.

[GIS] The different Grades of Gundam

Gundam model kits are broken down into different "grades" and scales. These grades usually indicate how detailed and/or complicated the kit can be with a range of takes two minuets to build to ones that can take days. Even though a kit is of a higher grade, that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be harder. I've built high grade kits in a matter of a few hours and others that take a lot longer (for example a HG 0 Gundam kit only took me only a few hours to build while a kit of the same grade but for Unicorn Destroy Mode took me much longer).  The difficulty honestly depends mainly on the mobile suit the kit is based on. 

The Unicorn Gundam is a much more complicated and detailed suit than many found in the Gundam universe, and this is because the suit itself has several modes- Unicorn and Destroy. Destory mode has even made already complicated Master Grade kits even more complicated due to adding an extra frame (the red parts you see are a lot of the time a whole new layer that has to be built. Heck, I've even built an SD kit that had this red frame). Not only is the Unicorn itself a very complicated suit, so are several others from the series such as the Kshatriya  and Sinanju. Due to these designs being fairly detailed and complicated, the kits based on these suits (despite the scale and grade) tend to break the mold of the grades I'll be explaining to you today but out of all the kits I've built (I'll have to make a list one day) ones from the Unicorn OVA series have proven time and time again to be my favorite (I've built several Unicorn kits already and have 2 master grades I need to get around to building one day...).... even though those legs and hip are a pain to keep balanced. Some of my kits (mainly the SD Unicorn) tend to lose legs and other parts just from being breathed on.

I won't be including some of the other grades that have much less in the series such as jumbo and mega >.< I might do a smaller GIS side entry or something one day about these since I have seen a few mega grades in person.

Also there is a very interesting grade known as SD or "super deformed" that instead of including here I will dedicate an entire entry to due to this scale being very good for beginners.

In order to talk about grades of kits, I might as well start with kits that usually don't have a grade. These are often not seen in actual specialty stores (this is based on my experience) and have to be ordered online. These kits usually don't have an accurate scale and the details are very limited. I myself have built two no grade kits, one being of Red Frame which is my 3rd favorite kit to build (thanks to my friend Ron who's known locally as Box Gundam for buying the kit for me a few years back for my birthday) and the other being from Gundam 00.

You can find a nice selection of no grade kits here and here/here. I personally would recommend the second two links as I have liked Robots4Less on Facebook. They restock often; so if a kit is sold out within a week or so they'll most likely have that kit again. No grade kits are ones that I like to refer to as "baby's first gundam" as they aren't hard to build at all, but if you're just starting yet have built any sort of model (cars, airplanes, worked on a train set, etc) then this will be no challenge at all to you. I'd actually recommend to most people to skip over building this grade unless you want something to practice detailing or painting on before painting an expensive kit (I'll talk more about detailing a gundam in an upcoming GIS entry). No grade kits also don't always have a scale.

I myself have not built many first grade kits, so my knowledge on these are very limited. All I really know is that these are a bit more detailed than no grades, and the name was coined to show the difference from NG kits. As technology got better so did the ability of Gundam kits to have more detail and be snap together kits rather than ones that required glue. You can still buy some first grade kits on the web via sits such as this.

Zaku II is the only first grade kit I've build. The pieces were all an orangish red color, so painting is necessary if you want to get the actual look of a Zaku II. Instead of doing the actual colors I did a custom paint job which you can see below.

HG kits are possibly the most common grade that can be found anywhere- either at local shops or online. This is mainly due to the amount of detail these kits can have, and the prices are very affordable. I recently picked up a Farsia HG kit due to wanting more "female" gundam (well, ones piloted by females). As of working on this article I haven't really gotten around to building it but from looking at the runners (I'll go over some terminology one day in a GIS entry, but runners are what the pieces are attached to before you gut them off to put together in a specific order) the kit looks fairly easy to build.  If you're building a kit for the first time, high grade is a good scale to go with especially if you pick up a kit from 00 Gundam or Gundam AGE (which the Farsia kit is from). HG kits are usually in a 1/144 or 1/100 scale meaning the kit is 1/144th of the size that a real life Gundam would be. They are also snap together kits that do not require glue.

There are not many real grade kits on the market, and I have yet to build one (though I really would love to get my hands on a RG RX-78-2). There aren't many of these kits because the line started in 2010 with only an average of 1-2 kits in the line being released each year. These kits are very detailed (even surpassing many MG kits which I'll go over soon in this post) and include flexible inner frames much like the bones of a human body. This allows for additional posability the other grades could not grant the kits to have.

These kits are not for beginners and should not be your go to kit even when you are more experienced at building. If introducing a friend to building please do not tell them to go buy a real grade kit. These kits are usually in a 1/144 scale. These kits are also fairly priced considering the amount of detail they tend to have.

I've built a few master grades in my time, including Exia Gundam and Crossbone. Master grades aren't exactly easy to build and are very time consuming. I do recommend these for the more experienced gundam builder due to the nice amount of detail... but most aren't exactly cheap. In fact many run $75+. I was lucky enough to win a set of six last summer due to a Gundam Campaign gundam.info had been running. These kits are very detailed and snap together which means no glue is necessary. The scale from these range from 1/100.

I'm not really looking forward to building my MG Unicorn because I've heard it's a pain when trying to put on display. I used to have my friends on display in unicorn mode and I remember the legs being very unstable with parts that often feel off for no apparent reason other than I happened to breath too hard. I'm a big fan of  gundam Unicorn, but I have built a HG and SD of the kit sooo I know the suit itself is very flawed when it comes to trying to put on display without limbs or parts falling off!

You want pricey? Well here's pricey!

This kit runs about $230 without shipping. EEESH! I still really want this due to my love of Red Frame but that is a lot of moola for something I have to assemble. These kits are pricey due to detail and extra articulation such as individual finger joints. According to Wikipedia, the kits can take years to develop because the PG line is also used to develop new ways of making the kits before implementing into earlier lines such as HG and MG.

[GIS] What is a "Gundam"?

The simple answer to this question would be "Gundam are giant robots that are piloted in some sort of fashion." but that answer doesn't really tell you much, especially if you aren't even familiar with the American counter part that is Transformers. Another way to answer this question would be "a mechanical, walking vehicle that is similar to the shape of a human" (even though there are some Gundam that have more of an animalistic shape). Gundam them selves are usually referred to as "mobile suits" and are inspired by power armors from the American novel Starship Troopers [thank you wiki]. 

You might be familiar with a little show that used to play on Cartoon Network called Megas XLR. While not the best example of an "american gundam like series" (in fact, this follows more of the format that Macross does considering the aliens versus humans and all)  it is one that from my experience a lot of the 90s cartoon watching generation have seen. While there are also no model kits that I know of from this series, and while the series itself doesn't really follow the same format as Gundam does (heck, Megas XLR focuses more on fighting an alien race rather than fighting with humans who happen to just not live on Earth) it's easier to tell people Gundam is similar to Megas XLR because it is a bit more Gundam like than Transformers because there IS  a human pilot rather than an intelligent life form that happens to take on the form of a giant robot.

I wouldn't mind fighting off aliens in a giant robot.

Want to know something interesting? The Gundam anime actually could be considered a flop- well, pre-model kit introduction. In Japan the anime (I'm of course referring to the first Gundam series, not any of the recent ones) was actually cancelled. Originally intended to be 52 episodes, the show ended at 43. It wasn't until Bandai started released kits based on the mecha designs that the show actually became popular.

Cartoon Network has played a few Gundam series over time most notably Gundam Wing and Gundam SEED. Oh, and lets not forget about that lovely little gem us Gundam fans love to hate- SD Gundam. You may have also seen Gundam 00 on Sci-fi (back before it got changed to SyFy.... sigh). Overall, Gundam has made it's way to American audiences. 

Now, there is so much more I could go into Gundam wise even just to explain the different aspects such as manga and anime that compile what is modern day Gundam, but I'll spread those out into different entries. Thank you for reading the first part of what I'm calling GIS- Gundam Info Series (well tech the second but I'll be redoing the supplies part).