Finally got Wing Zero ver. Ka 2020 finished and honestly it's simultaneously the greatest and WORST gunpla--no, the greatest and worst
model kit I've ever dealt with.
So for starters, you get everything you'd want from a Wing Zero EW kit. The proportions are perfect, you get two Heero Yuy figurines to scale (one standing in the OP credits pose and another for the cockpit which fits perfectly but God help you if it gets slanted, cause then it's like threading a needle to get it to fit right again), and of course the Twin Buster Rifles (and two big green sabers, handles and a cool shield).
You might notice parts of it almost glowing but that's just surprisingly good foil stickers picking up the light, which they do easily.
I won't bore you with details you can find in any given review online but I will say this thing sucks. It's a waste of money. It's a miserable pile of crap that took me literally twenty minutes to barely get it into the iconic Endless Waltz finale pose, the very thing its new gimmicks were designed to properly emulate.
Twenty minutes.
I forgot to mention it comes with its own very big, very durable adjustable stand.
Honestly this is the greatest and most complete (and complex) kit for $65 I've ever known. The complexity really comes from the legs which, as you can tell from promo shots and reviews, are ingeniously engineered. However the unfolding knee armor isn't stuck to the leg from top to bottom. It's bottom is purposefully loose to let you adjust its bend manually. The top is locked in nicely, though, and it doesn't flap about.
Of course, this being my first Wing Zero kit, I took for granted the first time I could get it to stand upright all assembled. It was so much fun to fiddle with and pose and has so many tricks in its design (plastic feels amazing, too, and the entire thing (even the wing joints!) is durable even for a semi-hard shake. However, little did I know that it was really just the black magic of "freshly built", since recently I took it out of the iconic pose just to fiddle with it again only to find it nearly impossible to stand upright without having it lean forward as a counterbalance for the wings.
Also the wing backpack can fold down outward.
Also the torso, although unable to lean side-to-side or backwards has a double-bend that gives it a surprisingly tight ab crunch to make it able to look directly down at its toes.
Also for whatever reason the legs, particularly the left one (might be me fiddling with it, twisting it a lot) seem looser now by the hips than before, making it too easy to do a semi-split and fall backwards.
And "fall backwards" is the key issue. These wings, like the rest of its gorgeous, clever design, are well crafted and masterful but the stupid things make it impossible to naturally pose the Gundam with any finesse. It's ridiculous! I understand why. I'm not retarded. Physics and weight distribution etc. etc. but even so I can't believe the drastic shock it is to go from practically Dynames-tier solidity and posability to this nightmare of gingerly flexing every little piece just to sloooowly get it into the pose you want. Reminds me of a Kotobukiya kit but without anything falling apart.
And when I say "Dynames-tier" I'm not joking.
So beautiful! So much fun! So rewarding to fiddle around with and explore all the intricate details on the armor, legs, inner frame...
And then BAM! Fun's over. Now you get you spend minutes at a time trying to make the thing stand upright without collapsing. Oh, what's that? Maybe you can use the rifles as support? LOL You mental midget, those won't help you! They barely lock into the hands at all, relying more on the meager support of the ball-jointed thumb and the rifles' new back-peg design to stick them into the arms.
And that issue with the rifles is a major one for the aforementioned iconic pose.
Here I tried to get it right without wasting almost a half hour of my life. Couldn't do it. Had to hide my shame behind the cool shield.
TL;DR This kit is everything you could ever ask for but don't be dumb like me and expect things it can't provide. For all its new engineering and design it's still a Wing Zero EW at the end of the day with the same issues you'd expect. For the price it's an unrivaled masterpiece for what it is, perhaps the best recent ver. Ka. It's so beautiful that I can't even bring myself to panel line it, not that it needs it (the face vent does but that's about it). Ver. Ka stickers are always cool but it feels like an insult to slap them all over this kit.
I hate this incredibly frustrating disappointment and wish I got a Kyrios instead.
This is the greatest model kit I own and I love it like my own child.
That about sums it up.
P.S. I haven't tried either version of the "transformation flight mode" because screw that. Just getting it into the pose was 20mins down the drain. I'm not dealing with that...at least for now. Maybe I'll try them if I can figure out how to get it to stand up on its own again without falling (not because the legs are weak but just because of the weight, though again the inner hip joint of the left leg is annoying).
