HGBF Wing Gundam Fenice Review

The HGBF Wing Gundam Fenice’s first TV appearance was in the Gundam Build Fighters anime. Piloted and built by Ricardo Fellini in the show. The design of the Fenice is heavily based on the original Wing Gundam.

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Build and Out-of-the-box appearance

Firstly, building this kit is a breeze, as expected from a High-Grade model kit. It might take someone less than an hour to finish this build and at least 2 hours if the builder is inexperienced with the Gunpla building.

Some sprues are exposed and need cleaning before finishing the build. These are more apparent behind the forearm armor and legs. This kit only has a small number of stickers, the most important one is for the chest piece.

Out-of-the-box this kit looks fantastic. You might need to ink the panel lines to make the details pop up more. With the asymmetric design, you might expect that the HGBF Wing Gundam Fenice would tip over on one side but that isn’t the case here. The backpack is light and Fenice can stand and pose without support from a stand. You will need to paint the right shoulder grey to be more accurate to the original design.

Even with the buster cannon attached, it can still stand on its own, but it is more unstable due to the added weight.

Overall Looks and Colors

HGBF Wing Gundam Fenice doesn’t follow the normal color scheme of the original and EW Wing Gundams. It uses green and an off-white color scheme while its wings try to reference the Italian flag with its green-white-red color scheme.

It has an asymmetric design with the right side looking like a generic Gunpla model while the left side is from the Wing Gundam design. This is one of the coolest-looking redesigns of the Wing Gundam I’ve ever seen and fits well with the Gundam Build Fighters’ theme of encouraging customization of Gunpla designs(which is ironic because this is a pre-built design).

This is a splendid example of how to redesign a Gunpla, keeping the familiar but adding a more unique personality to it. To be frank, all Gunpla based on season 1 of Gundam Build Fighters really looks great.

Accessories 

This model only has a few accessories included. HGBF Wing Gundam Fenice has the following accessories.

• Buster rifle
• A small beam rifle
• Beam rapier
• Beam cloak

The buster rifle and the beam rifle can be put together to make a bigger rifle. That rifle can be attached to the backpack.

The beam cloak can only be attached to the left shoulder armor and looks great paired with the beam rapier. The beam rapier can be stored in the arm using an add-on attachment that will hold the accessory.

One gripe is that the monocycle, the Meteor Hopper, shown in the anime is a separate accessory that you need to buy. I don’t really like accessories that you need to buy separately but you can skip the monocycle. It looks silly even with the Fenice on it. If you like it, get it. It will give more additional posing options.

Articulation

This model kit has fantastic articulation and good posing options for an HG kit.  Both shoulders are on a ball joint, and both swing out. The arms are attached to the shoulder with a peg and can move 360 degrees.

The head is on a ball joint and can easily be adjusted. The armor behind and on the side of the head prevents it from moving 360 degrees. The torso and legs are also on a ball joint.

This model kit can do many dynamic poses even without a stand. Having a stand only expands what poses you can do with this Gundam.

The only problem I have with Fenice is that it’s an HG model kit. It easily falls apart if you are trying to do dynamic poses. The parts in the hand are what frustrate me the most because they keep falling out and dropping the rapier. Arms would pop out the socket, this is a design quirk since the refreshed HG design for the Wing Gundam and it seems that Fenice adopted this quirk from its predecessor

Conclusion and Recommendation

This is a subjective 4 out of 5 for me. This is my favorite Gundam that came out in the Build Fighters series. Great visual design and revision of the Wing Gundam. The asymmetric look really stands out. The green color looks great. I wish it were darker.

I wish this had an RG version because the frame would make this design sturdier than it is right now.

Can I recommend this to a beginner builder?

Absolutely, this is an amazingly simple build with a very articulate and excellent design. The only thing that a beginner might need to do is to learn to ink the panel lines because it really needs it.

For more experienced builders, this is a good cheap model kit that could help kill time and definitely an incredibly good buy for an HG model.

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