MG Nu Gundam Ver. Ka

Santa (aka my wife) has been very nice to me this year. A special gift was delivered directly from Japan right on Christmas Eve. I usually buy my own Gundam model kits but this time, my wife decided to get one for me. I am very spoiled.

When Bandai announced the MG Nu Gundam Ver. Ka earlier this year, my wife decided to place a pre-order on HLJ for me. There were lots of press on the internet about this model kit. Every time when there is a new photo appeared on the internet, I wished it would arrive sooner. And the wait is over, here I have it only 10 days after it was officially released in Japan.

At first, when I learned that it was not going to be released on December 15, I thought for sure it would not arrive on time for Christmas. Well, I am wrong again. Asia’s efficiency is something for all of us to learn from.

There are already tons of coverage of this kit on the internet like this one and I am not going to repeat any of it.  Suffice to say, I am like a kid again opening this gift during Christmas!

There are so many pieces in this kit. It is listed at ¥7,000. One of the more expensive MG kits out there.

To be honest, I haven’t quite spent enough time going through everything in this kit but I can’t wait to get started on it.

The Nu Gundam comes from the animated movie Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack. It was released in 1988, the year when I was still a young lad. I was already studying abroad and it was extremely difficult to get a hold of anime news and merchandises (before the time of the internet). A friend of mine from Hong Kong sent me a booklet and a 1/144 model kit of the Nu Gundam soon after it was released in 1989. I was so moved that I think I cried ^^;

I think it might be difficult for others to comprehend why I love the anime series Gundam so much. Some people also asked me why I spend so much money buying the model kits and not building them. It is hard to explain but I guess since I grew up with anime, I had lots of fond memories of my childhood associated with these plastic toys and sci-fi animated TV series. I guess it is a connection that I still like to keep. The smell of the plastic when you first open a box of gunpla, the graphically rich representation of the construction manual, the awesome box art and all the commercial photography of the product printed on the box, all make up the experience of having a gunpla.

I couldn’t afford to get tons of gunplas when I was growing up. I might have had 15 or 20 in total. Now that I can afford to get them, I guess it is my way of compensating myself for not having enough when I was growing up?! Gee… maybe I am over doing it, I guess I will have to write another blog post to report on the overindulgence of gunpla purchasing soon ^^;

Speaking of overindulgence, here is a box of the older MG Nu Gundam that I got a few years back when I was in Tokyo. There was a period of time I sold some of my gunplas because I thought I would never build them again. But then after I sold a few, I realized that I just couldn’t do it. So I bought back the ones I sold and this MG Nu Gundam was one of them. Maybe that has something to do with the overindulgence that has since exploded.

The older MG Nu Gundam was made in December 2000. Compared to the new MG Nu Gundam Ver. Ka, the new one has 12 additional years of manufacturing technology and experience. There are so much more details added to the new kit that it makes the old one very plain to look at. 12 years ago, the MG Nu Gundam was listed at ¥5,000.  So it hasn’t really increased in price by that much over the past 12 years given petroleum has increased from $47 a barrel to $190 a barrel over the same period.  Can you imagine if the price of toys had increased by the same magnitude?

Just for a little comparison of detail, above is the head and face pieces of the older MG kit.

Here are the head and face pieces of the new MG kit. Can you tell the difference?

2 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.