This post will focus on the effect parts and the stand that comes with the Dragon Momoko Metel Build Strike Freedom.
Short version: there are good parts and bad parts.
Long version:
While it might at first appear that the insane mass of effect parts a good thing, poor quality and odd design choices hinder the real enjoyment of this part of the kit.
The display stand on it’s own is very good and a nice addition to have with any kit. The down side is that I am worried about the connection between the kit and the stand. The kit weighs quite a bit and I worry about that connector snapping. I would have liked to have seen them reinforce that part for this kit.
As for the effect parts, the chest requires a part swap which is okay and the effect parts for the skirt guns look really cool and attach very securely to the kit. The down side is the skirt guns will sag over time due to the weight weight of the effect parts. The dragoons( that is the name for the gundam seed version of the funnels) have two sets of effect parts, green(shown, total 10) and pink(not show, total 8 in 2x styles), which require part swaps to attach. Either version looks okay, even if I am not thrilled with odd design choice of a part swap. The green version is also used with the beam rifles, but these effect parts attach very poorly to the beam rifles.
There is a stand attachment that you can connect the dragoons to, in order to have them flying around the kit. The attachment looks really good, but sadly the connection points to the dragoons are very brittle. I broke many of them just trying to set up these shots and I doubt I will be able to get them to work again without a lot of effort. Part of this issue has to due with the fact that the connection points to the dragoons is set inside the dragoon itself. I feel like there would have been a simpler solution to this problem that would have also overcome the problems that Bandai discovered.
On a positive side, the wings of light are super cool! Even if they are on a bit of the over kill side of things, their design is much more interesting than what Bandai has done in the past for this effect. The wings are pre-made and they connect on to the wings in the same locations as how the dragoons connect to the wings. The stand for displaying the deployed dragoons actually has supports for the wings so that you do not have to worry about weight issues. These wings do need some nub clean up as the are pre-made and like most pre-made plastic parts there are nubs.
One big down side to all of these effect parts is how much space the full set up takes up. I do not plan on displaying the whole thing again until I figure out the dragoon display issue and until I move into a new place where I can customize the display of my kits more than I currently have the ability to. Even still it looks very amazing to see.
The only effect parts I have not discussed yet are for the beam sabers, but those are just the standard ones you get with any MG kit.
Last post will contain some comparisons and my closing thoughts on this kit.
