#baby's first gunpla

[robiland]

Time to build Aerial

[ryuki-blogs]

Aaand he's done! I overdid it with sanding in a few places and my attempt on panel lining failed miserably (the liner I had didn't stick at all) but I had fun! :D

The only peeve I have is that the neck joint is super loose and the head doesn't hold the pose almost at all but I don't know if it's something I did wrong or it's a kit issue, Gunpla people please enlighten me.

Still, I've built a little guy and I'm satisfied :D

[fureiya]

It is happening..

[bigbenalpha]

Welp, I done stepped in it now.

[overlyemotionalbreakfastcereal]

i’m allowed to post this now so uh this is how you take pictures of gunpla right

[kaxtwenty]

do you know of a good baby's-first-gunpla for someone brand new to the hobby? i have a housemate who can probably help me but ideally i'd like something i could assemble on my own

The Entry Grades are quite literally designed to be baby's-first-gundpla, so that could be a pretty good starting point. Currently there's only a few of them however, with the main three being the OG Gundam, Nu Gundam and Strike Gundam. The point of Entry Grades is that they can be assembled without the usage of tools or stickers, so everything can just be snapped off and put together.

But if you got a good pair of nippers, some tweezers and maybe some sandpaper, going with quite literally any of the High Grade "protag" Gundam sets will work. I'd avoid stuff like Real Grade or Master Grade as those are designed specifically for the skilled hobbyists. But you can’t go wrong with either a HG Aerial or HG Barbatos as your first!

And if you want to dip your toes into some non-Gundam gunpla kits, I found both of these sets to be pretty simple and easy.

There's a whole lotta options, but these are what come to mind when I think of "good first options." I'm still a newcomer myself (haven't even learned how to paint them for extra detail yet), so take it with a grain a salt.

[winonaparadise]

👼baby's first stream schedule! lots of working on GIRLS WITH HORNS this week with a dash of trying BALATRO for the first time and some more GUNPLA SUNDAYS! come hang with me 6pm EST Tues/Thurs/Sunday!

follow here: >>> twitch.tv/winonaparadise <<<

[puppygirlclaspers]

Hey people, so I was trying to find out a way of immersing myself in mecha even more and I settled on the idea of making funny little reviews about the gundam kits I've built on my blog so here it is tee hee

(Very minor spoilers for Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury season 1 episode 6 ahead)

I present to you:

Demi Trainer A.K.A baby's first gundam kit

This is what kickstarted my addiction to building these little guys and honestly it was such a blast as my first experience with it! I saw the HG (1/144) model of this mobile suit in a nerd shop I was in that I was told had these kits and I figured it was a good starting point. I liked the idea of the training mech from g-witch acting as training wheels for me building these kits.

Fun Facts About the Demi Trainer

the MSJ-121 Demi Trainer is a mobile suit seen in The Witch From Mercury series, and is primarily used by students in Asticassia as a mobile suit to train with (hence the name Demi Trainer)

The Demi Trainer is just one model in a series of other Demi mobile suits! Other Demi models we see throughout the series are the MSJ-OP122 Demi Garrison (seen early on when Suletta Mercury's Gundam Aerial is being detained after her first duel), the MSJ-R122 Demi Barding, which is a more advanced model of mobile suit, equipped with more armaments, while still maintaining the Demi model philosophy. There's also Chuchu's iconic MSJ-105CC Demi Trainer, which is an older model that has been heavily modified by Chuchu in order to compete with more modern iterations of Demi mobile suits.

Our primary experience with Demi Trainer in the show is when Suletta Mercury is tasked with piloting one as part of her spotting exam, where she has a particularly difficult time passing it. It honestly made me feel really sad when I watched it for the first time :(

The Design of Demi Trainer

I really love how this mobile suit looks! It's a very simple design but I feel it's so effective at conveying it's primary purpose: to be a baseline training model for mobile suits. It's a lightweight mobile suit with minimal modifications done to it so that it can achieve high mobility and it's easy to maintain. It also looks very much like something a company would mass-produce for an institution like Asticassia.

Demi Trainers are used with a standard set of equipment, which includes a simple shield, a beam gun for ranged combat, a saber stick for melee combat, a combat knife, as well as the Daedalus multi-tool, which can be shaped and transformed into a variety of tools. This makes Demi Trainer a very versatile mobile suit, appropriate for use in many different situations. It doesn't seem to come with any sort of flight module, though that makes sense, as I imagine those are quite expensive to include on mobile suits, and this is meant as a simple trainer mech.

Of course, since it's heavily used in Asticassia, Demi Trainer also has an equipable antenna module for use in duels within the academy.

The Demi mobile suits are known for their extensive customisability, and the Demi Trainer is no different! You can even see these aspects within the design of this mobile suit. There are many little slots and places where you can modify Demi Trainer and potentially add modules or armaments, and you can see the extent of this modification in Chuchu's modified Demi Trainer, despite it being an older model. I'd really love to see what kind of modifications other student in the academy would apply to their Demi Trainers!

Building the Kit

My experience with building this gunpla kit was a blast! I was so excited to get started on this, and the kit did not disappoint! It wasn't too complex so that I was overwhelmed, but it also wasn't so simple that I was bored. Hearing all the clicks and feeling the pieces snap together as I built it was extremely satisfying, and I really like how the instruction booklet was structured.

You're not told to put individual parts of the mobile suit together until you've built a number of modules beforehand. For example, the instructions tell you to build the head, body and arms before telling you to put those parts together, and I think that makes the experience more satisfying. The same structure applies for the waist and legs of the kit, and being able to put all of the parts together at the end is such a good feeling! Of course, you can totally ignore the structure of the booklet and put parts together as you build them, which is also fine.

The kit also comes with a variety of stickers, and with the help of hindsight after having built 2 more kits after this one (which I also plan on reviewing), I can confidently say that the stickers for the Demi Trainer are probably the easiest to apply based on my limited experience! You get a small choice of stickers too, mainly a choice of what colour you want the middle torso portion to be. Of course, I picked purple because it's my favourite colour, but other choices also include red, blue, yellow and pink.

At one point while building this kit, I tried to take a part out so I could hear and feel the click of it again as I assembled it, but I accidentally applied too much force into it and the piece snapped, which make me panic but thankfully I had some glue to repair it, which was a huge relief. Not a fault of the kit itself, just my own excitement getting the better of me! Though I will recommend to be careful when assembling these kits if you're not experienced, and be gentle with them.

I was so so happy when the kit was finished and I could play around with it! Building it is half the fun, and the other half is posing it in all sorts of cool ways! You've seen some pictures of that already, but I also have some gifs of the kit spinning on a little turntable saved for the end.

The HG Demi Trainer kit comes with just the shield, saber stick and beam gun that I mentioned previously, which I personally don't mind too much but of course having more options for equipment is always a good thing. Thankfully you can buy an expansion set for Demi Trainer that includes a beam rifle, gatling gun, combat knife, 4-cell hand missile launcher and open hand parts, as well as some smaller extras. I personally don't have this expansion kit but I would love to get it at some point!

Overall, I think this is a fantastic kit to build, particularly if you are new to gunpla and are looking for a place to start. The Witch From Mercury kits are some of the best quality I think I've seen in gunpla (again, from my limited experience) and if you love the series and want to collect gunpla, you can't go wrong with getting this kit. The posable nature and movement of the kit itself is great, which I think is really cool and allows for some creative shots to be made with them!

This is a little series of posts that I hope to continue in the future! If you have any suggestions on things to add or change please let me know! I'm open to constructive criticism :)

[bloodraven55]

baby’s first gunpla(s) have arrived and i’m about to start trying to put aerial together 🙌

[zolanort]

IT IS DECIDED. TONIGHT I AM PUTTING TOGETHER MY FIRST BABY LEVEL RX-78-2 GUNPLA. LOOK FORWARD TO GUNDAM SPAM AND REMEMBER THAT MY PROFILE DESCRIPTION and also my last two profile pictures WARNED YOU THAT THIS DAY MIGHT COME.

[aylynn]

Baby's first backlog items. Which look as if they had been chewed on by the third country postal service despite having had protection over them matching the boxes themselves in volume. The runners are A-OK tho, but I'm still salty. I guess I'd better wait for my gunpla to be shipped directly from Japan (which takes forever) than order through China.

[ryuki-blogs]

Mom said it was my turn on the Xbox

[toyhdgehog]

baby's first gunpla

[symphonic-scream]

I'm home from work so I'll be doing more of the asks I got last night but first I just wanna say

Yusuke Fans, I've been doing something. I work at *Thrift Store* (unnamed, so I can, say things), in the Donation Bay (I accept the donations) and one day, back in October, I saw a Beanie Baby Lobster

Actually, really, my coworker walked up to me, holding it, singing the Evangelion opening

Why? Because the week before I told him about how I wanted to own the Eva Crawfish/Lobster Gunplas, I wanted to build them, and had to tell him they existed

Anyways. So the Beanie Baby Lobster. He's been in my pocket ever since. I've taken to calling him Yusuke, and I'll just, remember he's there and hold him out to a friend of mine and just. Grin.

So here's some photos of Yusuke, and all the places he's gone

Walking to class, Yusuke in hand

These were taken at work! He made a friend!

He even joined me and my other coworker on our journey to work after an ice storm

So. The Lobster.

[mahoushoujotechsupport]

episode 3 rewatch time

oh suletta... if only you knew you would become the ultimate wifeguy in like a few months time

well, she's not lying. here's also the first instance of prospera without her helmet on and as a japanese user on twitter brought to attention after the finale, she's sitting down.

the "my legs are failing" thing kinda felt like an asspull until i read that tweet and they posted a few examples, but this is definitely something i will be keeping track of during my rewatch

nika coming up to suletta with praises must have been so refreshing after everything she just went through and then having to hear everyone shit talking you on your way to class

tanuki please

so we all assumed prospera gave everyone fake data so that aerial isn't found out as a gundam, but with the schwarzette existing, i think it's safe to say vim got actual gundam info here, right?

god i wish they had had the time to get more into things like this! presumably godoy found this out for her, but like who even was godoy!? we didn't find out his last name until the final episode and he didnt have a proper character page on the official site until the end either

suletta, you gentle little baby

so our el4n arc starts here and in retrospect this is so well done. like at first we're led to believe miorine just doesn't want any of the big 3 taking advantage of suletta because she sees her as naive... until suddenly it's obvious girl is just jealous af

miorine, you gremlin

interesting thing to note is how shaddiq earns himself a reputation as a lady's man because he duels over other women, never once until ep 9 dueling over miorine because he thought it would make him seem like a better man to her and im just like... lol? but dueling over a ton of other girls was fine? i don't actually dislike shaddiq, but what the hell man, you're stupid lol

this is a little bit of a neat parallel. inside the dueling committee lounge after secelia starts joking on guel, suletta stands up for him (sound familiar?)... then after exiting the elevator suletta starts telling him about her little motto and talking about her mom (again, sound familiar?). guel fell for suletta for pretty much the same reasons miorine did at the beginning but no hets allowed

nah, of course she's not jealous

i just like how content with herself miorine looks here lol

also as a side note, this could have easily been written as a fight where suletta powers through on her own and saves the day, keeping miorine as a damsel in distress, but that's not what happens here. sulemio work as a team and as soon as something goes wrong, miorine throws herself in there to help and fight too

i know the rainbow's because of the water still dripping down from the sprinkler system but still lol

we did

i get how suletta telling him he's strong really makes guel fall for her because he sees her as a worthy opponent so a compliment from her means a lot more than say lauda having his weird brocon moment or felsi and petra fangirling over him... but sir, did you really have to just like propose on the spot? (i say as if i wouldn't be having a totally different reaction were this miorine lmao)

ok that's a wrap i guess. not sure if i'll watch ep 4 tonight also because i kinda wanna get started on a new gunpla kit lolz

[turbobyakuren]

BACK INTO BUSINESS BABY WITH HG CHUCHU DEMI TRAINER

A short, simple, yet very fun gunpla. The posing is a bit tricky since the gun is attached to her waist but it packs a lot of punch once you understand how it works

If you’re looking to get into gunpla, i say this one is GUARANTEED to be a fun first build!!!