For those who thought the 1 144 HG 00 raiser was a great kit, this one came along and dwarfed it in terms of quality and size. Quite possibly the largest gundam in my collection, and also maybe one of the widest gundams ever, this kit has quite a presence. Needless to say, it needs no paint but if you want to by all means try it. The gundam itself has a full inner frame, the head has one more or less but I'll explain later. The 0 raiser has MOST of an inner frame, the little blue wings on the wing binders do not and neither does the white flap at the top. The only stickers you need are the ones for the GN domes on the arms and legs. For the head you use a special set of stickers instead of the ones on the sticker sheet. This is so you can do the light gimmick. If you use the special stickers that come with it, you take off the backpack of the gundam and put the light unit (which uses LR41 batteries) inside the chest cavity and turn it on. Immediately you'll see a bright glow coming out of 00's eyes, sides of the head, and back of the head. This is because of a clear piece in the neck channeling the light into the clear piece in the head. It is an amazing feature, though it's only fair to warn you that a section of the head armor is thin, and you might see the green shining through the top of the head. if you buy more lights (or saved the two from MG exia ignition mode) then you can put them in the GN drives and the wing binders. The wing binder light can only be seen at a certain angle, so it's probably for the best just to use the head and drives for the lights instead. The articulation of this model is top notch. It is also very stable, i've had it for three weeks and I've been fiddling with it quite a bit and it's only fallen three times. It comes with all of it's weapons from the anime (except the GN missles... they overlooked those possibly to keep the wing binders light so that the GN drive arms aren't too stressed) and they are all good but with a few nitpicks. for one, the GN shields are not much different from the HG. Another one is that the GN sword II's do not rotate on their own, you have to pull it out and put it back in rotated. The GN sword III is HEAVY! For a model, it's a pretty heavy weapon and while it has no problems pointing the weapon straight forward, trying to bring it across the body is a bit difficult. Adding the raiser sword effect part only makes things worse. A quick and easy solution is to let super glue dry on the arm peg (the one underneath that white part) and after it's DRY put it back in, and you can have it going across the body raiser sword and all. The GN sword II's combined also flop a bit, the connection piece does not hold it well at all. Put the effect parts and it looks even worse, again super glue would fix it but i haven't tried. despite those nitpicks, the weapons are faithful to the anime and are really sharp and good looking. It looks amazing even using the regular beam sabers it comes with. i don't have a stand, but if you have the means you should really get a clear green stand. It can stand fine on it's own, but it's a gundam meant for aerial poses. It can look decent on the ground, but on a stand is where I'm sure it truly shines. Of all the representations of the 00 raiser (HG, NG, PG) this is the absolute best. None of the others, not even the perfect grade, can compete with this kit's combination of stability, detail, accuracy, and quality. 00 fan or not, pick this up ASAP or hold out for the 00 seven sword G coming out september 2011. (or get both ^_^)
