1/100 Red Frame Review + Blue Frame Cameo

As promised, the 1/100 Red Frame review is here!

Review Summary:

Pros:

1. Build quality is excellent!
2. Has an ‘Inner Frame’ design like MGs
3. Nice Array of Weapons
4. Many joints for good posability
5. Junk Guild Decals x 2!!!
6. The Gerbera Straight of course!

Cons:

1. Fragile Beam Rifle
2. Slightly fragile shoulder joint

Pictures:

This is a relatively old kit released in 2004. However, it really does promise a lot!

Build Quality

The build quality of this kit is really solid. Absolutely nothing falls off no matter how you pose it, and the parts snap together precisely. There are two identical decals included, both of them are the Junk Guild logos with Lowe’s (he’s the pilot of the Red Frame) name on it. One can draw many similarities of this no grade kit to a MG: the posability, the semi-revealed “internal frame” and the decals given. Panel lines are all over this kit. However, I’ve only bothered to panel line the leg armours, and it looks good enough.

Head

There are three stickers included for the head; one large green sticker for the main camera right behind the V fin, and two green stickers for each ‘eye’’ (the targeting sensors). Now, this is rather different from other kits, which usually have the eyes printed on a single strip of sticker. A meaningless gimmick I’d say. The red V fin tends to shift around as it does not sit into the socket deep enough, hence, it will wiggle around easily when you touch the head. A drop of glue should keep it still.

Body

There are two waist joints for the body. one in the pelvis that allows the torso to turn around and move side by side, as well as another one in the stomach area, that allows the upper torso to wiggle around its sides quite a lot. Quite an interesting design, not to mention that it allows the Red Frame to do some body-stretching action poses. For those who are wondering if it comes with the flight backpack, the answer is no. The flight backpack is actually the M1 Astray’s backpack, as Lowe got it from Orb during his visit of the M1 pilots.

Arms

The arms have superb posability thanks to the grand total of 6 joints: 2 for the wrist, 1 for the elbow, and 3 more in the shoulder (The MG Strike only has 5 and it has a double joint in the elbow a single joint for the wrist instead). In fact, its hand is capable of touching its own shoulder with no problem at all! This is due to the large pivotal area for each joint. The shoulder armour’s muscular, blocky look compliments the torso really well, and I like it.  There are 4 hands included in this kit: For the right hand, you have one for gripping the Gerbera Straight and beam saber, and another hand that pulls the trigger when you arm it with a beam rifle. For the left hand, you also have a hand that holds melee weapons. Have a guess what’s the last hand used for? To hold the sheath of the Gerbera Straight of course! This is surprisinging! A hand to hold a sheath? Isn’t that a little ridiculous? No, it’s actually meant for you to complete the unsheathing pose. Cool eh?

Legs

The legs of this model balances the model very well, unlike other 1/100 NG kits. This is because of the large surface area of the foot and a moving heel. Unlike other models, there are two joints in the heels, a usual ball joint and a swinging hinge to raise the heel up and down to allow the foot to stay flat on the display surface. There are many joints in the legs too: 2 at the pelvis, double joints in the knee and 2 in the heel. This gives the kit a lot of potential of posing. The leg is hardly obstructed by the side skirts or front skirts, as they contour around the ‘inner frame’

Weapons

This kit comes with 4 weapons and a shield, namely two beam sabers, a beam rifle and THE Gerbera Straight. The main selling point of this kit is the Gerbera Straight I guess. It’s the only mobile suit equipped with a traditional looking physical blade, and it looks cool too. Sadly, the Gerbera Straight needs a lot of painting, as the handle and sheath are all white, with only two red strips of stickers are provided for the sheath. For those who are interested, the blade is not molded in silver but white, but has a shiny metallic plating on top. It’s not too fragile, but you still have to be careful not to drop it or apply pressure to it or the blade might just snap. The beam rifle included is your normal beam rifle, nothing interesting. However, it does feature a moving secondary grip, so you can have a dual grip on it. It looks like a smg in this mode though. The beams included with kit are not your usual undetailed beams. They have been finely designed! Look at the pictures to see for yourself!

Flaws

The sheath of the Gerbera Straight will swing downwards from the side-skirt armour because its centre of gravity is not located at the joint. The shoulder joint to the elbow joint will break just like the Blue Frame. Some strong super glue did fix the problem very well though. The tip of the beam rifle is very fragile. Now moving on to the Blue Frame…

Comparison to Blue Frame 2nd L

The Blue Frame 2nd L is a really bad kit in comparison to the Red Frame, due to some minor design flaws that affected the whole stability of the kit and posability. Unlike the Red Frame, the Blue Frame has a high heel design for its foot. This increased the Centre of Gravity of the kit by a lot, making it unstable. The moving heel design just made it worse. The Blue Frame is armed with the huge anti-ship sword gattling gun. No doubt it’s cool, however, the Blue Frame is unable to hold it, and often the sword will drag the Blue Frame down due to its weight. The extended V fin of the Blue Frame is very fragile, due to it being too thin. Speaking of the head, the sides of the head fall off very frequently. The Armor Schneider knives’ sheath do not attach to the leg very well too. The backpack is too heavy for the Blue Frame to stand. In conclusion, the Blue Frame is a kit that you will want to avoid!