MJH Barbatos (glamour reel)

This is Not a review. Not yet anyway. It's gonna follow shortly.

Just wanted to show off the details and the fabulousness of the MJH Barbatos even if it's just straight built without any panel lines. It still looks gorgeous. Btw that video is in my youtube channel. I might start doing more video reviews. I'm glad to be back.

Review: MG Marasai (Daban)

Here is our first review for 2017 Daban's copy of the MG Marasai. BTW. IF you can afford it just buy the Bandai kit it's superior in quality and it's just worth it. 

The Marasai or to be specific the RMS-108 or the MSA-002 Marasai is a mass produced Mobile Suit built by the Titans to replace their Hizack. Yup. this monoeye MS is a feddy suit. You can see this suit in MSG Zeta and the Unicorn series. 

So without further ado. Here's our review of the MG Marasai from Daban.

The Box

In the right lighting you should notice that the cardboard quality isn't as silky smooth as Bandai's box.

The Kit

I wasn't the biggest fan of the Marasai kit. I thought if anything Daban should have copied the Geara Doga first but it does make sense since they are coming out with the Zeta 2.0 sometime soon. Speaking of 2.0 the Marasai shares some parts from the Zaku -II 2.0 such as the shoulder and some arm parts, the waist, hips and foot inner frames are similar or if not identical to the Zaku 2.0.

Seriously... I'm not a Zaku, boy. Not a Zaku

Jegan! How are you???

Much pain was experienced in putting those ankles in

I have nothing against the 2.0 Zaku frame it's just that the armor design of the Marasai severely reduces the flexibility of the frame itself. Oh well. It still does look cool though.

When I reviewed the Daban MG Jesta Cannon I said that something is wrong with Daban's plastic. Here in the Marasai the plastic is good really good. it's crisp and substantial much like the old Nu and Sazabi ver ka's from Daban. Good job, Daban.

One gripe I have with this kit are the polycaps. They are inconsistent, some are to loose and soft while others are too firm and i had to shave and force parts in.  The shoulder polycaps are a bit too loose and the arms tend to sag when posing them. While the shoulder armor, shield and ankle polycaps are a B*tch to connect to. Much force and finger pain was experienced when i was connecting them to the kit. C'mon Daban, TT Hongli/ Gao gao did the Zaku-II 2.0 polycaps better than you.

The details are good. Much like the original from Bandai the Daban Marasai doen't have that much in terms of panel lines but since it's a grunt suit I'll give it a pass.
The Weapons

The weapon choices for the Marasai is pretty sparse. you get two beam saber handle and beam saber effect parts and a beam rifle. That's it. If you're thinking you can use other Zeon weapons without modification then you are mistaken. the Marasai uses swappable hand parts to hold the weapons. It does have a Zaku 2.0 style jointed hand but they can't be fully closed and are just for posing the kit.

  The Gimmicks

what are those holes in the backpack for?

What the heck is that?

Oh.....

Nice.

Aside from the normal action base attachment the Marasai has this crecent backpack adaptor that can simulate an atmospheric re-entry position for the Marasai. Why a re-entry pose, you may ask?  You can also equip the Hyaku Shiki Ballute system on the Marasai that's why.


Verdict

As a whole. I enjoyed making this kit. I can't say that I'm a superfan of the design but it seriously is growing on me. Plastic quality is a very substantial improvement over the Jesta Cannon but the quality of the polycaps keep me from giving it a really high score. Despite that it is a very very solid kit. here's hoping that Daban makes a copy of the Ballute system as well. It's not a must buy but it is a very good buy.

85/100


PS

I hope you guys enjoy my review of the Marasai. Oh btw. If you can please consider donating to the blog it would help us considerably in keeping up with the ever increasing kit releases in the future. There is a donate button on the upper right of the blog that leads to our paypal account and we would give you credit in our future reviews.

Please subscribe to my youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/thelatejuanmiguel we would be putting up video reviews very soon.  Thank you.

Upcoming Revew: MG Marasai (Daban)

What's our next review?

This guy.

Review: MG Jesta Cannon (Daban)

Here we are. Another "P-Daban" kit to light a fire under Bandai's butt. The first direct P-Bandai bootleg was the Tallgeese III and now we have the Jesta Cannon.( btw. Do you want a review of the Tallgeese III? Put it in the comments.). Also Before anything else. BUY BANDAI when you can. It's worth the money and we owe them for coming up with the entire Gundam franchise and designing our beloved gunpla. :-)

The Jesta Cannon is part of the Tri-stars, a trio of Federation pilots serving under Bright Noa in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn,  that modeled themselves after the original  Black Tri-stars during the One Year War. 

The Tri-stars are basically a special ops unit using the RGM-96X Jesta which was designed to escort the Unicorn Gundam and to eliminate non-newtype enemies to produce situations that will result in the Unicorn to directly confront a newtype enemy. The Jesta is basically designed and built as an Old type killer to compliment the Unicorn's Newtype Destroy Mode.  

We have been talking about the Jesta so much that you might ask what's so special about the Jesta Cannon? Well it is essentially a heavy assault variant of the Jesta, meaning it has more firepower and more armor compared to the standard model.

Alright enough about Gundam Canon (lol. cannon pun) . After quite a hiatus here is our review of the MG Jesta Cannon by Daban.


The Box

Look at this box... For a grunt suit, its huge.  What else can I say.  It is a direct ripoff of the Jesta Cannon P-Bandai box with additional chinese writing at the bottom

The Kit

My God, does this kit look BADASS. I know that the normal Jesta is cool but the Jesta Cannon is such a badass kit.The broad shoulders, leg armor and the cannon add-on to the backpack really make it very, very macho.

Special Ops? Try Very Special Ops.

Sexy back. A seriously sexy back

Daban's Jesta Cannon comes with all the parts needed to build a full Jesta and an additional few runners of recolored armor so you could mix and match all you want.

Extras... A lot of Extras

The Jesta Cannon even has enough parts to assemble 2 beam rifles. The problem is the rifle needs to specific polycaps to fit the rifle accesories and it only has one set of them. It's no problem if you have super glue. lol.

Pew Pew Pew

The Negatives
Let me be blunt. The plastics of the Jesta are softer than other recent daban MG kits I have assembled in the past. Smaller parts and some joints tend to stress mark and break.

Be careful with this hip joint. I had to glue them because it broke after I tried posing the Jesta

Did Daban change their plastics recently? I honestly don't know. but I feel that it has become a little bit softer.

Another Gripe I have are the wrist and ankle polycaps. I know partly it's because of Bandai's design but honestly, Trying to pose my Jesta Cannon is a pain in the ass. Then ankle joints are loose and it tends to have a difficult time supporting the top heavy Jesta Cannon. While the wrist tends to pop out at whim, I seriously wanted to glue them in place.


Verdict

As a whole, this kit is pretty good but it is definitely not Daban's best work. The plastic quality feels softer than previous kits and that is a little bit disappointing because I used to think that Daban is the benchmark for plastic quality for Bootleg manufacturers, but this kit has made me doubt that assumption of mine.

The details of the kit are a good reciprocation of Bandai's mold. No complaints here.

The extra armor parts and weapon runner are a good bonus for us buyers.

While I cannot say that this kit is a must buy it is a solid copy.

75/100


Author's Suggestion

If you really want a Jesta Cannon. I strongly suggest getting a Bandai Jesta then getting this kit as a conversion kit. You would appreciate the joints of the Bandai. It would be a lot more poseable and you would not be concerned too much about the joints suddenly giving out.

I hope you guys enjoy my review of the Jesta Cannon. Oh btw. Please subscribe to my youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/thelatejuanmiguel we would be putting up video reviews very soon. Thank you and have a happy holiday.

Next review: MG Jesta Cannon (Daban)

Up next:

This is next.

Watch out for the review in the next few days. We might premiere something brand new. ;-)

So.... blog update.

Youtube channel content to follow. lol

So we haven't put up anything in a while now and I feel I need to give an explanation and maybe an update on what's next for the blog. So... What's happening to the blog? Well we haven't been writing for a while that's because Me and Cat Casval decided to take a break from reviewing kits because we felt that we needed to take a break and just build kits for ourselves aside from that we have had some personal stuff we had to take care off first.

So what's next. Well aside from the long delayed  Daban Sinanju Stein review, we're currently doing a P-Daban MG Jesta Cannon review and probably a couple of PG's that have normal and destroy modes (hint hint).

Oh right. We're starting a youtube channel too. right now it's not searchable and is empty but content will be up soon, very soon. here's the url for the youtube page I hope you sub so I cood fiiiiinally change the channel's url to match the name. lol. https://www.youtube.com/user/thelatejuanmiguel

Have a happy holiday everyone. We're back.

Review: MG Rezel Type C (Daban)

Yup Another Unicorn Kit

Hey there folks. It's another MG kit from Daban. This time it's the Rezel Type C. Before anything else I'd like to state again that if you have the money get the Bandai original we owe it to them in order to keep Gundam and Gunpla a viable buisiness venture. Okay without further ado this is my review for the Daban Rezel Type C.

Look! It can actually stand on it's own two feet. So it's better than the EX-S already

The RGZ-95C ReZEL Type-C is a transforming Mass produced Mobile Suit used by the Londo Bell unit. Basically it's another attempt to create a mass produced Zeta Gundam.This suit was extensively used in the Unicorn Gundam OVA/Series

Missiles and Beam Cannons galore!

Weapons

When I assembled the main kit I only had to use about less than half of the runners provided by the manufacturers. The rest of the runners are for the accessories and it has A LOT OF ACCESSORIES.

It has a lot accessories because you can switch the Rezel's load out from the stock Type C to the Missile crazy Defenser A unit config to the Dual Beam Cannon wielding Defenser B Unit. or you have the third option of just Jamming everything in there (I chose the third option) 

It also comes with a beam rifle, a shield and two kinds of Beam effects. A regular sized pair of beam saber effects for the kit's normal beam sabers. hidden in the forearms and two almost PG sized beam saber effects for the Rezel's mega beam sabers 

You see those two white barrels beside the Rezel's head. those aren't beam cannon's those are actually Beam sabers

An action base is a must for this kit

Seriously It's amazing that I made this stand up without any support

This kit is Bulky. Equipped with both the A+B defenser units this is a back heavy kit, not as back heavy as the infamous EX-S, but still pretty darn back heavy. I suggest getting an action base for this kit.

Why would I need to invest in an action base?

Because of the Rezel's wave rider form

Look at them boosters.

I'm keeping the Rezel in this form for good

Size Comparison

With the Amazing Red Warrior MG

With the Blitz Gundam

Thoughts and Opinions

1. Seam lines. There are some
2. Some of the peg holes need shaving in order to fit some parts without forcing them in.
3. The hands are the old version 2 hands.
4. The Mega beam saber effects I got were slightly bent. Don't know if it's just me.
5. Some parts namely the vents, the inner frame of the shield, some boosters, have a tendency to pop out. some glue will help
6. the plastic is good it's the same as the stein.
7. if you're looking for detail. then this isn't the kit you are looking for. Honestly if you look at the kit itself. You would seriously think it was an HG.
8. On the bright side. There are lot of space to add your custom touches.
9. You need an action base. trust me
10. Transformation requires common sense.
11. The manual I got was underwhelming. Some of the pictures where faded and some steps didn't even print the picture of the small piece i needed.

Conclusion:

If you are looking for Ver ka levels of detail this is not the kit for you but if you want a unique looking  kit with a lot of potential and real estate for customization then look no further.

The transformation process is kind of complicated and you might need to think your way through it. Specially since some of the transformation sequence pictures in  the manual is faded.

Final Thoughts:

I enjoyed building this kit. It challenged me. Plus it looks really unique. Plus I love the color orange . lol. The only pet peeves I had with this kit is the lack of detail, some fitment issues and the manual. Other than that this is a great buy.

Rating: 85/100