HGUniversal Century

AMX-018[HADES] Todesritter

A rebuilt war machine with sub-arms, wire-guided remote weapons, and a backstory as scarred as its frame.

MechaGrade Score

3.8/5

[HADES] Todesritter · 1/144 · 2020

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2020

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is one of the more mechanically interesting HGUC kits Bandai has put out as a Premium Bandai exclusive, and it earns that reputation.

The HADES sub-arm system and the wire-controlled INCOM remote weapon give it play patterns most HG kits never attempt. It asks a little more of you in cleanup and detailing than a standard retail HG, but the payoff in the finished pose is real.

Best for: UC lore fans and HG builders who want a kit with an actual gimmick to build around, not just another beam rifle and shield

The full review

What it is

The Todesritter is the rebuilt wreck of the RX-80PR Pale Rider, stitched back together at Axis with a mess of scavenged Neo Zeon parts, and the kit does a good job of making that Frankenstein history visible in the plastic. The backpack carries two hyper beam sabers that double as beam guns, the forearms hide their own beam saber hilts, and the HADES system adds a pair of sub-arms at the shoulders that can wield the backpack weapons independently while the INCOM remote unit trails on a wire. Building it, the sub-arms are the moment that sells the kit. They peg on cleanly and actually change how the suit reads once posed with a weapon in each hand.

The catch

Molded color separation is decent for the main body but thins out in the details, and more than one review flagged that panel lines and small accents really need markers or paint to read well out of the box, this is not a kit that pops on molded color alone. The waist can turn a full 360 degrees, but the front, side, and rear skirt armor pieces get in each other's way and need to be nudged out of position to avoid binding, which is a fiddly extra step during posing. It is also a Premium Bandai exclusive, so it comes and goes on reissue cycles and isn't sitting on shelves the way a mainline HGUC would be.

Who it's for

Grab this one if you already like Universal Century side-story suits and want a kit whose gimmick actually matters in hand, the sub-arms and remote weapon make for a display piece with more going on than its price bracket usually offers. It is a poor first kit though, the panel lining expectation and skirt-armor fiddliness will frustrate someone who hasn't built a few HGs already. If you just want a clean out-of-box HG with no extra work, look elsewhere in the HGUC line first and come back to this one once you're comfortable doing some detail work.

The build story

What the build is actually like, and the engineering worth knowing about.

Assembly is straightforward HGUC-era engineering, snap-fit with a manageable gate count, but the sub-arm and INCOM wire assemblies are extra steps beyond a typical HG so budget more bench time than a basic kit. Nub placement is mostly on non-visible surfaces with a few exceptions on the backpack hardpoints where cleanup matters if you want the sub-arms to peg in flush.

The double-jointed elbows and knees are the standout engineering choice here, they let the suit hold aggressive sword and gun poses without looking stiff. Color separation by molded plastic covers the big shapes fine but the smaller Neo Zeon salvage details benefit from panel lining or a marker pass. The two hyper beam sabers, forearm sabers, and the wire-tethered INCOM unit add up to a genuinely strong weapons loadout for an HG price point.

Lore & trivia

01The Todesritter is built from the recovered wreck of the RX-80PR Pale Rider, captured by the Marchosias Corps late in the One Year War and rebuilt at Axis with Anaheim Electronics assistance.
02Its pilot, Chloe Croce, is the same pilot who flew the original Pale Rider, carried over into the rebuilt suit's story.
03The remote weapon uses a quasi-psycommu system originally developed for the AMX-014 Doven Wolf, here handled through the suit's HADES system and guided back to the suit via a physical wire.
04The kit first appeared as a Premium Bandai exclusive tied to the mobile game Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story: Missing Link and has seen at least one later reissue.