HGPost Disaster

ASW-G-08 Gundam Barbatos JUBILO IWATA Ver.

The scrappiest Gundam in anime, repainted in the orange and black of a J.League football club.

MechaGrade Score

3.4/5

Barbatos · 1/144 · 2020

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2020

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

I like this kit for exactly what it is: a genuinely solid HG Barbatos frame wearing a team jersey.

If you already respect the base Barbatos mold, the JUBILO IWATA colorway does not add engineering, it adds a novelty skin that either speaks to you or does not. On its own mechanical merits it holds up fine, the orange and black just make it a harder recommendation outside the fandom it was built for.

Best for: J.League Jubilo Iwata supporters and Barbatos completionists who want the oddball variant, not first-time Gunpla buyers hunting a display piece

The full review

What it is

This is the standard HGIBO Gundam Barbatos, the plain, unadorned first form Mikazuki Augus pilots at the start of Iron-Blooded Orphans, recast in Jubilo Iwata's orange and black instead of the usual mustard and grey. It was one of the HG kits Bandai put out in 2020 for a J.League collaboration tied into Gunpla's 40th anniversary, so the sprues, the frame, and the parts breakdown are unchanged from the regular release, only the plastic color and a set of team-crest stickers are different. Building it feels exactly like building the familiar Barbatos, which for me is a good thing, because that base kit earned its reputation honestly.

The catch

The Barbatos mold is over a decade into its shelf life at this point and it shows in small ways, mostly in sticker reliance for the pink foil highlights and team badges rather than molded color. Several of those stickers wrap around two or three faces of the same piece, so precise placement takes patience, and a couple of Barbatos's signature quirks carry over unchanged, most notably the exposed backpack thrusters that some builders find visually busy. This is also a licensed novelty release, so once collab stock sold through in 2020 it became harder to find at anything close to retail price, and you are paying a premium for a colorway, not new tooling.

Who it's for

Grab this one if you follow Jubilo Iwata or just want a genuinely unusual Barbatos on the shelf next to the standard release, the frame underneath is worth owning regardless of the paint job. Skip it if you just want the best version of this mobile suit for the money, since the plain HGIBO Barbatos or the upgraded Lupus Rex give you the same or better engineering without hunting down a secondary market collab kit. It is a fun curiosity purchase, not a kit I would point a new builder toward as their first Barbatos.

What works

Ankle and waist articulation with almost no armor in the way, so it holds a low, aggressive stance better than most HG kits its price
Shoulder blocks are raised off the frame, giving the arms real room to rotate instead of the usual HG shoulder lockup
The orange and black colorway is genuinely distinctive on a shelf full of stock-color Gundams

Worth knowing

Small foil stickers for the pink highlights and team crest, several wrapping around multiple faces of a single part
As a limited collaboration release it is scarce and often marked up well above what the plain HG Barbatos costs
The exposed thruster backpack is a Barbatos-wide quirk some builders find cluttered rather than mecha-cool

Sold? Grab it.

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The build story

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

The gate placement is typical mid-2010s HG Bandai, easy to snip and clean with a basic side cutter, and nothing here is fiddly in the way small RG parts can be. Where it slows down is the stickers, the foil pink pieces follow grooves molded into the plastic so placement is at least guided, but the ones that fold across a corner need a steady hand and patience, and a couple of team-crest stickers on the shoulders are small enough that tweezers help.

Where the kit earns its keep is articulation. Less armor bulk at the waist and ankles means the legs move more freely than most HG kits at this price point, and the swiveling ankles keep the feet flat on the ground through deep lunges instead of forcing you to fudge the pose. The shoulder joints raise up and rotate cleanly since the armor is set away from the frame rather than locked tight to it. Accessories are the standard Barbatos loadout, a mace and shield, nothing added or changed for the collab version, so the value here is purely in owning a Barbatos with a football club's colors on it.

Lore & trivia

01Gundam Barbatos is the mobile suit Mikazuki Augus pilots for most of the first season of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, before it is rebuilt into Barbatos Lupus for season two.
02The JUBILO IWATA Ver. was released in 2020 as part of a Bandai Spirits collaboration with Japan's J.League football clubs, tied into Gunpla's 40th anniversary celebrations that year.
03The collaboration line reused existing HG molds across several kits, including 00 Gundam, Exia, Impulse Gundam, and Strike Gundam, each recolored in a different J.League team's uniform scheme rather than tooled from scratch.
04Barbatos's Mace and Shield are shared across most of its HG variants, so the JUBILO IWATA Ver. carries the same base weapon loadout as the standard-color HGIBO release.