HGPost Disaster

ASW-G-32 Gundam Asmoday

A pale gray Gundam Frame with a pair of tonfas that make every pose feel like a threat.

MechaGrade Score

3.6/5

Gundam Asmoday · 1/144 · 2022

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2022

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

I like this kit more than its Urdr-Hunt obscurity would suggest.

The Grand Tonfas are the reason to own it, they swing between short and long configurations and give the Asmoday a fighting style none of the mainline IBO Gundams have. It stumbles on the same spot every Gundam Frame HG stumbles on though, a loose, wobbly torso that needs a fix before it feels finished.

Best for: IBO completionists and tonfa fans who don't mind a dab of glue to fix the torso

The full review

What it is

This is a Gundam Frame kit through and through, same core skeleton lineage as Barbatos and its siblings, dressed in pale gray armor with sharp yellow accents and topped off with a pair of arm-mounted Grand Tonfas. Building it feels familiar if you've done any other HGIBO kit, snap-fit frame first, armor over top, and the tonfas click on last as the payoff piece. The moment I locked the tonfas into their extended position and posed the suit mid-swing, I understood why people who've never watched Urdr-Hunt still track this kit down. It has presence a lot of background-cast HGs never get.

The catch

The torso is the known weak point on this kit, and builders across multiple reviews flag the exact same thing: the chest and abdomen sandwich together loosely, so the upper body can feel wobbly and doesn't hold its shape the way you want it to. A dab of glue on the spine-to-abs join fixes it, but that's an extra step past what the instructions ask for. Color separation is also thinner than I'd like, several of the yellow accent details are stickers rather than molded plastic, and you only get to display one length of tonfa at a time since there's no storage spot on the suit for the parts you're not using.

Who it's for

If you're building out the IBO Gundam Frame lineup or you just want a Gundam with a genuinely different melee weapon than a sword or rifle, this is worth the pickup, especially since HGIBO kits from this wave are getting harder to find at reasonable prices. If you're new to Gunpla and torso wobble is going to bother you before you know to fix it, or if sticker-reliant color separation is a dealbreaker, look at a mainline HGIBO Gundam Barbatos kit first since the frame problem is the same but the character recognition and part availability are both better.

The build story

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

The build runs through the standard Gundam Frame sequence, inner frame first, then armor panels snapped over it, and the parts fit together cleanly with tighter tolerances than some of the earlier HGIBO releases. Gate placement is manageable with a nipper and the plastic takes cleanup well. The one spot that needs attention is the torso, where the spine piece and the ab section sandwich together more loosely than the rest of the kit, and if you want the upper body to hold its pose under the weight of the tonfas, a small amount of glue at that join is worth doing before you call it finished.

Articulation is a genuine strength here, the hip and leg engineering lets the suit hold wide, aggressive stances, and the shoulders and elbows have enough range to sell the tonfa fighting style even though the hands themselves are the simple fixed-grip type common to this HG line. The Grand Tonfas are the standout engineering piece, they mount to the forearms and physically extend and retract between two lengths, plus the kit throws in lead wire detail parts to replicate the Gigant Javelin injection mechanism from the source material. Between the rifle, the javelin, and the two tonfa states, the accessory loadout punches above the price point for a background-cast HG.

Lore & trivia

01The Gundam Asmoday debuted in Iron-Blooded Orphans: Urdr-Hunt, a mobile game side story set between the show's two television seasons rather than in the main anime.
02In its backstory, the Asmoday was one of 72 Gundam Frame units built at the end of the Calamity War roughly 300 years before the story, and it was recovered largely intact from a debris field with no combat history, which is why its design looks unmodified compared to battle-worn Gundam Frames like Barbatos.
03The kit's Grand Tonfas can be built in a short, compact configuration or extended to a longer reach, and the model includes lead wire parts to represent the Gigant Javelin injection line seen in its game artwork.