HGPost Disaster

ASW-G-35 Gundam Marchosias

A demon-winged Gundam Frame with a killer silhouette and a frame that can't quite back it up.

MechaGrade Score

3.2/5

Gundam Marchosias · 1/144 · 2020

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2020

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

I like this kit more than I trust it.

The Marchosias has one of the best silhouettes to come out of the late IBO high grade lineup, all wing-like binders and a red cape sensibility, but the moment you start posing it the frame starts arguing with you. It looks fantastic on a shelf standing at rest and gets noticeably less fun the harder you try to make it fight.

Best for: IBO completionists and shelf-presence collectors who want the design more than a pose-everything display piece

The full review

What it is

This is a 1/144 high grade built around the same IBO frame Bandai had been refining for years, but dressed up with a genuinely different silhouette than the usual Gundam Frame profile. The back and waist binders unfold into four sub-arms that carry small daggers, on top of the main Bastard Mace and a shield, so you get a real pile of accessories for an HG price. Building it is straightforward IBO business, snap the frame together, armor over top, and the parts count stays reasonable with barely any wasted runner space. The demonic wing motif actually reads well in person, better than most render art suggests.

The catch

The frame is the problem. This suit is back heavy from all that binder hardware, and the standard IBO ball joints were not built for the extra leverage, so the torso and waist loosen up faster than on a leaner IBO kit. The sub-arms are the worse offender: each one has four or five joints, but they're geometrically stacked against each other, so despite all that articulation they don't hold interesting poses and tend to sag or pop out of socket. A display stand is close to mandatory if you want it upright for long. None of this is sticker-related, it is a structural joint problem builders consistently flag.

Who it's for

Get this one if you're chasing the IBO lineup for completeness or you specifically want that wing-binder silhouette on the shelf in a low-effort static pose, mace in hand. Skip it if you want an HG you can actually rotate through dynamic poses and trust to hold them, or if loose IBO joints have already burned you on a prior kit in the line. It's a good-looking suit let down by hardware that wasn't built for its own ambition, worth owning for the design, not for the play value.

The build story

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

The assembly itself is easy and quick, standard IBO snap-fit frame under armor panels, with almost no wasted runner and gates placed where cleanup is painless. Where it gets interesting is the backpack and waist binder assemblies, which are built from mostly new runners rather than recycled IBO frame sprues, since the wing shape is unique to this kit.

Color separation is solid for an HG in this line, and molded plastic covers most of the important surfaces. The four sub-arms are the headline gimmick, each one built from four to five small joints, but the geometry makes them fight themselves when posed, and combined with a back-heavy torso the waist and hip joints wear loose faster than average. Budget for a stand if you want it displayed mid-pose rather than at rest.

Lore & trivia

01The Marchosias originates from the mobile game Mobile Suit Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans Urdr-Hunt rather than the original TV anime.
02In its backstory it is one of the 72 Gundam Frames built during the Calamity War, but was never among the 26 frames later confirmed to have survived, making it one of the 'lost' frames.
03Lore ties it to a red-caped pilot who fought two Harael-type mobile armors single-handedly during the war, with no record of who that pilot was.
04The HG kit released in March 2020, roughly three years after the Iron-Blooded Orphans anime had ended, as part of Bandai's continued support for the HGIBO line.