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ASW-G-64 Gundam Flauros (Calamity War Type)

The Ryusei-Go frame reimagined in its original Calamity War livery, and it wears the retro paint better than I expected.

MechaGrade Score

3.8/5

Gundam Flauros (Calamity War Type) · 1/144 · 2017

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2017

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is the same excellent Flauros engineering Bandai already nailed with the Ryusei-Go release, just recolored into the white, blue, and frame-grey scheme the suit supposedly wore 300 years earlier in the fiction.

I went in expecting a reskin cash grab and came out impressed by how much the shelling mode gimmick and backpack articulation still carry the kit. The flatter colors take some getting used to after the punchier Ryusei-Go palette, but the bones underneath are genuinely good.

Best for: IBO completionists and Flauros fans who want the lore-accurate Calamity War colorway alongside their Ryusei-Go build

The full review

What it is

This kit is a straight recolor of the HGIBO Flauros, dressed in the white and blue Gjallarhorn-era paint the suit apparently wore during the Calamity War three centuries before Tekkadan dug it out of a mine. Building it feels exactly like building the original Ryusei-Go release, and that is a compliment. The shelling mode transformation, where the suit drops to all fours and swings its twin back-mounted railguns forward, is still the star trick, and it clicks into place without feeling like a compromise bolted onto a humanoid frame. I like that Bandai treated a variant kit as worth doing properly instead of phoning in the parts.

The catch

It is a P-Bandai exclusive, so you are paying premium web-shop pricing and shipping for what is, mechanically, the same kit as a more common release with a different color plan. The stock white, blue, and grey palette is flatter and less eye-catching than the original Ryusei-Go colors, so if you were hoping for a bolder repaint you might come away a little underwhelmed. Panel lining is doing a lot of the work here since the molded colors alone read a bit plain, and like most HGIBO kits there are enough small panel-line details that cleanup and finishing take real patience even though the plastic itself goes together easily.

Who it's for

Buy this if you already love the Flauros as a design and want the Calamity War version sitting next to your Ryusei-Go for the lore angle, or if the muted white-and-blue scheme is just more your taste than the original colorway. Skip it if you only want one Flauros on the shelf, since the standard HGIBO release gives you the same build experience for less money and more available stock. It is a kit for people buying into the character and the fiction, not a kit that's making its case on being a dramatically different build.

The build story

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

The actual assembly is straightforward HGIBO fare, snap-together with clean gate placement and nothing that fights you, but there is a lot of panel line detail molded in that rewards taking the extra time to pick out with a panel liner or wash rather than leaving it stock. Nub marks land in mostly hidden spots typical of the line.

Where this kit earns its keep is the engineering under the surface: the transformation sequence into shelling mode is clean, the double-sided ball-joint neck and 360-degree waist give real posing range, and the two-piece railgun backpack has enough of its own hinge points that it doesn't just drag the silhouette down when the arms are up. Accessories carry over the Flauros loadout of shortened rail cannons, curved blades, and twin machine guns, which is a solid armament set for an HG price point.

Lore & trivia

01The ASW-G-64 Gundam Flauros was one of 72 Gundam Frames built by Gjallarhorn near the end of the Calamity War specifically to fight autonomous mobile armors like Hashmal.
02In the show's own history, Flauros lay abandoned and dormant in a semi-metal mine for over three centuries alongside a Hashmal unit before Tekkadan excavated it in 325 PD.
03After Tekkadan's recovery crew repaired it and repainted it aboard the Saisei, the suit became Norba Shino's personal machine as the Ryusei-Go, which is the more familiar colorway this kit's variant is playing against.
04This Calamity War Type release represents the suit's original wartime livery from three hundred years before the events of Iron-Blooded Orphans, released as a Premium Bandai exclusive in April 2017.