HGPost Disaster

Gundam Amazing Barbatos Lupus

Barbatos Lupus dressed for a fight it was already winning, in a red that finally earns the name Crimson Comet.

MechaGrade Score

3.7/5

Barbatos · 1/144 · 2024

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2024

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is the standard Barbatos Lupus skeleton wearing a sharper, redder coat, and I mean that as a compliment.

The claw-arm gimmick and the booster/mace combo give you more to actually do with the kit than the vanilla IBO release ever offered. It is still an HGIBO frame underneath, so the joints are the joints, but the extra parts and the display base make it feel like a proper anniversary piece rather than a simple repaint.

Best for: IBO fans and Build Metaverse watchers who want a meaner-looking Barbatos with more gimmicks to fidget with

The full review

What it is

Pull the runners and you are building a familiar shape. Amazing Barbatos Lupus is Meijin Kawaguchi's personal customization of the original Iron-Blooded Orphans Barbatos Lupus, reworked with a leaner silhouette, a bigger V-fin, a trimmed backpack, and a red color scheme that leans hard into the Iron-Blooded look. What sold me on it is how much they packed into the accessory set. The booster and the mace can combine into one weapon, the claw detaches from the booster and mounts on the arm with its own unfold-and-rotate gimmick, and the tail blade runs on a lead wire so it actually swings instead of just sitting there. It builds fast and it reads as a real upgrade over the base kit, not just a new sticker sheet.

The catch

The frame is straight HGIBO, which means the familiar complaints carry over. Joints loosen with repeated posing, and once you clip the Amazing Booster onto the back the whole figure gets top heavy enough that it wants to tip on anything but a stable stance, so the included display base is doing real work here, not just sitting in the box for looks. Bandai leans on stickers again for some of the finer color separation on the armor, so if you want the sharpest color breaks you are either living with foil stickers or reaching for paint. None of this is a surprise if you have built any Barbatos variant before, but it is worth knowing going in.

Who it's for

If you already like the Barbatos Lupus shape and want it in a more aggressive, more accessorized form, this is an easy recommendation, especially if the Iron-Blooded Orphans connection or the Build Metaverse anniversary angle appeals to you. It is also a fine pickup for anyone who wants extra weapon and gimmick variety without stepping up to MG money. Skip it if loose IBO joints have already soured you on the line, or if you are hoping for an entirely new frame under the paint. This is a remix, and a good one, but it is still built on the same bones.

The build story

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

If you have built any HGIBO kit before, this goes together the way you expect: clean nub placement, decent fit, no real surprises in the sprue-to-shelf pipeline. The extra Amazing Booster and weapon parts add build time without adding real difficulty, so it is a longer sit at the workbench than the base Barbatos Lupus but not a harder one.

The engineering payoff is in the gimmicks, not the frame. Double-jointed knees, a 360 degree waist, and elbows that bend to roughly 120 degrees carry over from the base kit and still hold a pose reasonably well fresh out of the box. What is new is the claw that detaches from the booster and reattaches to the forearm with its own rotate function, plus the booster-and-mace combination weapon, both of which make display poses far more interesting than a straight IBO release.

Lore & trivia

01The kit depicts Meijin Kawaguchi III's personal Gunpla from the Gundam Build Metaverse anniversary ONA, itself a customized version of the ASW-G-08 Gundam Barbatos Lupus from Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans.
02In the show's fiction, Meijin considers the combined form with the Amazing Booster Ten-shiki his '9th Form,' a mobility upgrade so extreme it earns the unit the nickname 'the Crimson Comet.'
03Gundam Build Metaverse was produced by Sunrise Beyond to mark the 10th anniversary of the Gundam Build franchise that started with Gundam Build Fighters.
04The mace's grip can be extended to reproduce a 'shooting mode' from the source footage, and the gun barrel accessory rotates in 90 degree increments to match its on-screen poses.