HGAfter War Gundam X

GW-9800-B Gundam Airmaster Burst

A quick, clean weekend build that nails the blue and yellow without ever touching a paint booth.

MechaGrade Score

3.6/5

Gundam Airmaster Burst · 1/144 · 2020

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2020

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is a comfort-food HG, and I mean that as a compliment.

It goes together in under an hour, the molded plastic already gives you the Airmaster Burst's signature blue and yellow without paint, and the backpack gimmick is genuinely more fun to fidget with than I expected from a kit this size. The catch is that it is a P-Bandai exclusive, so you are paying secondary-market prices for what is, underneath the color scheme, a fairly simple HG skeleton.

Best for: After War Gundam X fans who want Witz Sou's upgraded suit on the shelf without a full paint and panel-line project

The full review

What it is

I went into this expecting another quick reissue kit and came out liking it more than I planned to. The molded parts do almost all the work: the blue torso, yellow accents, and grey frame are all separate colors straight off the runners, so the finished kit reads as fully painted from across the room. The backpack is the star, it is a completely redesigned unit over the original Airmaster's, with real engineering behind the booster arms and beam cannon mounts, and it transforms into fighter mode with a few simple part swaps rather than a full teardown. For a kit this size, that is a nice bit of theater.

The catch

This is a P-Bandai online exclusive, which means it never sat on a store shelf at retail HG pricing, and secondary market listings run well above what a comparable non-exclusive HG costs. Sticker use is minimal (basically the head camera and a strip of black trim on the wings) which I count as a plus, but it also means there is very little for you to do beyond snap and pose if you are not planning to paint or panel-line. Builders and reviewers describe the actual assembly as fast and largely uneventful, which is great for a relaxing evening but means there is not much of a puzzle here if that is what you are after.

Who it's for

Grab this one if you are building out the After War Gundam X roster or you specifically want Witz Sou's upgraded Airmaster on your shelf, and you are fine paying exclusive-kit prices for a kit that will look sharp with zero painting. Skip it if you are hunting for a meaty engineering challenge or you are price-sensitive, since the build itself is simple and the P-Bandai tax is real. If you already own the base HG Airmaster and love the design, the redesigned backpack and beam cannon loadout here are enough of an upgrade to justify picking up the Burst version too.

The build story

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

Reviewers who put this one together describe the whole thing as quick and painless, under an hour for most builders, with clean gate placement and no fit fights along the way. Stickers are limited to the head camera and a thin black trim strip on the wings, so most of the color you see is molded plastic rather than applied decals, which also means less cleanup work after the build.

Articulation follows standard HG conventions for the era: a double-jointed head on a ball-and-socket mount, ball-jointed shoulders, and double-jointed elbows and knees, enough to hold the aggressive flight poses the design calls for. The headline feature is the backpack, newly molded for this release with auxiliary wing boosters that house a pair of beam cannons plus a nose-mounted beam cannon replacing the original vulcan guns, and the whole unit converts to fighter mode through simple part removal rather than a full re-engineering of the kit.

Lore & trivia

01The Gundam Airmaster Burst is the upgraded form of the original GW-9800 Gundam Airmaster, rebuilt after the Airmaster was badly damaged by a pair of NRMA-006 Gadeel mobile armors in After War Gundam X
02Freeden mechanic Kid Salsamille led the upgrade with support from the Estard government, reworking the suit into the more heavily armed Burst configuration
03Pilot Witz Sou used the Airmaster Burst against New UNE forces and during the 8th Space War between the New UNE and the Space Revolutionary Army
04The kit was released as a Premium Bandai online-exclusive HG in October 2020, with a later reissue also going the P-Bandai-only route