HGMobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury

Mirasoul Flight Unit

A small backpack with big engineering ambitions and a sticker sheet that tests your patience.

MechaGrade Score

3.4/5

Mirasoul Flight Unit · 1/144 · 2023

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2023

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is a good option set held back by its own sticker sheet.

The boosters themselves are genuinely clever, with pop-out maneuver thrusters and ball-jointed arms that swing into believable flight poses. But Bandai leaned hard on stickers to sell the color separation, and that's the difference between a kit I'd call excellent and one I'd call solid.

Best for: Aerial owners who want the zero-G duel silhouette and don't mind sticker work for the payoff

The full review

What it is

The Mirasoul Flight Unit is the add-on booster pack Gundam Aerial straps on for its zero gravity duel against Gundam Pharact, and Bandai turned that one scene into a tidy 1/144 accessory kit. What sold me on it is the engineering packed into something this small. Both booster arms use ball joints at the base and the tip, so you get real reach and angle instead of a stiff pack bolted to the back. Pop the maneuver thrusters out from inside the wings and the whole silhouette changes from cruise mode to combat mode. It plugs straight onto the HG Aerial's backpack and, per Bandai, onto other HGTWFM suits like Demi Trainer too, so it has a little more use than a one-suit prop.

The catch

The color separation leans almost entirely on stickers, and there are a lot of them. Builders counting have found eight stickers just for the sub-thruster sections (four black, four gray) with more spread across the rest of the unit, and they're fiddly to place cleanly on the small curved surfaces. The plastic is also a darker shade that shows nub marks more readily than lighter HG runners, so cleanup matters more here than usual. At around 10-12 dollars, a chunk of buyers are candidly just paying for the two extra flat hands in the box, since the flight unit alone doesn't feel essential to owning Aerial.

Who it's for

Grab this if you already have the HG Aerial and want the exact loadout from its duel with Pharact, or if you like collecting HGTWFM option parts and appreciate a booster pack with actual working joints instead of a static clip-on. Skip it if stickers are a dealbreaker for you or if you were hoping for a self-contained kit, because on its own the Mirasoul unit is a display accessory, not a mobile suit. If you just want extra hands, this is an expensive way to get them, but if you want Aerial posed mid-duel with thrusters deployed, it earns its spot on the shelf.

The build story

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

This is a short build, more accessory than kit, so most of your time goes into cleanup and stickers rather than complex assembly. The dark plastic means gate marks are more visible than on a typical HG, so take an extra pass with a blade or sanding stick on visible surfaces. The sticker sheet is the real time sink: the sub-thruster sections alone call for eight stickers split between black and gray, and lining them up on the small curved parts takes patience.

Where it earns its keep is the articulation. Both arms run on ball joints at the base and the tip, so the boosters can swing well past a straight backward pose and actually sell the idea of thrust vectoring. The maneuver thrusters tucked inside the wings pop out for a high-maneuverability look, which is a nice bit of engineering for such a small part count. It attaches cleanly to the HG Aerial's back and, by Bandai's own listing, onto other HGTWFM frames as well, plus you get a pair of flat hands in the box.

Lore & trivia

01The Mirasoul Flight Unit debuts in episode 6 of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, worn by Gundam Aerial for its zero gravity school duel against Elan Ceres' Gundam Pharact.
02In the show's fiction, the unit was originally a defective mobile suit flight pack built by third-party manufacturer Mirasoul, later modified with adjusted propulsion shift timing to work with Aerial.
03Despite the power boost, Aerial still struggled against Pharact's remote weapons in the duel until it triggered a data storm that shut the remotes down.
04The kit is numbered #13 in the HGTWFM (High Grade The Witch from Mercury) option parts line and released in March 2023.