HGUniversal Century

MS-06RD-4 Zaku High Mobility Test Type

A Zaku torso bolted to Rick Dom legs, and somehow it works better than it has any right to.

MechaGrade Score

3.6/5

Zaku II · 1/144 · 2016

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2016

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is a P-Bandai kit that earns its existence instead of just cashing in on a niche design.

I went in expecting a lazy recolor and came out with a kit that has real new tooling in the head, shoulder, chest, feet, and machine gun, not just a repaint job on old runners. It builds on the modern Origin Zaku frame, so the engineering underneath is a generation ahead of the old HGUC Zaku, and it shows the moment you start posing it. The tradeoff is that this is a suit built for lore fans first and general Zaku fans second.

Best for: 8th MS Team fans and Zeon completionists who want Aina Sahalin's experimental Zaku done properly, not a general first-Gunpla pick

The full review

What it is

This kit reimagines the transitional mobile suit that bridged the Zaku II and the Rick Dom, the one built to test the leg-mounted rocket thrusters before they went into full production. Bandai based it on the modern Origin Zaku II tooling rather than dusting off the old HGUC frame, and that decision carries the whole kit. The torso is standard Origin Zaku with a new head and shoulder armor, but the waist and legs are reworked to read as proto-Dom, thicker, more purposeful, with the recognizable Dom-style rocket thruster silhouette at the hips. Holding it, the suit feels like an actual missing link, not a paint swap, and that novelty is what makes it fun on the shelf.

The catch

It is a P-Bandai exclusive, so pricing and availability run higher than a shelf HG, and you are paying for a narrow niche. Builders who've done it describe the construction itself as comfortable and low-drama since it inherits the modern Origin Zaku engineering, with seam lines showing up mainly at the forearms and left shoulder rather than everywhere. Color separation still leans on molded plastic plus a sticker sheet for the finer panel details rather than full paint-level accuracy, so if you want the sharp two-tone Zeon color scheme crisp, you're either living with stickers or picking up a paint brush.

Who it's for

Buy this if you're building an 08th MS Team display or you collect every branch of the Zaku family tree, this kit rewards exactly that kind of completionist. The modern Origin frame underneath means it's also a perfectly reasonable build for someone who already has a few HGs done and wants slightly more engineering than a basic Zaku II offers. Skip it if you want a first kit or a widely available one, since this is P-Bandai exclusive stock and the design itself is a deep cut that won't mean much without the 8th MS Team or Origin MSD context behind it.

The build story

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

Builders who've put this one together describe it as a comfortable, low-friction build, largely because it shares its bones with the recent Origin Zaku kits rather than older, fussier tooling. Seam lines are limited mostly to the forearms and left shoulder rather than running down every limb, which keeps cleanup manageable for a weeknight build. The mono-eye assembly and head sculpt are new enough to feel distinct from a stock Zaku II, and the joints hold their gates in sensible spots that don't fight you during trimming.

The articulation is where this kit earns its price tag. Builders praise how easily it holds dynamic poses and how good it looks from angles a standard Zaku can't quite pull off, thanks to the ball-and-socket torso joint and double-jointed elbows and knees inherited from the modern frame. The proto-Dom waist and legs give it a visibly different silhouette on the shelf next to a regular Zaku II, and the two-weapon loadout (machine gun plus heat hawk, with a variety of hand parts to hold them) gives you enough options to build a small combat vignette without hunting down extra accessories.

Lore & trivia

01The MS-06RD-4 was a joint Zeonic and Zimmad project built to field-test the leg-mounted thermonuclear rocket thrusters that would later define the MS-09R Rick Dom, using a Zaku II upper body on Rick Dom-style legs.
02In the Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team storyline this design is associated with Aina Sahalin's Zaku, which shot down two RGM-79[E] GM Early Types and damaged a third before being destroyed by Shiro Amada's Ball Type K, losing all its test data in the process.
03The kit was produced as part of Bandai's Origin MSD P-Bandai line, giving a manga-only or side-story mobile suit an official plastic release instead of remaining an illustration-only design.
04Despite being a P-Bandai niche release, the kit tools genuinely new parts (head, shoulder armor, chest, feet, machine gun) rather than just repackaging existing Zaku II runners in new colors.