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MSJ-105CC Chuchu's Demi Trainer

A cheap school trainer with a punk haircut and a rifle it has no business handling this well.

MechaGrade Score

3.6/5

Chuchu's Demi Trainer · 1/144 · 2022

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2022

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is one of the most fun budget HG kits Witch from Mercury gave us, and I say that as someone who wasn't expecting much from a background classmate's suit.

Chuchu's personal paint job on an otherwise generic Asticassia trainer frame turns a filler unit into a genuinely characterful shelf piece. It won't blow you away with engineering, but it moves better than its price tag suggests and looks sharper built than it does in box art.

Best for: Witch from Mercury fans and budget builders who want a distinct silhouette without committing to a big-name protagonist suit

The full review

What it is

This is the base MSJ-121 Demi Trainer, the suit Asticassia students learn on, reworked with Chuchu's own color scheme and a bulked-up forearm setup she welded on herself in-universe. Building it feels like assembling a plain school-issue mobile suit that somebody's classmate vandalized into being cool, which is basically the joke of the character. I went in expecting a forgettable trainer kit and came out liking it more than several higher-billed HGs from the same wave, mostly because the pink-and-orange scheme actually reads clean once it's snapped together rather than looking like a paint accident.

The catch

It is still an entry-tier HG trainer under the hood, so don't expect MG-grade engineering. The head sculpt built around Chuchu's hairstyle is a little busy and can look off from certain angles until you get the antenna pieces seated right. Some retailers list only a handful of stickers for the smaller color accents, so a few markings ride on decals rather than molded plastic if your particular shop's copy skews that way. At around 119 pieces across four runners it is light, and there isn't a huge amount going on with the weapon loadout beyond the one rifle.

Who it's for

Grab this one if you're building through the Witch from Mercury cast and want the side characters represented, or if you just like oddball trainer-frame designs more than another Gundam-face lead unit. It's also a solid pick for someone newer to the hobby since the part count is low and the gate placement is forgiving for a clean first cut. Skip it if you only want hero units or if a single accessory loadout is a dealbreaker for you, since this kit is light on extras compared to the pilot suits in the same line.

The build story

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

The build itself is quick and low-friction, which fits its billing as a school trainer kit. Gate placement is typical modern Bandai, mostly on non-visible undersides of limb parts, and cleanup is minimal thanks to the low part count. Nothing here fights you; it's a snap-together kit in spirit even though it isn't formally EG-tier, and a first-time builder could get through it comfortably in an evening.

The engineering highlight is how much motion Bandai squeezed out of a cheap trainer chassis. The extendable shoulder joints and pull-out neck genuinely widen the pose range past what the plain silhouette suggests, and the waist's forward/backward lean lets you get real weight and aggression into rifle poses. The beam rifle's dual articulating handles plus its skirt-mounted sub-arm stabilizer are a nice touch for a kit at this price point, even if it's the only weapon in the box.

Lore & trivia

01The Demi Trainer is the standard mobile suit used to train students at the Asticassia School of Technology in Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.
02This variant is a custom job piloted by Chuatury Panlunch, known as Chuchu, who reworked the stock trainer's forearms and color scheme to suit her more aggressive hit-and-run fighting style.
03The kit was released in November 2022 as part of the HGTWFM line adapting the Witch from Mercury cast, and ships with a beam rifle, alternate hand parts, and a lead wire for the antenna detail.