HGMobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (Universal Century)

RH-35E Riah 35 Draken-E

A civilian loader mech built with more heart than half the warships in the line.

MechaGrade Score

3.7/5

Riah 35 Draken-E · 1/144 · 2024

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2024

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This little Gundam Base exclusive punches way above its size and its price.

It is not a combat suit, it has no gun, no beam saber, nothing you would call a weapon, and I still had more fun clicking it together than a few HG grunts I have built this year. The swap between the standard clamp arm and the power loader style arm is the whole personality of the kit, and Bandai nailed the cockpit detail on something this small.

Best for: 0080 fans and Gunpla builders who want a cheap, characterful side project instead of another mobile suit

The full review

What it is

The Draken-E is the little worker mech from War in the Pocket, roughly a third the size of a real mobile suit, and this HG treats it like a real subject instead of an afterthought. You get two arm configurations in the box, the stock manipulator clamp arm and a chunkier loader arm that is clearly built with an Aliens power loader in mind, and swapping between them changes what the kit reads as on the shelf. The cockpit area is where Bandai actually went to work, packing in more sculpted detail than I expected from something this compact, and building it felt less like assembling a mobile suit and more like putting together a tiny piece of industrial equipment with a face.

The catch

This is a Gundam Base exclusive, so it was never on general retail shelves and secondhand prices run above what a kit this size should cost. It is small and mostly molded in a handful of colors, so the Zeon color scheme variant needs real paintwork if you want it accurate, and builders note some panel and marking detail leans on stickers or markers rather than molded color. Articulation is simple by design, the arm segments swivel and the elbows bend but this was never built to hold dynamic action poses, it is a worker machine, not a soldier.

Who it's for

Buy this if you already love War in the Pocket, want a cheap change of pace between bigger builds, or collect the odd civilian and support-unit side of Gunpla that never gets attention. Skip it if you only want posable combat suits or if you are not willing to hunt it down secondhand since Gundam Base exclusives do not restock on a normal schedule. For the right person this is a five out of five afternoon, for someone chasing weapons and action poses it will feel like a curiosity at best.

The build story

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

It goes together fast, the parts count is low and there is nothing fiddly in the arm assemblies, the swivel points on the manipulator and loader arms are the most interesting engineering in the kit since they let you rebuild the same torso into two different looking machines.

The standout is the cockpit sculpt, Bandai clearly spent the detail budget there rather than spreading it thin, and the loader arm in particular has a satisfying chunky, industrial read once assembled that sells the civilian-mech concept better than a straight reissue of the old placeholder version ever did.

Lore & trivia

01The Draken-E first appeared in Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket as a civilian worker machine used by the Side 6 colony of Zum City, not as a combat unit.
02This HG version, released in 2024 as a Gundam Base exclusive, was the first time the Draken-E got a proper poseable kit instead of the small, largely static bundled figure that used to ship alongside other HGUC 0080 releases.
03The kit includes parts to build either the civilian Riah forces look or a Zeon-marked variant, referencing the suit's use by both sides in the show.