HGUniversal Century

RTX-65 Guntank Early Type

A legless tank that somehow out-poses half the humanoid kits in the HG line.

MechaGrade Score

3.9/5

Guntank Early Type · 1/144 · 2015

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2015

Runnersn/a

Check price on Amazon

Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

The verdict

I did not expect a treaded tank with no legs to be one of the more fun HG builds I have put together, but here we are.

The waist swivel, the independently poseable cannons, and the way the treads splay outward to widen its stance give it a real range of motion I was not banking on. It will never out-pose a bipedal Gundam, but for what it is, a support vehicle from the early days of the One Year War, it nails the assignment.

Best for: Origin-era completionists and anyone who wants a genuinely different build in their HG shelf lineup

The full review

What it is

This is Bandai's HG take on the Guntank as redesigned by Kimitoshi Yamane for Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, the lumbering proto-mobile-suit the Earth Federation fielded before Zeon forced its hand into building actual Gundams. The kit captures that bulky, half-tank-half-mech silhouette well, with a translucent blue visor piece that sells the cockpit detail immediately on sprue. Building it feels different from a normal HG in a good way. You are assembling tank treads and bogie wheels instead of the usual leg frame, and the twin large-caliber cannons on the forearms have little collapsing pistons that actually compress when you pose the arms back. That small touch got a genuine grin out of me.

The catch

The gate marks are the real complaint here. Reviewers and my own build agree the wheel and tread parts carry a lot of nub marks on curved surfaces, something like two dozen-plus contact points across the treads and wheels, and they show if you do not clean them carefully. The plastic on those tread pieces is also on the harder side, so cutting flush without stress-whitening takes patience. Color separation leans on a light sticker sheet for some of the smaller cockpit and panel details, though Bandai also sells an optional waterslide decal set if you want to skip the stickers entirely. The cannons and extended treads are thin enough that I would not want to drop this kit off a shelf.

Who it's for

If you are building straight through the numbered HG Origin line or you just want a UC kit that is not another Zaku or Gundam variant, this is a satisfying detour. It is also a nice pick for anyone who wants to practice nub cleanup on curved plastic before tackling something pricier. I would not hand this to someone as their very first kit ever, since the tread assembly asks for more care than a typical snap-fit HG, but for a second or third build it is a great change of pace. Skip it only if you specifically want humanoid full-body posing, since this kit is built around a wheeled base by design.

The build story

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

The runners split cleanly between the tank-tread undercarriage and the humanoid-style torso and arms, so the build alternates between two very different assembly feels in the same kit. The tread wheels in particular carry a lot of small gate marks, with reports of around seven nubs per wheel and two per track link, so budget extra time with a sharp side cutter and a sanding stick if you want clean curves. The harder plastic on those pieces resists nicks but also resists clean cuts, so go slow.

The payoff is in the engineering. The waist rotates a full 360 degrees on a ball joint, the head swivels independently, and the arms swing on peg-and-socket shoulders with elbows that bend up to roughly 130 degrees. The treads themselves extend outward and rotate, letting you widen the stance for a more aggressive pose instead of leaving it stuck at parade rest. Both large-caliber cannons pivot up and down and rotate on the forearms, and their built-in piston rods compress visually when you angle the arms, which is a small detail that punches above the kit's price point.

Lore & trivia

01The RTX-65 Guntank Early Type was designed by Kimitoshi Yamane specifically for Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin as the Earth Federation's early proto-mobile-suit, predating the more familiar humanoid Guntank seen in the original 1979 series.
02In the story, the Guntank Early Type was fielded partly as a fear-mongering show of force against the Space Colonies, a move that backfired and helped push sentiment toward what became the Principality of Zeon.
03This kit was released in May 2015 as the second entry in Bandai's numbered HG Gundam The Origin (HGGTO) line, at a list price of 1,700 yen.
04In the Origin storyline, a Guntank Early Type unit was later used by Zeon to test the Mobile Worker prototype that would evolve into their first true mobile suits, a battle the Guntank lost, underscoring how quickly its tank-based design became outclassed.