HGUniversal Century

RX-0 Full Armor Unicorn Gundam (Unicorn Mode)

A base Unicorn kit buried under so much extra hardware you need a second pair of hands to pose it.

MechaGrade Score

3.7/5

Unicorn Gundam · 1/144 · 2013

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2013

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

I like this kit a lot, but it earns its price by volume, not by finesse.

You are getting the solid HGUC Unicorn frame plus an entire second kit's worth of gatlings, bazookas, grenade launchers, and shields bolted on top, and that armament is genuinely the reason to own this over the plain Unicorn HG. It is not the cleanest build in the line and it is not the best looking Unicorn on a shelf, but as a display of pure overkill it delivers exactly what the Full Armor name promises.

Best for: Unicorn fans who want the maximum-weapon loadout version and don't mind a busy, sticker-heavy build to get there

The full review

What it is

This is the HGUC Full Armor Unicorn in Unicorn mode, meaning the V-fin sits closed and yellow rather than lit up in psycho-frame pink, so you're building the calmer of the suit's two personalities with a mountain of extra gear strapped on. The backpack alone carries two hyper bazookas, a spare I-field shield, and a pair of jabber-style boosters, and the arms and legs pick up gatling pods and grenade launchers on top of that. Clipping all of it together and finding a pose where none of it clips through itself is a genuinely fun puzzle, and once it's assembled the sheer amount of hardware hanging off a 1/144 frame is a little absurd in the best way.

The catch

The base Unicorn frame under all that armor is a mid-2010s HGUC, so detail work like the eyes, head camera, and shoulder gun tops rely on stickers rather than molded color, and those stickers have stiff, visible borders that a lot of builders end up painting over instead. The added weapon assemblies bring a lot of small parts that are easy to lose mid-build, and hip articulation is the one joint the kit skips, so some dynamic poses are off the table. All that backpack hardware also adds real weight, and the kit can get back-heavy and tip if you don't brace the stand or work the ankles carefully.

Who it's for

Grab this one if you already love the Unicorn Gundam and want the version that looks like it's ready for a siege rather than a parade, or if building a small mountain of gatlings and bazookas sounds like a good afternoon. Skip it if you want the cleanest, most refined Unicorn on your shelf, since the plain HGUC Unicorn (or an RG if you want the frame gimmick) will look sharper with a fraction of the fuss. This is a kit for people who want more gun, not more polish.

What works

The full weapons loadout, gatlings, bazookas, grenade launchers, and spare shields, genuinely changes how the kit displays compared to a standard Unicorn
Basic HGUC articulation is still intact, with bendable knees and elbows and a swivel waist that let you hold real poses despite the extra weight
Great value if what you want is bulk and hardware, since you're effectively getting a small armory bundled with the mobile suit

Worth knowing

Face, eye, and camera details are sticker-based with stiff borders that show if you don't clean them up or paint over them
No hip swing articulation, which limits some of the more dynamic poses the extra weapons practically beg for
Backpack-heavy loadout can make the kit tip or sag on its stand if you don't brace it

Sold? Grab it.

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The build story

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

Assembly itself follows standard HGUC logic, snap-fit with a manageable part count, but the volume of extra weapon sprues means more gate cleanup and more small clips and pegs than the plain Unicorn kit, and it is easy to misplace a grenade launcher or a tiny gatling barrel if you are not careful staging parts as you go.

The standout here is genuinely the arsenal: three separate shield units (including one that mounts on the backpack), twin hyper bazookas, multiple gatling pods, and a hyper beam javelin all included, which is a remarkable amount of gear for an HG price point. Color separation on the main body is typical HGUC quality, decent but sticker-reliant in a few spots, while the weapons themselves are molded in appropriate grays and blacks that need little extra painting to read well.

Lore & trivia

01The Full Armor Unicorn was designed in-universe by engineer Takuya Irei aboard the Nahel Argama, built around the idea of loading the base Unicorn with as much extra weaponry as it could physically carry rather than adding armor plating.
02Its shield design uses a four-petal I-field barrier generator, and with three of these shields mounted across the suit it can project nearly 360 degrees of beam protection.
03Thanks to the psycho-frame's Newtype interface, the pilot can control the detachable shields as remote weapons even though the shields themselves have no thrusters of their own.
04This Unicorn Mode version keeps the V-fin molded in solid yellow rather than the glowing pink seen in Destroy/NT-D mode, matching the calmer pre-activation state of the suit.