HGUniversal Century

RX-104FF Penelope

A Gundam wearing a battleship, and it looks the part.

MechaGrade Score

3.5/5

Penelope · 1/144 · 2019

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2019

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

I think this kit nails the one job it set out to do, which is make Penelope look enormous and strange on a shelf, and I think it fumbles the second job, which is standing there confidently while it does it.

The transformation gimmick, an actual Gundam hiding inside all that flight armor, is genuinely satisfying to pull apart and reassemble. But the ankles and waist are not built for the weight this kit is asking them to carry, and that gap between spectacle and stability is the whole story of this build.

Best for: Hathaway's Flash fans who want a display centerpiece and are willing to babysit the pose

The full review

What it is

Penelope is the RX-104 Odysseus Gundam wearing a Fixed Flight armor unit, and Bandai built the kit so that relationship is real, not just cosmetic. You assemble a complete, reasonably proportioned Gundam first, swap its hip joint, then lock it into the FF unit's shell. Popping the armor open to reveal the Gundam underneath is the best five minutes of this build, and it is why I kept coming back to this kit after finishing it. At full size it rivals an HGUC Nightingale, and the shoulder armor, tail stabilizers, and leg thrusters give it presence from every angle that a normal 1/144 just cannot match. For a kit built around one big trick, the trick works.

The catch

The trick has a cost. The ankle joints are too small for the mass stacked above them, and reviewers consistently report Penelope tipping backward if you do not get the balance exactly right, sometimes needing a stand even for a static pose. The shoulder joints are not articulated at all and reviewers warn they can crack if you force movement there, and the tail sections of the FF unit carry the same warning. Swapping repeatedly between Odysseus and full Penelope form loosens the waist ball joint over time. Bandai also leaned on foil stickers for some color accents, and at least one call-out (blue in front of the beam rifle sensor) has no sticker provided at all, so the color separation is good but not complete.

Who it's for

This is a display piece first and a poseable model second, and you should buy it knowing that going in. If you love Hathaway's Flash, want the Odysseus reveal gimmick, and are fine setting Penelope in one strong pose and leaving her there, this kit earns its shelf space. If you want a kit you can repose often, hand to a kid, or that will forgive rough handling around the shoulders and tail, look elsewhere in the line first, an RG or a sturdier HG will treat you better. Go in treating this as a centerpiece you build carefully once, not a toy you fidget with daily, and it delivers exactly what it promises.

The build story

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

Assembly itself is straightforward and the kit goes together easily for its size, which is a relief given how much plastic you are handling. The Odysseus Gundam builds first as its own complete figure, hip joint and all, before you commit it to the FF shell, and that staged build order makes the whole thing easier to follow than the finished model suggests. Cleanup is typical HGUC-era work, nothing unusual in gate placement, but the sheer part count for the armor sections takes real time.

The engineering highlight is the swap-and-reveal mechanic between Odysseus and Penelope, it is clever and it is the reason to own this kit. Underneath, the Gundam itself has decent articulation for an HG, double-jointed elbows and knees, rotating forearms, ball-jointed hips and manipulators, but once you lock it into the FF armor, that range shrinks fast because the shoulders lock up and the added mass fights the lower joints. Value-wise you get an enormous finished piece and a real inner mobile suit for HG money, which is hard to argue with even accounting for the stability issues.

Lore & trivia

01Penelope is not a separate mobile suit but the RX-104 Odysseus Gundam equipped with a Fixed Flight (FF) armor unit, one of the earliest mobile suits fitted with a miniaturized Minovsky flight system.
02It was piloted by Lane Aim of the Earth Federation Forces' Circe unit in Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway, and squares off against Hathaway Noa's Xi Gundam.
03The HGUC release is numbered #229 in Bandai's High Grade Universal Century line and released in 2019 alongside the Hathaway's Flash movie.