HGUniversal Century

RX-105 Xi Gundam

A 26-meter monster of a suit folded into a 1/144 box that still transforms and still poses.

MechaGrade Score

4.1/5

Xi Gundam · 1/144 · 2021

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2021

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is one of the best big-suit HGUCs Bandai has put out in years.

The Xi Gundam is a huge, ugly, glorious machine in the show, and the kit gets that scale and that menace across without needing a bigger price tag or a bigger grade line. It transforms between MS mode and flight mode with real engineering behind it, not a gimmick bolted on, and it holds a pose once you get the hip and shoulder joints seated properly.

Best for: HG builders who want a genuinely big, mechanically interesting kit without stepping up to MG money

The full review

What it is

The Xi Gundam is Hathaway Noa's ride from Hathaway's Flash, and Bandai built this HGUC around Hajime Katoki's redesign of Yasuhiro Moriki's deliberately "de-Gundamized" original, the one with the oversized hands and the false face on the chest plate hiding something meaner underneath. Building it, that two-faced design idea actually reads once it's assembled. The kit's backpack adaptor slides to rebalance the silhouette between modes, the skirt armor pivots out of the way of the legs, and the double-jointed elbows and knees give it more range than a suit this bulky has any right to have. Snapping the flight form together the first time is the moment this kit earns its price.

The catch

The leg fins that lock the two modes together are genuinely tight, tight enough that several builders sand down the connecting pegs before attempting the MS-to-flight swap, because forcing it risks snapping a foot part. Like most modern HGUC kits this one leans on stickers for some of the finer color separation rather than molded plastic, so the two-face chest detail and a few accent panels need a topcoat or a steady hand with paint markers if you want them to hold up over time. It is also a big kit for the grade, with real weight on the ball joints, so a few builders report the ankles and hips loosening after repeated transformation and pose changes.

Who it's for

If you liked the movie or just want a big, weird, mechanically dense Gundam that doesn't ask MG money or MG build time, this is an easy recommend. The transformation gimmick alone is worth the kit for anyone who likes when the plastic actually does the thing the anime does. Skip it if you want a display piece straight out of the box with zero sticker work, or if tight, fiddly leg-fin assembly during transformation sounds more frustrating than fun to you. Builders who want their kits to survive constant re-posing without loosening should treat this one a little more gently than a smaller HG.

What works

Anime-accurate MS-to-flight-mode transformation that actually works through real part geometry, not a snap-on gimmick
Double-jointed elbows and knees plus a sliding backpack adaptor give this big suit a genuinely wide pose range
Captures the Xi's oversized, two-faced, de-Gundamized design at 1/144 scale better than the source material's proportions have any right to allow

Worth knowing

Leg fin pegs are tight enough during transformation that sanding them down before the first swap is close to mandatory
Sticker reliance on some of the finer color separation, including the chest's false-face detail
Ball joints on the ankles and hips can loosen with repeated re-posing given how much suit they're carrying

Sold? Grab it.

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The build story

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

Assembly is straightforward for a suit this size, runners are clean and gate placement is typical modern HGUC, but there's a lot of it. The skirt armor, backpack, and leg assemblies all have multiple points of articulation built in rather than being static shells, so cleanup takes longer than a standard HG just because there are more moving parts to trim carefully around.

The standout engineering is the transformation sequence itself: the legs, feet, and Minovsky flight unit all reposition to turn the Xi from a towering biped into its flight silhouette, and the wing and leg blade parts deploy along the way rather than being separate swap-in pieces. Loadout covers a beam rifle, shield, twin beam saber blades, and multiple hand parts, solid value for an HG at this price point given how much the kit is actually doing mechanically.

Lore & trivia

01The Xi Gundam is piloted by Hathaway Noa, Amuro Ray's protege, in his campaign against Earth Federation corruption as the masked vigilante Mafty in Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash.
02Designer Yasuhiro Moriki originally pitched the Xi Gundam as a deliberately "de-Gundamized" monster with oversized hands and a hidden second face, a look Hajime Katoki refined for the anime while keeping the false Gundam-style face on the upper chest.
03At roughly 26 meters tall, the Xi Gundam is one of the largest mobile suits to headline a Universal Century production, built by Anaheim Electronics as a secret fifth-generation prototype with an internal Minovsky Flight Unit for atmospheric combat.
04This HGUC (kit #238) released in April 2021 alongside the theatrical release of Hathaway's Flash and includes both its MS mode and true-to-anime flight mode transformation.