HGUniversal Century

RX-77-2 Guncannon (Revive Ver.)

The Federation's forgotten heavy hitter gets a runner sheet that finally matches its bulk.

MechaGrade Score

4.2/5

Guncannon · 1/144 · 2015

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2015

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is one of the best HG kits Bandai has put out for a suit that usually gets treated as the Gundam's sidekick.

The Revive line's Kusabi gate tech and double-jointed limbs turn a suit that used to feel like a brick into something that actually poses like a walking artillery platform. I did not expect a 2015 re-tool of a background Project V unit to be this satisfying to build, and it is.

Best for: builders who want a genuinely good-posing 1/144 with zero stickers and don't mind panel lining a mostly-red suit

The full review

What it is

The Guncannon Revive is Bandai going back to one of the original Project V trio and giving it the same modern HG treatment that made the RX-78-2 Revive a hit. You get the shoulder-mounted twin 240mm cannons, the beam rifle, two sets of hands (fists and open palms), and a movable ab joint that lets the suit bend forward at the waist, which sounds minor until you pose it crouching to fire and realize how much life that one joint adds. The Kusabi gate system means parts pop off the runners by hand, no nippers required for most of the build, which is a genuinely nice quality-of-life touch on a budget kit.

The catch

The suit is molded almost entirely in solid red and dark gray, so straight out of the box it reads a little flat and toy-like. Panel lining is basically mandatory if you want the surface detail to actually pay off, this is not a kit that pops on its own. The nub marks land on the red parts, which show scuffing more than the darker plastic would, so cleanup matters more here than on a lot of HGs. There are no true detail stickers for the main body, just clear ones for pilot markings and cannon numbers, so what you see is what the plastic gives you.

Who it's for

Grab this if you want a proper Guncannon on your shelf, if you're building the Project V trio (Gundam, Guncannon, Guntank) and want them to match in build quality, or if you just want to see what the Revive line did right on an unglamorous suit. It's also a fair pick for someone past their first kit who's ready to try light panel lining, since the flat red plastic gives you a reason to. Skip it if you want an out-of-box showpiece with no extra work, the payoff here is tied to putting in a bit of post-build effort.

The build story

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

Runners are laid out well and the Kusabi gates make this one of the more relaxed HG builds around, you can pull most pieces free without a nipper and the connection points clean up with barely any scarring on gray plastic. The red parts need a bit more attention since nub marks show against the glossy solid color. Fit is tight throughout, nothing floppy, and the ab crotch joint assembly is straightforward for a budget-tier kit.

The articulation is the real story: ball-jointed shoulders that swing forward, upper arm rotation, double-jointed elbows and knees, a rotating waist, a see-saw hip joint, and ankles that tilt and pivot. It holds crouching and kneeling poses that older Guncannon kits simply could not do. Both cannons stay firmly mounted through posing, the beam rifle grip is secure, and the open-palm hand swap gives you a real gunnery-support silhouette instead of just a standing statue.

Lore & trivia

01The RX-77-2 Guncannon was one of three Earth Federation mobile suits built under Project V (Operation V), alongside the RX-78-2 Gundam and RX-75-4 Guntank.
02It uses the same Core Block System as the Gundam, housing the cockpit in a central block that can eject as the Core Fighter in an emergency.
03Kai Shiden, a civilian who ended up crewing the White Base, became the Guncannon's primary pilot and used it to down an MSM-03 Gogg during the defense of Jaburo.
04The Guncannon was the only one of the three Project V suits to see even limited mass production after the war.