HGUniversal Century

RX-93 ν Gundam

Amuro's last Gundam, built down to a beginner-friendly HGUC that still hands you fin funnels.

MechaGrade Score

3.7/5

Nu Gundam · 1/144 · 2008

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2008

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is the HGUC line doing exactly what it does best: take a legendary Universal Century suit and hand it to you at a low price with almost none of the frustration.

It is not a flashy build and the articulation shows its age next to a modern RG or MG, but the proportions are right, the fin funnels are there, and it snaps together with barely a fight. For an old-catalog HG, it earns its keep.

Best for: newer builders and UC completionists who want the classic Nu Gundam silhouette without RG small-parts stress

The full review

What it is

The HGUC RX-93 ν Gundam is Amuro Ray's final mobile suit from Char's Counterattack, shrunk to 1/144 and built the old HGUC way: polycap joints, molded color plastic, and a part count that respects your evening rather than eating it. I went in expecting a bare-bones filler kit and came out with a Nu Gundam that actually reads as a Nu Gundam, the head shape, the shoulder binders, the leg proportions are all there. It comes with a beam rifle, a hyperbazooka, two beam sabers, and the fin funnels that made this suit famous, so you are not paying 2008-era HG prices for a suit that stands there empty-handed.

The catch

The articulation is where its age catches up with it. There is no ab crunch, the legs cannot kick back far because the rear skirt armor is fixed in place, and while the arms and double-jointed head move well, hip and knee range fall short of anything Bandai has put out in the last decade. Nub marks land in some visible spots on the limbs since this predates a lot of HGUC's later gate-placement refinements, so cleanup matters more than you might expect from a simple kit. It also leans on molded color plus a small sticker sheet rather than full color separation for some of the finer trim.

Who it's for

Buy this if you want the real Nu Gundam experience without RG-level small parts or MG-level time investment, or if you are working through the UC roster on a budget and do not want to skip Amuro's final ride. It is a genuinely good first-Gundam candidate too, the fit is forgiving and nothing here will punish an unsteady hand. Skip it if pose range is your top priority, in that case the RG or the MG Ver. Ka give you the crunch and hip movement this older mold does not have, and budget builders chasing pure value might find newer HGUC molds pack more into the same price point.

The build story

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

Nine runners is a lot of sprue for a 1/144 HG, and while the parts are small, they come away clean with a nipper and a light touch on the nub. The head assembly is a nice surprise, the helmet and face piece are essentially one detailed unit that snaps home cleanly, no fiddly two-piece face alignment to fight with. Everything is polycap-jointed so the whole thing goes together fast and locks solidly, no loose knees or wobbly ankles reported from builders working through this one.

The real payoff is the loadout. You get both beam sabers, a beam rifle, a hyperbazooka, and the deployable fin funnels sitting on the shoulder binders, so the finished kit actually feels equipped rather than posed with an empty hand. Articulation is fine for its era, a double-jointed head that tilts back easily and arms that swing away from the body for a wider guard stance, but the lack of ab crunch and the stationary rear skirt are the two spots where you feel the mold's age most.

Lore & trivia

01The RX-93 ν Gundam was Amuro Ray's final mobile suit, built by Anaheim Electronics for his last confrontation with Char Aznable in Char's Counterattack.
02It was the first Gundam-type unit equipped with fin funnels, remote psycommu weapons that could both fire beam shots and generate an I-Field shield.
03Char reportedly let Anaheim Electronics pass Psycho-Frame data to the ν Gundam's development so the final duel between him and Amuro would be fought on equal footing.
04This HGUC release (HGUC 086) came out in 2008 at roughly 2,500 yen, well before the RG version gave the same suit a full inner-frame treatment.