HGUniversal Century

XM-X0 Crossbone Gundam X-0 Full Cloth

A ghost story wrapped in silver beam cloth, with more weapon options than you know what to do with.

MechaGrade Score

3.8/5

Crossbone Gundam X-0 Full Cloth · 1/144 · 2021

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2021

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is the Crossbone line playing its greatest hit again, and it still works.

Bandai took the earlier HG Crossbone frame and dressed it in the flowing Full Cloth cape, then handed you enough guns, blades, and buster parts to pose a small armory. The base kit underneath is proven and solid. Where it loses points is the cloth itself getting in its own way once you actually try to move the arms.

Best for: Crossbone fans and pose-heavy weapon collectors who don't mind a little glue and sticker work for the payoff

The full review

What it is

The X-0 is the third Full Cloth release in HG scale, and Bandai clearly knows the formula by now. You get the compact, well-proportioned Crossbone body, a mane of coat-like ABC cloaks down the back, and a genuinely absurd loadout: two Butterfly Busters, a stack of Peacock missile pods, the Muramasa Blaster, a separate Beam Zanber, heat daggers, a scissor anchor, and a core fighter that separates out. Building it feels less like assembling one gundam and more like assembling a weapons rack with a robot attached. I had a great time just laying out the sprues before I even started clipping.

The catch

The cloth is the whole point and also the whole problem. Reviewers and builders consistently flag that once the Full Cloth panels are on, the shoulders get heavy and the cape fabric-effect parts physically block a chunk of arm and torso movement, so big weapon poses fight the kit rather than flowing with it. Color accuracy also leans on stickers for the thruster highlights and red trim rather than molded plastic, so if you want the exact anime look you're weeding through a sticker sheet or reaching for paint. It's a P-Bandai exclusive too, so pricing and availability run higher than a shelf HG.

Who it's for

Buy this if you already like the Crossbone silhouette and want the deep-cut Ghost version with Curtis Rothko's blind-pilot mobile suit and its stacked arsenal, or if you're chasing a big dramatic cloak-and-guns display piece and don't mind babying the pose once it's built. Skip it if you want a kit that articulates freely right out of the box, or if you're not willing to hunt down a secondary-market P-Bandai listing. First-time Gunpla builders should start with a standard HG, this one rewards patience more than it teaches technique.

The build story

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

The core frame goes together the way earlier HG Crossbone releases do, snug joints, clean gate placement, no surprises in the clipping or fit. The Full Cloth add-on pieces are where the extra time goes, they're soft-effect plastic parts meant to drape like fabric and they take a bit of care to seat properly around the shoulders and back without stressing the joints underneath.

The real standout is the weapons complement. Between the twin Butterfly Busters, the stacked Peacock missile array, the Muramasa Blaster and Peacock Smasher combo build, the separate Beam Zanber, and the core fighter that pulls out of the torso, you get more display configurations than most HG kits offer at double the price point. Articulation on the bare frame is good Crossbone HG standard, the tradeoff only shows up once the cloak is fully mounted and starts fighting the shoulder movement.

Lore & trivia

01The X-0 was the third F97-series Crossbone Gundam, built for SNRI's operations around Jupiter but never reached the Crossbone Vanguard flagship because its transport ship was destroyed, leaving it lost in space for roughly twenty years.
02It was found and given the designation 'X-0' by the Manzana Flor crew, who nicknamed it 'Ghost' since most people didn't even know a third Crossbone Gundam existed.
03Its pilot, Curtis Rothko, is blind and pilots the suit through a sound-conversion system that turns sensor data into audio feedback across a 500 km range, though the manga eventually reveals Curtis Rothko is really Tobia Arronax hiding under an assumed identity.
04This HG release reuses and builds on the Full Cloth treatment Bandai first applied to the X-1, following the same Premium Bandai exclusive release pattern.