MGAnno Domini

GN-001/hs-A01D Gundam Avalanche Exia'

The base Exia frame, buried under a mountain of armor plating that fights you the whole way.

MechaGrade Score

3.3/5

Exia · 1/100 · 2018

GradeMG

Scale1/100

Released2018

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is a kit I respect more than I enjoyed building.

The bones underneath, that clean Exia MG frame, are still terrific, but the Avalanche armor bolted on top is a different animal entirely, heavier and stiffer than the suit under it was ever designed to carry. I finished it satisfied with how it looks locked into a standing pose, and mildly annoyed at how much fighting it took to get there.

Best for: Exia fans who want the armored 00V variant on the shelf and are willing to accept limited posing for it

The full review

What it is

Underneath all that plating this is still the excellent MG Exia frame from 2008, and you can feel it every time you strip the Avalanche parts off to check something, the inner frame moves the way an MG should. The Dash Unit and Avalanche armor pieces are new tooling built specifically for this release, not just an add-on sprue bolted onto an old kit, and Bandai clearly put real design effort into making the armor read as a single suit rather than a Gundam wearing a backpack. The GN Drive glows through clear plastic once assembled, and the four beam sabers can all be mounted and displayed at once, which is a genuinely fun accessory moment.

The catch

The catch is weight and articulation, and it is a real one. The armor is heavy enough that it fights the joints underneath it, especially at the shoulders, where the rubber-like holographic connector bands that let the Avalanche shoulder armor swing are also what restricts how far the arms can actually raise. Builders report the completed figure feels top-heavy and a little rickety in dynamic poses, with parts working loose or popping off shield tabs and armor plates during posing sessions rather than during the build itself. Expect a fair amount of paint or foil-sticker work on the new Avalanche runners if you want the panel colors fully separated, since some of the new parts lean on stickers more than the base Exia kit did.

Who it's for

If you already love Exia and want the bulked-out atmospheric-reentry look with all four sabers fanned out on a shelf, this delivers something no other Exia release does, and the new tooling is worth seeing in hand even with its flaws. If your priority is a kit you can pose hard and leave in a dynamic stance without babysitting it, this is not that kit, go with the base MG Exia or MG Exia Repair II instead and skip the armor entirely. I'd point newer builders toward a straight Exia build first and treat this one as a second kit once they know what they are getting into.

The build story

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

The base Exia frame goes together the way MG Exia always has, clean gate placement, confident snap-fit, satisfying to build. The new Avalanche and Dash Unit runners are where the personality shows up: bigger clamshell armor pieces, new joint hardware for the shoulder mount, and noticeably more parts that expect paint or foil stickers rather than molded color if you want the full look. None of it is poorly engineered, it is just a lot more kit than the frame underneath, and that shows up the moment you start posing rather than during assembly.

Once assembled the waist rotates fully, the head sits on a ball joint, and the double-jointed elbows and knees are all present from the base Exia design. The problem is that the Avalanche shoulder armor pins straight into the arm articulation path, and the flexible connector material there is stiff enough to cut into the raise-and-swing range that made the plain Exia such a good poser. Displaying all four beam sabers deployed at once is the clear highlight of the kit's accessory loadout, and it is a pose this kit was clearly built around.

Lore & trivia

01The Avalanche Exia' name specifically marks the version fitted with the newly developed Dash Unit on its legs, letting an armor package designed for atmospheric combat also operate in space.
02The suit and this kit both originate from Mobile Suit Gundam 00V: Battlefield Record, a side-story manga rather than the main 00 television series.
03In its debut appearance the Avalanche Exia' was deployed during the Meteor Nacht incident, sent ahead of Gundam Kyrios Gust to fragment an incoming asteroid before atmospheric entry.
04The Avalanche and Dash Unit armor pieces were newly molded for this release rather than reused from the standard MG Exia kit.