XXXG-01H Gundam Heavyarms (IGEL Armament)
The gun nut Gundam gets a second gun nut Gundam bolted to its shoulders, and somehow it still stands up straight.
MechaGrade Score
Gundam Heavyarms (IGEL Armament) · 1/100 · 2019
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This is the base MG Heavyarms EW kit wearing a full suit of extra armor, and the extra armor is the whole reason to buy it.
Katoki's original engineering was already solid for a kit this old, but the IGEL add-ons turn a good display piece into a genuinely imposing one without tipping it over. The catch is that all that hardware costs you the arm articulation that made Heavyarms fun to pose in the first place. I'd call it a great shelf piece that asks you to accept a stiffer pilot in exchange for a much bigger silhouette.
Best for: Endless Waltz fans who want the loaded-for-bear Heavyarms silhouette and are fine trading some arm articulation for bulk
What it is
The IGEL Armament is the P-Bandai reissue that bolts a second full weapons loadout onto the standard MG Heavyarms EW: shoulder missile pods, leg-mounted missile blocks, a pair of tread units, plus the beam gatling gun, army knife, beam saber and shield the base kit already carries. Building it is really two builds in one. The Heavyarms frame underneath goes together the way a mid-2010s Katoki-era MG should, clean snap fit, sensible color separation, satisfying clicks at the joints. Then you spend a second evening building twelve individual missile container blocks and clipping them onto the shoulders and legs. When it is all attached and the hatches are popped open, it looks like nothing else on the shelf.
The catch
The IGEL gear is heavy, and it shows. With everything mounted, overall articulation drops from what would be a very good range down a full grade, mainly because the shoulder pods and the doubled gatling hardware fight the arms for space and reduce how far you can raise or rotate them. The back-mount and crotch-mount connectors for the tread units are a known weak point, they are not built to hold up much sustained weight, so leave the kit resting on a stand or a flat surface rather than posing it standing free for long stretches. It is also a P-Bandai exclusive, which means secondhand or resale pricing well above what a standard retail MG runs, and the water-transfer decals need patience to apply well.
Who it's for
If you already like the base MG Heavyarms EW and want the version that actually looks like it is carrying the arsenal Trowa's Gundam is famous for, this is worth tracking down. It rewards people who build for display first and posing second, since the payoff is a genuinely dense, heavily armed silhouette with all those hatches open. If you want a Heavyarms you can throw into acrobatic melee poses, skip the IGEL gear and build the plain EW release instead, the arm movement you lose here is real and you will notice it every time you try to bring the gatling guns up to a firing angle.
The build story
What the build is actually like, and the engineering worth knowing about.
The base frame goes together the way you want an MG from this era to: parts clip in with light nub cleanup, colors are separated well enough that the paint job is optional rather than mandatory, and the joints have that reassuring firm click rather than a loose wobble. The extra hour of work is the IGEL half, twelve separate missile container sub-assemblies for the shoulders and legs plus the tread units, all small parts that need careful test-fitting before final assembly so the hatches actually swing open cleanly later.
Once mounted, the shield, army knife, beam saber and beam gatling all still peg on without a fight, and the twin gatling cannons look properly menacing held two-handed. The tradeoff shows up the moment you try to raise the arms past shoulder height, the IGEL pods physically block the range that the plain Heavyarms enjoys. For a kit this dense with molded detail and extra hardware, the part-count-to-price value is strong if you can find it near retail, less so if you are paying secondary-market markup for a P-Bandai exclusive.
Lore & trivia
- 01Heavyarms was designed in-universe by Doktor S and built in the L3 colonies with Barton Foundation funding as a dedicated long-range firepower unit, distinct from the Barton Foundation's original planned pilot for it.
- 02The pilot most fans know as Trowa Barton is actually an amnesiac who took the name and the Gundam after the real Trowa Barton was killed by his own conscience-stricken technician before Operation Meteor began.
- 03Heavyarms carries a built-in self-destruct system wired to a cockpit trigger, powerful enough in the fiction to level several city blocks, meant as a last resort so the suit's technology never falls into enemy hands.
- 04The IGEL Armament equipment first appeared as a Katoki Hajime design in supplementary Gundam Wing manga material before Bandai turned it into this P-Bandai exclusive add-on kit.
What other builders say
This write-up is grounded in real reviews and builder discussion, not just one opinion. A few worth reading:
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