PGAnno Domini

GN-001 Gundam Exia

A skinny, sword-hungry Gundam that turns a Perfect Grade into a genuine posing machine.

MechaGrade Score

4.3/5

Exia · 1/60 · 2017

GradePG

Scale1/60

Released2017

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is the PG that finally trades bulk for range of motion, and it pays off in almost every pose I put it in.

Exia's sparse armor plan means the engineering underneath has to do real work instead of hiding behind plates, and Bandai clearly leaned into that. The one asterisk is a hand-assembly step that has no business being this fussy on a kit at this price, and it is the single biggest thing standing between this release and a truly clean sweep.

Best for: PG collectors and Gundam 00 fans who want the most posable Perfect Grade Bandai has built and don't mind a fiddly afternoon assembling the hands

The full review

What it is

Exia was the first Gundam 00 suit to get the Perfect Grade treatment, and it landed for the show's tenth anniversary in December 2017. Where most PGs read as armored bricks, Exia is built around exposed frame and thin plating, and that design choice turns into the kit's whole personality. The shoulders swing forward far enough to bring both hands together across the chest, the double-jointed elbows and knees go deeper than I expected out of a 1/60, and the transparent GN Drive and particle-channel parts use a dense integrated rubber that looks genuinely different from the usual clear PG runners. Building it feels heavy in your hands in the best way, dense plastic, tight tolerances, a frame that wants to be posed rather than shelved stiff.

The catch

The plasma-welded hands every other PG ships with are gone here. Exia's fully articulated fingers come as loose, tiny individual parts you assemble yourself, no pre-built joints, no shortcuts, and builders who've done a stack of PGs before this one flag it as the roughest part of the whole build. Budget real time and good tweezers for that step alone. The kit also comes with fixed-pose alternate hands for gripping its seven melee weapons, which helps, but doesn't remove the small-parts grind. Price and shelf footprint are what you'd expect from a 1/60 PG, this is not an impulse buy, and the standard release doesn't include the color-changing LED unit, that's sold separately.

Who it's for

If you already own a PG or two and want to see what the format looks like when the suit itself is built for mobility instead of mass, Exia is the one to get, and Gundam 00 fans get the added pull of owning Setsuna's signature machine at the biggest scale Bandai makes it. I'd steer a first-time PG builder toward something with the standard welded hands instead, that finger assembly step is not where you want to be cutting your teeth. But if you've built a PG before and you're comfortable slowing down for one genuinely fiddly stretch, this kit rewards the patience with articulation most Perfect Grades simply don't have.

The build story

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

The runners feel dense and premium from the first sprue, and most of the frame goes together with the satisfying snap-fit precision Bandai's PG line is known for. The exception is the hands: instead of the pre-articulated, plasma-welded fingers every other Perfect Grade ships with, Exia's come as raw, individual parts you have to assemble joint by joint. It is genuinely the roughest stretch in the whole build and worth doing under good light with tweezers on hand.

Where the kit earns its score is everything downstream of that frame. The shoulders travel far enough forward to bring both arms across the body without fighting the torso, both elbows and knees are double-jointed, and the legs move through a full front-to-back range that most PGs can't match at this scale. Seven melee weapons plus the shield give it real loadout variety, and the translucent GN Drive and particle-line parts, molded in a dense rubber built into the frame rather than as separate clear plastic, add a visual touch none of Bandai's other PGs have replicated the same way.

Lore & trivia

01PG GN-001 Gundam Exia released in December 2017 as the first Gundam 00 mobile suit to receive the Perfect Grade treatment, timed to the show's tenth anniversary.
02In the anime, Exia is piloted by Setsuna F. Seiei (born Soran Ibrahim), a child soldier from a war-torn region who joins the paramilitary organization Celestial Being at age 14.
03Celestial Being built Exia as a third-generation close-combat mobile suit; its sparse armor placement was a deliberate tradeoff, maximizing mobility and range of motion at the cost of protecting exposed vitals during combat.
04A separate color-changing LED unit was released for the GN Drive and particle channels, sold apart from the base kit for builders who want the light-up display option.