RGCosmic Era

MBF-P01-Re2AMATU Gundam Astray Gold Frame Amatsu Mina

A gold-plated peacock of a kit that asks a lot of your patience and pays most of it back.

MechaGrade Score

3.8/5

Gundam Astray Gold Frame Amatsu Mina · 1/144 · 2017

GradeRG

Scale1/144

Released2017

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is a kit I respect more than I relaxed while building.

The RG engineering under all that gold is genuinely clever, the backpack unit is the star of the show, and the finished pose is unlike anything else on my shelf. But I will not pretend the head assembly and the ankle joints did not test me, because they did, repeatedly, with parts small enough to lose in carpet fiber.

Best for: RG collectors who already know the line's small-parts rhythm and want a showpiece, not a first kit

The full review

What it is

Amatsu Mina is Rondo Mina Sahaku's rebuilt, gold-armored version of her late brother's Astray, and Bandai gave it the full RG treatment: real gold and clear injection plastic standing in for the suit's ornate ceremonial look instead of paint or foil stickers. The backpack alone is worth the box price, a folding, deploying rig that houses the Maga no Ikutachi tail-blade and unfolds those signature wing-like blades without looking like a stuck-on accessory. The spear, Okitsu no Kagami, is molded in clear plastic for the first time at this scale, and holding the finished figure with its wings spread is the payoff that made the fussier stretches of the build worth sitting through.

The catch

The head assembly is the roughest patch, tiny layered parts stacking on tinier parts, and I would not call it fun in the moment. The ankle joints are the other sore spot: on my copy, and by the sound of other builders' copies too, they do not reliably hold the weight of the spread wing units, so the finished kit tends to want an action base or a wall to lean against rather than standing free in a dynamic pose. The two-tone gold plastic looks great out of the box but shows mold lines and gate marks more readily than a matte color would, so cleanup matters more here than on a typical RG.

Who it's for

Buy this one if you already own a few RG kits and know how to handle their small, dense parts, because this is not a forgiving kit to learn the grade on. It rewards builders who want a Gundam SEED Astray side-story piece with real presence on a shelf, gold frame and all, and who don't mind propping it against a stand for the best poses. If you want a first RG, a stress-free weekend build, or a kit that stands rock solid on its own ankles, look elsewhere in the line and come back to this one once you have the reps in.

The build story

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

Runner cleanup on this kit is not casual. The gold plastic (in two distinct tones) makes nub marks and seam lines stand out in a way the usual RG white or blue never does, so I slowed down on gate placement more than I normally would. The head is the low point of the build itself, a run of small, thin parts that have to seat correctly in sequence or nothing downstream lines up cleanly. The rest of the frame goes together with the usual RG snugness, though a couple of weapon pegs on the poseable manipulators are loose enough that accessories can pop free if you don't seat them fully.

Where the kit earns its keep is the backpack. It deploys, extends and retracts, housing the Maga no Ikutachi tail-blade in a way that reads as a real weapons bay rather than a fixed decoration, and the wing units it carries are the reason to own this figure. The spear, Okitsu no Kagami, uses clear parts at 1/144 for what I understand is the first time on this scale, and it changes how the weapon reads in hand versus a solid-color equivalent. Articulation elsewhere is properly RG: extendable, retractable arm joints, a shoulder design that keeps the huge backpack from fighting the arms for space, and enough range to get real dynamic poses once you've got the kit braced. For a mid-tier RG price point the part count and color separation are a strong showing, provided you accept that the ankles need help holding the pose.

Lore & trivia

01Amatsu Mina is the rebuilt form of Rondo Gina Sahaku's original Gold Frame Amatsu, restored and upgraded by his twin sister Rondo Mina Sahaku after his death in the Gundam SEED Astray side-story continuity.
02The suit and its pilot appear during the 'Break The World' incident in October C.E. 73, working alongside the Junk Guild at GENESIS Alpha to try to stop the Junius Seven drop.
03The RG kit's spear weapon, Okitsu no Kagami, is molded using clear plastic parts, a first for a weapon of its type at 1/144 scale.
04This RG release is numbered RG #24 in Bandai's Real Grade line and hit shelves in March 2017.