Written by 11:48 am Previews

Preview : 1/144 B-Club RX-77-3 Guncannon Heavyarms Conversion

Kit Info
Manufacturer: B-Club
Scale: 1/144
Media: Resin
Parts: 72
Price: ¥7,600

The Subject
The RX-77-3 Guncannn Heavyarms is a heavily modified RX-77-2 Guncannon developed as an outgrowth of the RGC-80 GM Cannon design. The Guncannon Heavyarms is designed as a stand-alone combat unit, unlike the GM Cannon.

Basically a retooled Guncannon, the Heavyarms featured better armor, improved 240mm cannons and a grenade rack. By UC 0085, this successful variant would see limited mass production.

The Kit
B-Club is a subsidiary of Bandai which produces resin kits of generally more obscure subjects from the Gundam universe. Being resin, the products are also considerably more expensive than the injection offerings from Bandai.

It’s also not everyday that they actually reissue old kits since resin tends to do lots of nasty things to the molds. So I was pleasantly surprised they announced the re-issuing of the conversion kit for the Guncannon Heavyarms. Now this subject doesnt get more obscure. For one thing it’s from the Gundam MSV series, which was originally a subline of the original series. When the Heavyarms did get animated it was in some throwaway scenes in Gundam Zeta. The recast for this set has also been long out of production.

Me being a fanatic of the Federation Mass Production Mobile Suits, well… I just had to get it! And so I did, from Hobbylink Japan. This was to be, only my third ever original resin kit. Anyhow, on with the preview!

The kit came in a box about half the size of a small HGUC model kit box but it’s packed the brim with parts. The resin parts themselves came in a sprue-like tree made also of resin. This is the standard B-Club practice. The resin is a dark greyish color which is quite different from what I see in recasts. The molding is very crisp which made me wonder if they actually produced new molds for this one.

The boxart shows the completed kit. Instructions are black and white without actually showing how the completed kit looks like. It’s also all in Japanese but it’s easy enough to figure out from the larger than average-sized drawings.

An interesting addition is a set of polycaps so the kit can be fully poseable. I’m not really sure if the polycaps can hold the kit in any pose since the completed kit is almost ALL resin which should make it quite heavy.

One minor quibble is the lack of any markings. B-Club doesn’t even include a set of stickers. I don’t use stickers on my gunpla but still, this is an expensive item, surely they could have made an effort to include some sort of markings.

Oh, did I mention it needs an HGUC Guncannon to use as a base for this conversion? The sheer amount of parts in this set does make me wonder how much of the injection kit will be used though. The instruction sheet doesn’t give any indication on that front.

Now lately, the trend has been that sometimes (but not all the time) B-Club would release a resin kit, then Bandai would release the same thing in injection kit form. At maybe 25% of the price of the resin kit. This kit, however, should be safe. But of course, never say never.

I’m very glad I have this in my collection. Sure it’s a very obscure subject, but I think it’s a very nice design evolution of the Guncannon.

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Tags: , , , , , , , Last modified: 26 February, 2020
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