MG 1/100 Sword Impulse Gundam - Part 2

Luckily for me, I have some "free" time to do this. It took me about 2 hours or less to do the photoshoot, including readying the stage. The stage didn't look so great and was mostly half-assed as I didn't have the right components(thicker paper) to make it look better. Ah well, I guess it works well.

This review is a continuation of the previous post, here.

Now, onto the continuation. =)

Part 5: Action
But before we can actually get into the action poses... here are some stationary poses from the 4 angles perspective. =)
The Impulse is pretty tall, almost as tall as the bottle by itself and the Excaliburs are even as long as the bottle un-extended! The items laid in front of the Impulse are not all the stuff it has, those are just the stuff I'll be using in this review. =)

As you may have noticed, the Excaliburs can touch the ground and can give support to the Impulse to stand easily.

*pew**pew**pew*

Shield gimmick. FYI, the beam rifle got a gimmick too, as I said before, in which it can attach itself to the rear skirt armor. I didn't do it for this review as I already did it for the Force Impulse. XP

Cockpit hatch open! The top part is where it really connects to the Core Splendor inside whereby the pilot can peak out from it, to my knowledge.

Beam Boomerang/Flash Edge. It is a boomerang weapon whereby it is thrown at the enemy for a type of mid-long range attack. Looking at the size of the beam part of the boomerang gives me the impression that it can be used for melee attacks also, in a sense, being used like any other beam saber. ^^ It can also be used without beams.

Hand swapping is needed to be able to hold the Excaliburs better as the normal open-able hands could not grip it good enough for more dynamic poses, especially when one sword if held in one hand.

Sword Impulse cannot really hold the Excaliburs horizontally very well as it will sag after a while. Rather disappointing in that aspect. But that mostly applies when only one sword is held in one hand normally. If the Excalibur is held vertically, it should be able to stay upright for quite a while. ^^;

GAT-TAI~!

However, when you let it hold the swords combine, it can hold them no problem. Note that you need to use the normal hands instead for this.

EDIT: Just in case; The swords combined can also be held with one hand(must use the "holding" hands for this) and can balance a bit(it can still sag, but slower than when holding one sword but still can balance when put right) though I don't think it is a good idea to leave it be holding for long periods of time as it may stress the plastic connections of the arm used. Otherwise, it is pretty much possible to hold the dual Excaliburs with one hand.

A little fight scene with MG Sword Strike. Who do you think will win? XP


Part 6: Irony
After I was done playing around with the Sword Impulse, I decided to see if the Strike can hold the Excaliburs better... and of course, it can! o.o
The most amazing part is that the Strike can hold them without saging! Well, it might sag after a while, but the hands are very study! Sadly it is unable to hold them backhanded as the finger joints are very limited in holding the swords in various poses.

GAT-TAI~!

Sword Strike with three swords! XP Ah, that was so fun. ^^

Part 7: Conclusion
Overall the MG Sword Impulse is a very beautiful kit and deserves quite a lot of "love". ^^

There are a few drawbacks though. As stated above, the hands are unable to properly hold the Excalibur, especially horizontally, which is quite unacceptable. If Bandai had given it better sturdiness(a firmer wrist connection), this kit would had been near perfect! I mean, if an older kit like the Strike can hold the swords better, why can't the newer model have a more sturdier or at least as study hand/arm joint? This is even more annoying when the SEED Gundams are very similar to each other in design. =/ Though, it is not such a bad thing when you can consider that it can hold the Excaliburs combined no problem at all(with two hands of course).
The mold on the upper part of the chest has not been fixed also, they just use the same Impulse mold like the Force Impulse and made it red. Lazy Bandai.

At any rate, the MG Sword Impulse gets my approval as one of the Gunplas you should buy when you want to buy a MG kit as it is pretty simple and straightforward to build. It doesn't take such a long while to build and that the entire kit is molded beautifully and quite detailed. If the slight problems with the strength of the arms do not bother you, it is a very good buy. I'm quite satisfied here. ^^

SPECIAL NOTE:
About the wrist... you can make it more firmer by doing the "superglue trick". This where you apply a thin layer of superglue onto ONE of the connectors and leave it to dry overnight. After that, you connect the two connecting parts together for a more firmer grip. This is also useful for lose parts.
It is highly important that you DO NOT apply the superglue and STICK them together immediately or else the part loses its mobility. If it is too thick, you'll have difficulty in inserting it later on. Though, you can always sand it down if that happens.

NOTE: For those who have seen SEED Destiny, you might have noticed I did not split up the Impulse into the Chest Flyer, Core Splendor, Leg Flyer and Sword Silhouette in this part of the review(though can be seen a bit in Part 1). I felt it wasn't really necessary as well as time is lacking for me to actually do these parts. I might add them later on(next week or next month) when I get some more "free" time as right now I'm kinda pushing my responsibilities to the side a bit too much. x.x

Fin~