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Post by goldorak on Mar 30, 2012 4:44:19 GMT -5
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Post by IronSouls on Mar 30, 2012 9:51:18 GMT -5
I got mine yesterday and played with it a bunch last night. Here are my impressions:
Solidly built for something so skinny in design. I didn't have any lose joints at all, in fact the legs are probably a little bit to tight. I'll live with that problem though. ;D
Paint apps are good, not smears as far as I can see. The tampo markings are clear, I just wish there were a little more of them. The colors they used to paint it are a little weird, the "red" is more of a red-ish purple which I know is correct but next to other GGF:MC and metal builds it looks weird.
The wings are pretty nice, the backpack mounts on there pretty well but I don't recommend swapping it on and off to often, the mount seems like it would get loose over time.
Now to my major gripe, the wing cannons. They are REALLY solidly built I was messing around with them a lot trying to get them into a nice display position, however for the life of me I could not get them to have a good forward firing position. On the cover of the manual they show it doing that but I could not reproduce that pose. The head v-fins are just to big to get it in anything but pretty much a 45 degree upward angle. I just wanted to recreate the full burst mode and I think I did a decent job of it but I was disappointed the mobility.
The stand is nice, but I feel over engineered, the piece isn't that heavy and that support arm is huge.
Overall very nice. I think I like the Seven Sword Exia a bit more but I really like this Metal Build line.
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Post by moleman on Apr 29, 2012 21:38:48 GMT -5
Here's my review of the Metal Build Freedom Gundam Sculpt and Paint: This is one of the categories of where the MB Freedom really shines. The proportions that Bandai gave the freedom feature much longer legs, a smaller narrower chest and longer arms. In other words, Bandai stretched the freedom design out from its more bulky animated version and kind of gave it proportions that are closer in kin to something Yamaguchi would do. The whole sculpt just screams dynamic and it really shows in the poses below. While some might not like the deviation from the line-art, I find the proportions refreshing and definitely more attractive than the rather cartoony looking master grade. The color palate that Bandai chose for the figure includes a slightly pearlescent white, flat grey, metallic blue, metallic red and a slightly brown metallic grey. I deeply enjoy the flat grey highlights around the body to add some contrast among the white and it gives the figure an almost real grade feel. Another thing to note is the lighter blue stripes on the wings and how they act a lovely contrast to the darker blue. The tampo- printing is neat and almost readable! Overall I’m in love with the sculpt and color palate that Bandai chose for this figure.     ![]() i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb410/Ericshen69/DSCN1033.jpg/img]  Articulation: The MB freedom has fantastic articulation and I would say it’s on par with current master grades. I’m not going to mention all of the articulation points, but I will mention a few points that stick out. First of all the knees are double jointed and feature an awesome sliding knee armor gimmick akin to what a master grade feature. The shoulders are triple jointed and can pull away from the body. The shoulder pads are on their own joints and allow the freedom to move its arms wherever they need to while still having the shoulder armor in a normal position. It’s kind of hard to explain how the shoulder pads interact with the rest of arms, but the effect works. The front hip skirts also split down the middle to help get out of the way and allow the legs to move further up. The wings feature a lot of movement and can move in pretty much any direction you want it to, but they’re a bit tight and can be kind of a pain to articulate (more on this later). The legs also have some pull out metal boosters. How cool is that?           Accessories: The accessories include two beam sabers, two pink beams, a shield, beam rifle, a nice assortment of different fixed posed hands, a stand and some attachment clips for the stand. The beam rifle is panel lined and features a moveable handle. The shield features some breathtaking detail and paint applications. The shield also features a handle that’s on a sort of ratcheted joint to remain firm during posing. The stand is like a Bandai action base, but with some awesome graphics on the base of it and the stand features safety locks for all of the positions the stand can be oriented in. Metal Content: This line is called metal build and it lives up to its name. While there’s not a lot of exterior metal besides the feet, freedom gundam has a lot of heft. Metal content is in the ankle joints, inside the lower legs, knees, elbows, hip joints, inside the torso and the wing joints .Most of the metal bits are not painted and instead have been given a gritty metallic grey finish. The heft is great and the metal joints contribute to the sturdiness of the figure. Furthermore, the metal content provides a good sense of balance on the figure even with the wings attached.     Quality Control and Potential Design issues: So if you’ve been looking through the pictures you’ll notice that the paint job isn’t the cleanest it could be. While to the naked eye my copy is passable, but if you start looking for painted dirt and overspray you can easily find some. I’m a bit disappointed the paint job didn’t come out as amazing as the MB 00 gundam. I guess Bandai decided to use the B factory on the freedom and it shows. For the $185 I paid for this piece I should expect a cleaner paint job. Paint aside, while the joints are all nice and tight, some of them are overly so. The amount of torque I had to use to get the wings to move for the first time was a little scary, and the same could be said about the elbows. Nevertheless, I’d rather have super tight joints than floppy ones. Thankfully all of the joints are metal so they could take a good beating. Another point of criticism I have for this piece is the way the back pack attaches. The backpack attaches to the back with two tabs that stay in about half of the time. The connection isn’t loose, in fact it’s quite tight, but the amount of torque required to move the wings or hip joints can unseat the backpack. Another annoyance I have is how thin the joint is to elongate the hip rail guns. Apart from most of the joints being metal, the joints on the rail guns are plastic and ones to elongate the rail guns kind of scare me how fragile they feel. Furthermore, when freedom gundam is on the stand make sure the backpack is securely attached or you could get a face planted gundam. Hopefully these issues are just reserved for my copy and there’s a lot more near perfect pieces out there. However, I have read on a lot of the HK forums that the paint job wasn’t very good and mine is no exception.   Overall: This piece is definitely beautiful to look at and it holds poses wonderfully. However, getting freedom to the right pose can be a tad irritating. As I mentioned before the paint job is a bit sloppy on my copy and I really wish Bandai took their time to get this piece as perfect as it could be, but what are you going to do? I think the MB 00 is still the better piece of the two and I hope Exia will be of the same quality as the 00. Freedom gundam is good, but not as good as it could be. At the end of the day posing freedom gundam feels like I’m posing a piece of art and that alone almost melts away most of my criticisms with the piece. Despite, some quality issues I will still recommend this piece to gundam high end gundam collectors and mecha fans alike. By the way Bandai normally don’t reissue their GFFMC and MB figures, so get this one while you still can.  Thanks for viewing. |
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Post by zephyranthes on May 1, 2012 23:32:33 GMT -5
Thanks for the great pictorial review moleman. Terrific pics, too.
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Post by mechamasterj on May 2, 2012 21:51:12 GMT -5
Great review I agree 100% except mine was missing the piece that goes under the back pack or rather the back half of the lower torso. Big qc issue buti assume an isolated case
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Post by moleman on May 2, 2012 23:03:16 GMT -5
Thanks for the kind comments guys, it keeps me motivated to do more reviews. MJ are you going to return yours or try to get an exchange for another one? I hope your able to resolve that issue because missing the back of the torso is a pretty big slap in the face. I saw one dude on toysdaily who had one with the face being distorted and like half painted, it was quite disturbing. I love my MB freedom, but I wish Bandai would just use their "A" factory for all of the "A" priced items.
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Post by max on May 2, 2012 23:53:10 GMT -5
Great review Moleman! - picked mine up last weekend. It's a great piece. I think I was lucky as mine was defect free.   |
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Post by moleman on May 6, 2012 12:09:34 GMT -5
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Post by DebiraX1 on May 7, 2012 15:54:42 GMT -5
Hi.
Just two questions:
1. Any comparison pic with other robots, please? (SOCs, MMM Gundams...)
2. Are the fingers movable?
Regards.
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Post by GLaw on May 9, 2012 22:35:42 GMT -5
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Post by dimis on May 21, 2012 14:45:28 GMT -5
I got mine from Amiami, which had been pre-ordered through my proxy service along with 6 other releases the last three months and it's one of those with the sloppy QC. Various specks of dust, left forearm unevenly painted and the left leg having something like glue that shines when you hold a certain way towards the light. I'm so annoyed because the metal builds and composites are the only series i collect of Gundam. I live in Europe and i'm thinking of buying another from European imported stock. I've found it for $175, so i could abuse the sloppy one and keep the other mint in box. Am i crazy? :-) I mean what are the chances the other will also be bad?
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Post by mechamasterj on May 21, 2012 22:32:18 GMT -5
Guess you'll find out but seeing as you canteeven see the figure from the box I think keeping one mint would be pointless then again if you never open box you'll never know if it has badqc as well
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Post by nikodiablo on Jul 17, 2012 19:27:11 GMT -5
I noticed that the Metal Build Freedom is not selling as well as the Metal Build Seven Sword. Even the ebay resellers are still selling at close to its original retail price.
I thought Freedom is quite popular.
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Post by zephyranthes on Jul 18, 2012 0:16:35 GMT -5
I noticed that the Metal Build Freedom is not selling as well as the Metal Build Seven Sword. Even the ebay resellers are still selling at close to its original retail price. I thought Freedom is quite popular. I've noticed the same thing. It seems that these were possibly overproduced -- supply exceeding demand. Maybe this will result in a price drop. If it drops enough, I might buy one. I've held off so far based on the reports (inc. on this site) of defects (paint apps, missing pieces). I'm loathe to spend good money on a product with a strong chance of having glaring defects. But at a really good sale price...hmm. |
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Post by dimis on Jul 18, 2012 5:39:26 GMT -5
The MB Freedom may not only have the defects you mention, but overall it feels like a lower quality figure. I'd say it's on par with the Metal Composite Origin. The plastic pieces of the MB 7 swords feel like porcelain, while on Freedom they feel exactly like my MC Origin's. Which is why it's hard to reach the demand that the 7 Swords had as soon as it came out.
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Post by nikodiablo on Jul 18, 2012 8:10:35 GMT -5
^ I think that's not the only thing that happened. I believe that the 7 Sword was released in much smaller quality than Freedom, and people quickly grabbed them, regardless of the quality. Heck... people wouldn't know about the quality of the product until there's some sort of a review, right? If I remember quickly, 7 sword quickly went out of stock less than 1 month after its release.
IMHO Bandai probably thought that Freedom can replicate the success made by the 7 Sword, and produced them in greater quantity. Hey - the bot starred in 2 TV series, it must be popular with the fans, right? Unfortunately the sub-par quality didn't go well with the fans, and the higher production amount means that there are more stock available and resellers can't really control the pricing.
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Post by supergetterv on Jul 18, 2012 14:13:25 GMT -5
For me, I never liked the Freedom or the Strike Freedom. The fact that they also released the RG kit also didn't help push the sale of this MB. It has to be that the poor quality that is keeping this from being sold out. If the reviews were good that may sway some buyers. As it sits now, if this gets any closer to the $100 range, I will definitely be interested in getting one.
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Post by zephyranthes on Jul 19, 2012 0:53:45 GMT -5
For me, I never liked the Freedom or the Strike Freedom. The fact that they also released the RG kit also didn't help push the sale of this MB. It has to be that the poor quality that is keeping this from being sold out. If the reviews were good that may sway some buyers. As it sits now, if this gets any closer to the $100 range, I will definitely be interested in getting one. $100 price could convince me to purchase it. I guess I'll keep waiting. I like the MC RX-78 Origin quite bit. I don't recall any significant QC problems with mine. However, I can't compare it to Seven Swords since I never got my hands on one of those. I wanted the MC Unicorn, but the price was very high so I passed on it. Now I wish I had gotten that one though I read that there were some issues with the paint discoloring on the Unicorn. |
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Post by nikodiablo on Jul 19, 2012 4:39:59 GMT -5
^ One of those crazy ebay resellers is selling the GFFMC Unicorn (Prism Coating) for nearly USD 700  ... Go figure. |
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Post by dimis on Jul 19, 2012 9:22:12 GMT -5
For me, I never liked the Freedom or the Strike Freedom. The fact that they also released the RG kit also didn't help push the sale of this MB. It has to be that the poor quality that is keeping this from being sold out. If the reviews were good that may sway some buyers. As it sits now, if this gets any closer to the $100 range, I will definitely be interested in getting one. $100 price could convince me to purchase it. I guess I'll keep waiting. I like the MC RX-78 Origin quite bit. I don't recall any significant QC problems with mine. However, I can't compare it to Seven Swords since I never got my hands on one of those. I wanted the MC Unicorn, but the price was very high so I passed on it. Now I wish I had gotten that one though I read that there were some issues with the paint discoloring on the Unicorn. I think you are referring to the Prism coating version of the Unicorn. That was, allegedly, yellowed in parts straight from the factory because of uneven application of the coating, but not all had this. I have the 1006 Unicorn and it didn't have any problems. About the Origin, i didn't say it had defects, just that the quality of the materials was lower than those of the 7 Swords. Personally i would have been happy to have paid $300 for an MB 7 swords. |
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