#Gunpla

What's the Best Gunpla Kit Ever Made? Japanese Builders Weigh In — "So YOU Claim It's Perfect? Don't Make Me Laugh, You Commoner."

Asked which Gunpla (Gundam plastic model) kit is the single best-engineered one ever made, Japanese builders did what any good hobby community does: they refused to agree, and the thread turned into a gloriously nerdy roundtable instead. The most-liked picks tell you a lot about what Japanese modelers actually prize — and it isn't always the flagship. The runaway crowd-pleaser is "the HG (High Grade) Zeon 'swimming club' kits," the affectionate nickname for Zeon's amphibious mobile suits, praised for low part-counts and budget pricing while punching way above their weight on poseability and proportions. "The HG Gundam Aerial" from The Witch from Mercury gets love on the principle that "the protagonist's mobile suit always gets the most effort," with one builder calling its all-new tech "flat-out brilliant." "The MG (Master Grade) Narrative Gundam Ver.Ka" earns a flat "everything about it is too perfect," "the HGUC Gustav Karl" gets singled out for cleverly balancing proportion and range of motion through smart gimmicks, and the budget kings — "the HG Genoace" and the AGE Federation line — win the "cheap, moves well, great molded-in color separation" vote. There's wholesome shop talk too: a confession about a shield that's a pain to paint inside, a fragile shield-arm joint, and a lot of old-timers marveling at how far the hobby has come. And then someone shows up to put the Narrative fanboy in his place with one perfectly haughty Gundam-villain quote.