7 January 2011

Gashapon Senshi NEXT Kshatriya

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While I do collect a lot of shokugans, I don't really collect gashapons. Gundam gashapons have been around for many, many years, but this particular gashapon series called Gashapon Senshi NEXT (ガシャポン戦士NEXT) has caught my attention, mainly due to the fact that it's one of the few I know that has limited articulations. Me and AstrayP03 have both decided to draw one out each from a gashapon machine in Gundam Expo Hong Kong 2010, and we both got Kshatriya - arguably getting the best out of the buck as it's the biggest in the series ^^

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3 smal bags of parts as well as 2 leaflets. The plain black & white one simply states that it's from Bandai Asia and listed a bunch of safety warnings on the back, while the colourful one shows that RX-78-2 Gundam, Char's Zaku II, Ex-S Gundam, and Unicorn Gundam Destroy Mode are also in this series.

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All parts for movable Kshatriya laid out. 2 runners for the joints can be seen on the bottom right

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The legs go on a simple distorted T-shape part and will support the waist/torso as well. A swivel joint is used for each shoulder, and the lower arms can rotate on their own without prior assembly.

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All parts lined up for assembly, showing roughly which goes to where. No instructions were given on assembly, but as one can see it's quite straightforward.

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And the finished gashapon miniture Kshatriya is here!

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The back of Kshatriya is quite simple, but for a gashapon I can't ask for too much can I?

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Kshatriya equipped with one beam sabre, while showing off the limited articulations it can handle

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Dual-wield with ReZEL's pink beam sabre on the left hand as well, as seen in the first episode of Gundam UC OVA

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As for size comparison, here is gashapon movable Kshatriya standing next to 1/144 GFFN ReZEL


This movable gashapon Kshatriya is one of the very few gashapons I have in my collection of toys, and certainly one of the more interesting ones as I have seen many Gundam gashapons before but an articulated one is something fairly new even for these SD (super deformed, similar to chibi or even Q-version). While assembling this little guy I'm reminded of Kinder Surprise all of a sudden, which both have something in common anyway.

For 12HKD a pop, getting a Kshatriya on the first pop is very lucky for me and AstrayP03 since it's what we were hoping to get in the first place ^^ Colouring is not bad for gashapon quality, though one can always do some more touch-ups with Gundam markers etc. A neat little toy for one's desktop I'd say~

Recently I have been going back to smaller toys while many I know are going bigger and bigger for their models or figure collections. It may be hard for some to imagine, but for me a bunch of little things can warm my heart up already - it's the little things that makes the difference I suppose. So, smaller isn't always "not as good", right?

5 comments:

  1. Yeah we were super lucky! I passed by the expo a few more times the next week and there were quite a few ppl trying their luck for kyshatria! I took a peek into the gashapon machine and noticed something, the capsule for Kyshatria is the biggest LOL the rest uses the smaller gashapon capsules.

    Hope to do a lil' masking and touch ups when I get back ^^

    Now that you mentioned it, I totally forgot about kinder surprise! Used to have a whole box of those goodies :P too bad gashapons don't come with the awesome chocolates that kinder surprise has.

    and btw, you're not the only one who is moving to smaller ones ^^ I for one didn't get any thing larger than a 1/144 scale last year :S smallest being my 1/400 meteor unit!

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  2. I think that's the best Gashapon I've ever seen... They usually lack details and everything else. Basically a molded piece of soft plastic but your Ksh looks almost like a SD figure that is worth something.

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  3. @ AstrayP03 (Zhe):
    I didn't notice that the capsules for Kshatriya and the rest are of different sizes!

    Just saw a thread on ToysDaily forum on painting the gashapons. It will be a great reference for us!

    http://www.toysdaily.com/discuz/thread-145227-1-1.html

    Small stuff often gets more and more ignored - I've recently started to look back on them, and there's quite an art of it to be appreciated there too! ^^

    @ Z:
    Gashapons can be pretty good, though I don't take notice of them very often so there must be a lot of unseen beauties out there. This new series of Gashapon Senshi NEXT is not bad for a gashapon, and with some extra touch-ups it sure will look comparable to an SD Gunpla!

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  4. What is the top one, the girl with the cat-ears?

    And where do I get it?

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    1. That is Nendoroid Shana Dengeki Daioh version. It's a limited version figure, so it's quite rare these days.

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