| HGGS 1/144 GAT-01A2R Slaughter Dagger (no picture available)
Series: High Grade Gundam SEED (HGGS) 1/144 Title: GAT-01A2R Slaughter Dagger Release Date: 08/2006 Suggested Price: ¥ 1200 No. of Parts: 138 Plastic colors: light gray, dark gray, red, black Gimmicks: none
Contributor: Mwulf Date: September 29, 2009 It ought to be awesome, but it's not. Yes, the Slaughter Dagger. Cool design, cool colors, but once you build it everything just falls apart. It's a shame, really, because it could have been oh-so-much. In the end, the Slaughter Dagger suffers from to worst possible illness - the poor proportions. You see that pretty image of the Slaughter Dagger on the box? Unfortunately, the real model hardly looks a thing like that. If anything, the Stargazer HG models make me think that the "smart" designers were already hard at work on the 00 line, leaving models like this to the less-competent employees.
Yawn. I'm bored. You're boring me. No, it's not you... it's this slaughter dagger! The head's composition is the same as every other Gundam model. Two halves for the skull, a faceplate, and a foil sticker for the visor. The Slaughter Dagger also has a tiny red triangle affixed to the top of the forehead to give it that "evil Gundam" vibe, but that can only go so far. The only redeeming part of the head is that the two antennae are already molded into the plastic of the skull instead of being separate parts. That makes the head a bit more sturdy than it could have been. A win, I suppose.
Nothing to see here folks, nothing at all. It's a GM's torso, but with darker colors. Just dark red and gray, nothing else. There's hardly any texture to the plastic so it looks like gunpla from the Dark Ages - you know, the old no-grade models from the 1980s. The backpack is kind of cool because it's molded in black, giving the illusion of a more diverse palate. It looks like the Strike Gundam's Aile pack, but don't be deceived. Although the main "backpack" and lower thruster pods are indeed copies of the Aile pack, the giant wings that ought to be on top of the pack are completely absent. Instead, we get two little black stubs with gray foil stickers. These wings are WAY too small, especially compared to how incredibly big the rest of the backpack is, and give the entire model an air of absurdity. The thruster pods can rotate and move in two directions, and the joints are fairly sturdy, but all of the details are the result of foil-stickers placed on textured plastic that makes them peal off easier than dead skin. Ugh. And they don't look all that much better, either.
The arms are boring, too. There's no texture to them, and the only detail comes from foil stickers. To parts for the shoulders, two for the forearm, one for the joint, tow for the upper arm, and two for each hand. You know the drill. The joints are firm and you get an average amount of poseability, but that's about all.
The legs are probably the only decent part of the Slaughter Dagger. There are no foil stickers, and a few opportunities for panel-lining which help to give them a bit more definition. The skirt armor doesn't allow for too much movement, but both the knees and ankles have double-joints, so you can pose the Slaughter Dagger several different ways with relative easy, and everything is firm enough that it will hold the pose. The feet are pretty heavy and wide, and this also helps with posing.
You have a beam rifle, and two beam sabers. The beam rifle is nothing special. A few pieces of dark gray plastic snapped together. The beam sabers really piss me off, if only because they're way too good for such a crummy model - there are clear green beam blades! Amazing! Most HGUCs don't even get that. It's very nice, and if you can find a cool pose with both beam sabers active and stand several feet away from the Slaughter Dagger, you can actually manage to make it look rather cool.
Homogeneous colors. You've got black and gray and red, but virtually no panels to line making everything look like a cheap toy from before you were born (or when you were a kid, depending on your personal level of decrepitness). It's horridly ill-proportioned with gigantic forearms, enormous thruster pods, and ridiculously tiny wings. It's poseable and sturdy, which is good, but none of that means a thing if the molding is up to par. The Slaughter Dagger might be a good model to buy if you never built a gundam model before, or if you're gung-ho enough to do your own painting, detailing, or kitbashing. Otherwise, don't waste your money. If you absolutely MUST have a model of the Slaughter Dagger, you'd be far better off buying some spray paint and merging a HG Dagger kit with a HG Aile Strike kit. Overall Rating: 1 out of 5 stars <<back to Gundam |