GUNPLA
In April of 1979, the first episode of one of Japan's major cultural phenomena aired, that being Mobile Suit Gundam. It had a rocky start, with most people expecting a more combat oriented anime with massive robots. Instead, what they got was a drama centered around said robots, with realistic emotions and such. However, Gundam's ratings began to increase as soon as Bandai, a toy company at the time, bought the rights to the series, providing plastic model kits that were very easy to put together. Due to this ease in use, the plastic model kits helped sell the series as a whole, allowing for even more spin-offs and sequels to come out. The cycled back to more model kits being available to be bought and sold, and GUNPLA (Gundam Plastic Models) became a lucrative business.
I first got into GUNPLA through my friend. He was super into the main series and building the model kits of the robots from it, and consistently sent me updates as he finished kits, despite me not being too interested at the time. In my first semester of college, however, I found a couple kits inside of a store in the downtown area, and I decided to try an Entry Grade kit as a starter, or as a one time thing. Little did I know that I would find that the experience of building the Gundam that I ended up getting would be so extremely therapeutic and it worked out to be an amazing time waster. I will go over some of the things to keep in mind if you want to try GUNPLA for yourself:
What You Need To Build
Something that can be kind of daunting to people who are uninitiated is the actual creation of the kits from plastic on runners (sheets of molded plastic that is cut to get the pieces). The kits fit together entirely with friction and all that you need for GUNPLA (most of the time) is just a pair of nippers and your kit. Nippers are basically like a pair of pliers with one sharp end that can cut through plastic with leverage. The quality of your nippers and your skill with them can change the amount of extra plastic leftovers (or nubs) on your pieces. These nubs can make your kits look worse and the ways to get rid of them is a bit of practice, extra nipping, or sandpaper.
Grades
One of the most important part to many collectors and hobbyists is the grade of GUNPLA you get. These are mainly how high quality or difficult to build a kit may be. There are 5 main grades that most GUNPLA will end up being: Entry Grade, High Grade, Real Grade, Master Grade, and Perfect Grade. There are other kinds of kits but most of the time those are the ones you will find.
Entry Grade kits are very simple and take about 30 minutes to build. They don't require nippers or anything so anyone could pick up an entry grade and build one. They are 1/144th scale kits compared to how large they would be in reality.
For me, High Grade kits are about an hour to 2 hours to build, and are fairly anime-accurate most of the time, meaning that they will look most like how they do in the original show they came from. These kits usually have a small amount of nipping to do and don't have a fully modeled skeleton or anything. They are also 1/144th scale kits.
Real Grade kits take about double the time to build, and tend to have a few extra details in order to make them look more "realistic" rather than anime-accurate. These are novel for their detail at 1/144th scale, so you can compare them to your high grade and entry grade kits.
Master Grade kits take about the same amount of time as a real grade kit, but they are 1/100th scale. The greater scale allows for there to be more gimmicks and interesting parts to be inserted into the kit, like moving pistons, among other things.
The ultimate grade is the Perfect Grade. These 1/60th scale beasts tend to have the most detail and such of any kit grade, with them usually being the main set piece of a GUNPLA collector's collection. They tend to be the most expensive though, which would explain why I don't have a perfect grade kit of my own. If I were to buy one though, it would have to be of a kit that I absolutely love.
Conclusion
Overall, I think that GUNPLA is one of the coolest things to build and see in action. There is a huge community around the world that builds and shares their kits and customizes their kits for all to see. If you are interested in getting your hands on one after reading this, I recommend trying a high grade kit just to see what all the fuss is about. And if you are a little skeptical, an entry grade is a much cheaper alternative to deal with. Thank you for reading!
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