#high grade
Goods buds chill together!!
RX-80WR White Rider (ZEUS)
I’ve run out of kits I’m not saving for customs, and I haven’t bought anything P-Bandai in a while, so I tracked down one of the designs I really liked. I know there were other I was into, but this was the only one that immediately came to mind. If you don’t recognize the White Rider, it’s one of the two prototype units for the Pale Rider introduced in the recent game MSG Battle Operation Code Fairy. It certainly does stand out, with the crown, cape, and heavy crossbow. You can easily tell the design came first and they had to create lore to justify it all later.
The Good: Never built the Pale Rider, but this is a pretty good kit. Good range of posability, full accessory storage, some interesting gimmicks, and some cool use of new parts, such as only the right outer arm being new to accommodate the Prototype Shekinah. The cape and Shekinah also balance each other well, so there’s no stability issues.
The Bad: The Shekinah is a completely new piece, and it’s transformation requires quite a bit of prying things apart. It probably wouldn’t be too hard to have designed it to be fully transforming, especially since the barrel does that already.
Last complaint is the stickers, which there are a lot of. This can happen when you’re trying to add new details to an older kit, and granted it comes with doubles of some since you can display it with or without the ZEUS System active.
The Details: And I didn’t use any of them. I did basic panel lining and black fill in recessed areas, and metallic red for optics and the like as I chose to display it with ZEUS active. In addition, I added gold anywhere the stickers said to add it or yellow, and a few more spots on the Shekinah, ankles, and a few miscellaneous other areas. I also added silver to the chest vents, cape, and the top of the Shekinah.
I considered painting the Heat Rapier as if it was active, but as its main weapon is the Shekinah, I wasn’t sure how often I was going to have it out.
Overall, this was a good kit, with a very fun design and main weapon. Don’t know if I’d suggest tracking it down unless you really dig its aesthetics like I do, but if that’s why you want you won’t be disappointed. I did consider, and may still, track down its brother, the Black Rider, but I’m not in the mood to build the same kit twice in a row. Maybe some day.
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