I finished the MG Gyan. Well I haven't finished the light-up beam saber for lack of batteries, and the mines, but I finished the rest of it. I thought I would share my experience with all of you fine people.
PROS The poseability is incredible. The groundbreaking new feature (Well I think it is new as I haven't seen it on any other kits yet) is the independently moveable hip connecters. While were able to move the hip joints together in the RX-78 OYW version, they had to be moved together. With the Gyan they are fully independent so the left leg can be slid to the front while the right one remains in the back. This allows for incredible kneeling poses. Luckily it works just as well in physical form as it does in theory. Hopefully we will start seeing this in more kits. The shoulder incorporates the excellent flexibility of the HGUC Gyan and adds in the increased chest/shoulder flexibility displayed in the RX-78 OYW version. This allows you to have an excellent Superman flying style pose. The only minor problem is that they are so flexible that you can actually pose it in a position that won't allow room for the head. But still it is impressive. The internal structure is nicely detailed. I put it together first before adding any of the exterior armor and it held up well with the exception of the biceps which I will cover in the CONS section. I really liked how the torso vents look as you can see the inner vent structure through the external vents in the armor. I think they raise the bar of what we should expect in any possible MG Gelgoog version 2. The Shield is beautifully detailed and the additional rocket trails piece looks really nice. There is a CON that will be detailed below. The hands are the standard type with the lower three fingers connected together with an independent index finger. The finger sculpt is very nice and distinguishes it from the typical hands. The monoeye engineering rocks. Looking at the instructions I thought it would be limited to the horizontal axis and expected to be disappointed. It surpassed my expectations by floating the eye "ring" on a ball post that allows it to do the full range of positioning implied by the "+" shaped visor. VERY COOL! Seam lines are kept to a total minimum. In fact I don't think there are any. Very cool. The feet are slick. The "toe" is totally flexible which is a cool feature. The colors are different from the HGUC. Instead of the purple hues of the HGUC we get a muted blue hue. I like it better than the HGUC. CONS My biggest complaint with this kit is the bicep connection. The part consists of a square with one side missing where a poly cap is slipped in. The polycap is held in place by the external armor when you slide it in to place. This is connected to the shoulders by a pole extending from the "ball" of the shoulder. The arms always pop off if you try to pose it with the armor off. An additional problem is that it is very easy to scrunch the polycap in a weird angle if you don't slide the armor on very carefully. As a result it is very easy to weaken the arms even more and they tend to pop off even with the armor on. Add to this a fairly heavy shield, that is actually meant to be held extended out from the body, and we have a repeat of the MG GP-02a flaw. The Shield, while beautiful, is fairly heavy. This doesn't work well with the Gyan's gimmick of sliding the shield in front of the hand. It makes it hard to pose and essentially invalidates the use of the add-on rocket trails. Since the Gyan only has the sword and shield for its gimmicks, this sucks. The cockpit hatch. It has been a while since I watched the Gyan in action so I can't remember where the actual hatch is supposed to be. I had always thought it was the little square between the breasts of the armor, but I could be wrong. In the MG kit the hatch is the big white navel piece. While I don't have a problem with that being the hatch, I wasn't blown away with how it worked out in the final kit. It slides down and in to the rest of the torso. To compensate for this they have an open space below it that looks awkward to me. It is somewhat covered by the front hip armor, but still visible. If you bend the torso back it is painfully visible IMHO. I just don't like it that much. CONCLUSION On the whole I like this kit a lot in spite of the flaws. Actually the flaws might be fixable if you are more careful with the polycaps in the biceps. I am trying to see if I have any unused one in my vast collection of unused polycaps to see if that affects my rating of the kit. I think that it does a great job over all. Considering the limitations inherent in the design, they did a great job. If you are a Gyan fan I would highly recommend getting it as I doubt we will ever get a version 2 of this design. I would also recommend that all Monoeye fans get this to vote with their wallet and show Bandai that not every MG kit needs to be a Gundam. My initial reaction to the kit was 4 out of 4 stars. Only after I objectively looked at the flaws did I lower it to 3.5 out of 4.
