$6.51(US)
£4.18(UK)
800 yen

http://www.hlj.com/cgi-local/hljpage.cgi?BAN910537

Pictures of my SD Zeong model kit can be found here

Yes I am one of the few people who loves the design of the Zeong, in both its original 1979 incarnation and the more modern Katoki redesign loveliness. The SD design is equally appealing to me and I think it's actually even better looking in SD than normal! On to the the kit itself then.

Head:

A very neat piece of work. It is composed of essentially 3 sections - the black "skull" that sits inside, the red "horns" that protrude from the sides and the grey head casing that locks it all together. It all slots together pretty well, though mine does have a very slight gap along one of the edges of the head casing, probably because I missed a runner mark somewhere in my sanding. The red horns come with the yellow rings to slot onto the bottom, which have yet to fall off!

Torso & Skirt:

Not much to say about the torso. Slots together very easily as soon as you get the parts the correct way around! It's connected to the skirt by a large plastic "pin" into a polycap, allowing for the torso to lean forwards and backwards pretty well, as well as slight rotation to either side. The large grey section of the skirt is two piece - one for the outside and one for the underplate onto which the thruster bank attaches. There are balls on the plate to attach either the legs or the adjustable thrusters onto.

Legs & Thrusters:

The legs are straight forward two piece affairs, foot and leg. There is no movement in the foot at all, which is a shame but to be expected in a cheap, SD kit. The thrusters (as seen in place of the legs in the actual MSG anime) are obviously just simple constructions, resembling feet actually. There is a small amount of movement on the ball joint, allowing the legs to be adjusted slightly (of course they can be rotated on the spot to face any direction). It's more of a nice feature when you are using the thrusters though, as it means you can adjust the angle of them quite a bit.

Arms & Shoulders:

The shoulders slide onto a perfectly sized plastic "pin" on the torso and then the arms slide onto that same "pin", therefore holding the shoulders in place. The arms are essentially four piece, with a shoulder section, an elbow/upper-arm section, a lower arm section and the hand itself. There is articulation between shoulder section and shoulder "pin", between upper arm and shoulder sections and between the forearm and upper-arm via the elbow. The hands also have limited movement in their sockets. I was very impressed with the range of movement on the arms as the kits design doesn't immediately suggest it would be so varied.

Extras:

As you'll have noticed in the pictures or guessed from the inclusion of the legs this SD Zeong can be changed to the Perfect Zeong. Surprisingly this is not just the swapping of the large thrusters for legs, you also get nifty little armour covers for the exposed upper arms! There is also the ability to configure it with the wire-guided forearms as seen in the anime. This works really well and I was quite pleasantly surprised at how stable the end result was. You get little cylinders the same colour as the upper-arm detailing to attach to the elbow joint and the end of the forearm. You get supplied with very sturdy yet very flexible/posable black wire to attach into the ends of each cylinder. The head is also detachable and able to adopt a myriad of tilted positions on the neck joint.

Overall:

As this was my first encounter with an SD kit of my own I had fully prepared myself for the worst. Having read through reviews on Newtype Asylum and seen pictures of out-of-the-box SD kits I was fully expecting a one or two colour little thing in desperate need of a paint job. I was incredibly shocked to discover the Zeong is incredibly far from this. If I compare the straight Zeong section of the kit to the pictures on HLJ then it's exactly the same. So from the skirt up, you get precisely what you see there. It's worth noting that it does come with a mono-eye sticker as seen in those pictures. The legs, however, are a little more disappointing - they're one colour for the feet and one for leg itself - though this is hardly a major downside. All in all it's surprisingly versatile, fits together nicely and makes a great piece unpainted.

Written to Fun Loving Criminals - Couldn't Get It Right