In 2016, I had been working at Samurai Comics for a year, and was given a little bit of store credit as a bonus. Free Comic Book Day was coming up, and I knew that I was going to want to take it pretty easy the next day. I used said store credit to buy a model kit of Epyon, the giant mecha from the Gundam Wing series that ran on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block back in the early 00’s. Only, this was the slightly modified design from the Endless Waltz motion picture.
I warned the roommates ahead of time what I was doing, and that I’d be taking over the kitchen table for this project. They were cool and mostly stayed out of my way while I put this all together and listened to music.
As I worked on this project, I posted some in-progress shots on my Instagram (which no longer exists), and recently unearthed them. I thought it would be fun to share them here.
When you open a Gundam model kit, all the pieces come on these multicolored plastic sprues. It’s up to you to take them off and snap all the pieces together.
I’d put together like half a dozen Gundam model kits back when Wing was on the air the first time, about 15 years prior to this one. In fact, Epyon was the first one I had bought for myself, although a friend had given me the kits for Gundams Sandrock, Heavy Arms, and Shenron as well.
And just like those old kits, all the directions for Master Grade Epyon were also in Japanese. I can’t read Japanese. Fortunately, it’s 99% pictographs and arrows, which are actually really easy to follow.
The head and torso came together pretty quickly.
And then the arms. You can see the nail clippers and X-Acto knife I was using to remove the pieces from their sprues, as well as trim off any excess. Amazingly, despite how much cutting I was doing that day, and how much I left an uncovered blade out on the table, I didn’t bleed at all.
If Gundams were people, their feet would be disproportionately large. But since they’re giant robots, I think the oversized feet are probably for balance as much as anything else
Legs attached, but you can see there’s still some pieces yet to be attached, on the left of the photo. You can also see that I was almost out of soda.
And now Epyon is a wingaling Gundam!
Finally, I built and attached his weapons, and Epyon was complete. Look at all the plastic shavings on the tabletop!
I still have this guy sitting on a shelf, along with some High Grade kits I’ve put together over the years. Five-plus years later, I still haven’t added his decals.
Some day. Maybe?