Upscaled and upgraded? - RG 1/100 Zeong from Zhan Shen Hao - REVIEW - [4K]

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hello my friends and welcome back to The Garage. Today on the channel we're taking a look at a new real-grade upscale from Zenshen Hao, a third-party company I've not heard of before. We've already taken a look at the two previously released real-grade upscales from Fat Cat and determined the quality of those kits were both splendid. Will this new company be able to contend with the Fat Cat real-grade upscales or is this kit not of the same standard? Join me today as we take a thorough look at this Xeong and determine if it's a good companion piece for our Fat Cat Gundam 2.0. We look at everything on this channel from panel lining, seam lines, mold lines, assembly, aesthetics, accessories, gimmicks, and more. Nothing is left out here at Joe's Gunpla Garage. Before we dive in, if you liked the video please drop a like as that helps the channel out a lot. Maybe even consider subscribing while you're there. We're always talking Gundam on this channel and it would be great to have you here as a part of the Gunpla Garage community. Now, on to the review. I usually start my reviews by looking at the box. However, all the boxed versions of this kit were sold out by the time I went to order it, so I had a package of bubble-wrapped runners show up to my house like a nefarious deal of contraband. Not to worry though, as the runners here were well protected and I didn't have any missing or damaged parts getting the kit shipped this way. Upon opening my bag of runners, I was greeted with 34 runners, with most of these runners being rather large. Across all these runners are 444 parts total to make up this upscaled Zeong. This is a hefty amount of parts considering the Zeong doesn't even have legs on this build. The Zeong is fully color separated, coming molded in 13 different colors, including some colors the original kit didn't even come in either. The silver pistons on the arms and silver details on the lower thrusters was a really nice touch included with this kit and not the original. This model also includes a full sheet of water slide decals, so you can give this kit the professional finish that it deserves. The assembly of the Zeong upscale is what you would expect from a third party kit. The fitment of parts on this kit is decent for the most part, but there are some very tight fitting joints that you'll have to contend with. For me, I had to sand down the pegs on the arm to torso connection, as well as the outward reaching joint in the torso. The abdomen was also incredibly tight with its fit and articulation. Definitely some things to be aware of as you assemble this kit, because disassembly will prove to be a little difficult here. Another area that took a little bit of finesse would be attaching the skirt armor onto the skirt framing. These armor panels have some very tight fitting pegs and slots and must be inserted at the exact right angle to get it to fit properly. Be gentle and patient during this step, or you may run the risk of damaging a peg or two. We have a handful of small parts here, but they're not so small that they're impossible to work with. All the small parts are in the head, with the eye sensor being the smallest part here for this kit, but that's pretty standard for mono-eye mobile suits. The Zeon does include a few areas of C-clips, most notably in the arms for the elbow joint and the side skirts at the waist. These C-clips are tight but easy to articulate, and I didn't notice any stress on the plastic in these areas after assembly. The plastic quality on this kit is almost on par with Fat Cat quality, so it's really good from a third-party perspective. The plastic quality on this kit is just a few steps below Bandai. The C-clips here specifically are pretty thick and have a little bit of a springy quality to them, which is what gives the C-clips their robustness. The original kit included the advanced mobile suit joint to mold the movable hands all as one piece. This technology is hard for third-party to replicate, so a typical peg and socket system was employed to create the movable hands here for the Zeon. These assembled easily, but are the reason why the kit's piece count was bolstered, as it takes 62 parts just to create the framing for the hands and the fingers. I would consider the assembly of this kit to be fair, as it doesn't have the same fit quality of Bandai or even Fat Cat, but a few areas of tight fitment is easier to contend with than loose joints or misaligned pegs. Don't let those few areas of tightness deter you. A little bit of sanding on those tight areas will get this kit feeling just right. I am a big fan of panel lining. This is easily the best way to elevate your model kits. For this kit, I used Tamiya Accent Color Black, panel lining on all the runners, and cleaning up with Zippo lighter fluid. The channels for the panel lines on this kit are well-defined, both on the inner frame and the outward armor, making for a very pleasant and easy time to panel line this kit. I didn't have to touch up any panel lines after cleanup, which is sincerely an incredible feeling. While I did the bulk of the work with the Tamiya, I still had to break out a pen, and I used my pen of choice, the Pigma Micron .003 pen. To maintain consistency on the skirt, I wanted to panel line the lower trim on the side, so it lined up with the panel lines on the front and rear of the skirt. This is a line created by color separated parts, and is not able to be panel lined with the Tamiya, so a pen must be used here to panel line it. The panel lines here are a tasteful degree of realism, so if you only wanted to use the pen on the outward armor, it wouldn't take you very long. However, the mechanical details on the inner frame really shine once panel lined. However, this would take a considerable amount of time to do so with a pen. Usually panel lining the inner frame can be skipped, but because the Zeong is designed with showing off the thrusters under the skirt, I'd highly recommend panel lining at least the inner frame here, and I'd recommend to use a hybrid method of panel lining for this model, as you'll be here all day if you were to panel line this with a pen. The color accuracy for the Zeong is absolutely perfect. There's no painting required to make the Zeong anime accurate. The color mix of gray and blue gray, as well as the blue and lavender blue of the body, makes for a wonderful contrast of colors for this model. The mechanical detailing on the underside is outstanding. If you wanted to add color anywhere to this kit, that would be the place to do it. There's so many pipes, tubes, pistons, and panels underneath the Zeong skirt that would really shine with some additional color. The kit does include a full sheet of waterslide decals, with the same design and scheme as the official release. These decals do lift off the paper within five seconds of being in warm water. The decal sheet seems large, but it gives you plenty of options and extras. If you don't want to use the decals with the metallic coloring, there are spares included without this metallic detail. There's a few spare decals here for each type of decal, so if you make a mistake applying the decals, you can try again. The longer decals do take a little bit of finesse to install and are very delicate, so be careful as you install those decals. When it comes to seam lines, because this kit is based off the real grade kit, the seam lines are very minimal here. Most seam lines are from color-separated armor panels lining up against one another. Taking a close look at the kit, we only have five instances of seam lines. We have a seam line on the back of the head above the cockpit hatch. We have another seam line down the back of the head towards the bottom. We have a seam line down the middle of the forearm frame. We have a seam line at the upper torso above the arm connection. Our final seam line is at the side of the abdomen and it's barely noticeable. We do have a seam line at the cuffs of the forearm, but these are able to be masked as a panel line and is consistent with the middle portion of the cuffs as well. The nubs on this kit are fairly easy to contend with. The Zeong is undergated on the areas that it matters, and the nubs that are on the edge of armor being in areas that are easy to clean up. For this kit, I did the two-cut method for all nubs and only broke out my gun primer razor for a few areas on the inner frame. You're able to get a very good, near-professional finish of this kit just from the two-cut method alone. When it comes to mold lines, once again, the Zeong handles these well. On the completed model, there's really only one that jumps out at you, and it's on the cockpit hatch on the front of the chest. The other mold line is less noticeable, appearing on the yellow cuffs on the end of the forearm armor. The chest one is really the most egregious, but also incredibly easy to fix. With all aspects of the build covered, let's dive into articulation. Starting with the head detached, the thrusters on the side can swing forwards and backwards. We can remove the dome and the head track so we can move the mono-eye looking upwards for nearly 180 degrees of articulation for the mono-eye. The neck itself is on two swivels, so the head can look downwards a great amount and upwards a great amount as well. The head can rotate left to right about 70 degrees. While this may seem constrictive, the mono-eye does move with the head as you do this, which is really cool and certainly makes up for it. This even works with the eye in the upwards position. The torso has an extension gimmick at the bottom of the torso where it connects to the waist. With this, we're able to extend the torso from the waist so the Zeong can lean forwards. The next bit of articulation I can't show you unless the torso is removed. The abdomen has an aggressive forward crunch. This forward crunch with the waist extended gets the Zeong to look 90 degrees downwards. This ab crunch doubles as a backwards lean, allowing the Zeong to lean backwards a great amount. If we couple the backwards lean with the waist extension, the Zeong can look 90 degrees upwards. There's very light tilting articulation in the torso section at the waist, but it's pretty minimal. The Zeong does have a bit of articulation rotating left to right at the waist, but this only works with the torso extended. The final bit of articulation is the thrusters on the back and the chest, and these can open outwards just slightly. Moving on to the leg section, we'll cover the skirts and the thrusters. All the skirts can lock into place to keep the skirt nice and flush. However, all the skirts have articulation to them. The front skirts are on two swivels with the outer end connecting at a ball joint, so it can rotate and swivel around a little bit at the end. The side skirts are simply on two swivels so they can expand and open up. The two rear side skirts are on the same double swivel ball joint type connection that the two front skirts are on. Finally, the rear skirt is on a single swivel so it can open up and down. Flipping the Zeong over, we can go over the articulation of the thrusters. The five rear thrusters are on a rotation so they can swivel left to right. They can also swivel downwards and upwards and are more capable of movement depending on how you pose the skirts. The front thrusters can tuck upwards and lock into place. If we unlock the thrusters and swing them downwards, we can then rotate the thrusters forwards and backwards, as well as inward and outward a little bit. The last bit of articulation is a small sliding gimmick on the thrusters allowing them to extend downwards a little bit. Starting off the arms, we can extend the arm joint from the torso for our forward reaching motion which is quite impressive for the Zeong. Within this armpit joint, we can also shrug the arm up and down a little bit. The shoulder armor has a swivel at the top of the tip so it can swivel upwards. The shoulder armor also has a swivel at the base so it can raise upwards as well. With the shoulder armor raised, we can move the arm outwards at the shoulder for a full t-pose of the arm. The arm can rotate 360 degrees at the shoulder. Just be careful of the Zeong's fins in the ear. The arm can rotate 360 degrees at the bicep. We have a double bend in the bicep for a full curl, but the forearm cuff does impede this articulation a little bit. With the arm detached, we can get a full curl, but with it attached, we can only get about 70 degrees of arm compression. The fingers in the hand are on two swivels and a ball joint. With this, we can almost make a full fist with the fingers. The hand is on a ball joint so it can swivel and rotate around as a ball joint does. Finally, the hand is on a swivel so we can spread it outward or inward completely flat, which is a nice touch. The Zeong may appear to be light on accessories because its weapons are in its hands and fingers, but with this model we get the additional effect parts to really make the Zeong shine. To start, we have 10 beam effect parts for each hand of the beam emitters at the end of the fingers. We do get a long cable for the wire-guided hand separation gimmick. The forearm can slide open so we can attach the hand to the action base adapters. That way we can display this with the hands detached if we wanted to, no problem. The hands do have a thruster effect that fits into the end of the forearm. We get two large and five smaller thruster effect parts for the bottom thrusters of the Zeong. These slide into the sockets on each thruster quite easily. We do get a large three-plate upscaled action base 5. Last and certainly not least, if you wanted to display the Zeong in a landed mode, we do have a set of landing gear so it can rest easily without needing the action base. The posability of the Zen Shen Hao Zeong is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, it has the capabilities of everything the original had to offer. However, you will definitely need to sand some areas to make this articulation fully usable, so you'll absolutely need to keep this in mind as you assemble the kit. If a joint feels way too tight as you assemble it, you should probably sand it and do a test fit until it feels just right. Once the Zeong had been sanded to an acceptable amount, I had a problem-free experience posing this kit around. The action base is really nice and helps display this model with its full capabilities, including all the effect parts. Despite having no legs, the articulation of the skirt armor, as well as all the thrusters in their effect parts, makes for a very expressive and powerful-looking mobile suit. The abdomen articulation once sanded really opens the door for all matter of poses for the Zeong, to be flying in either direction, either looking upwards or looking downwards. The official real-grade Zeong was the best Zeong model kit ever made, and this picks up the mantle from the original quite well when it comes to poses. It just comes with that caveat of needing sanding. We've reached the end of the review where we go over all the pros and cons of the model before I give it my final recommendation. We like to keep it positive on this channel, so we'll cover the cons first before talking about any mids or pros. Our first con, and easily the biggest con here, is the tight joints. On my copy of the kit, my abdomen articulation, waist extension, armpit swivel, and shoulder connection were all far too tight. These are not joints that would loosen up over time from regular articulation and needed to be sanded to an acceptable level. Once these joints were sanded, it made for a fine kit. If you don't sand these parts, I wouldn't be surprised if you broke something. For our second con, while the fitment of parts is generally pretty good, there are some very tight fitting pegs and specific angles that pieces need to be installed at so they don't break. While most of the kit assembled fine without any issues, it's these few areas of really tight fitment that made the fit more subpar than good, like Fat Cat's fitment, or near perfect like Bandai's fitment. Our third con might be another specific issue that's only included with my copy, but I felt I should mention it here. One effect part for the thrusters on the forearm came extremely warped. Now, this isn't a big deal because I'm not afraid of using glue to fix it and make this part look as it's supposed to, but I can't confirm if this is an issue inherent to the kit or something that happened to this kit while it was in shipping. I'm thankful that this was just an effect part and not an actual piece of the mobile suit itself. If I got a warped armor or frame piece with this kit, I would be really disappointed. That does it for the cons, so let's cover the only mid that we have here. For the mid, I want to mention that posing the fingers can be annoying. Moving the hands around at the tips of the fingers can lead to some of the finger armor sliding around. This is very easy to fix but will definitely be a noticeable nuisance when posing the fingers, especially if you're using the beam effect parts. Now onto the pros. Our first pro will be the value that's packed in here. We get the effect parts, a fully upscaled action base, and a big sheet of waterslide decals with extra decals. Our second pro will go to the panel lining. When upscaling something, it's easy to lose the scale size, but Zhenshin Hao did a great job keeping the panel line scale accurate while maintaining deep valleys for the fluid to flow through. This was a very easy kit to panel line. For our third pro, this iteration of the Xiong has some additional silver pieces on the arms for the pistons, on the shoulder armor, and on the lower large thrusters. These parts are new additions not on the original release and help bring some life to the model that otherwise would have required paintwork. For our fourth pro, the nub layout here is great with it being undergated where it needs to be. You can use the two cut method for nearly the entire kit and get a great result out of it. The plastic quality is also very good, making for an easier time cleaning the nubs. For our fifth pro, the shelf presence of this kit is absolutely amazing. This kit with the effect parts and stand can easily overtake any kit that's on your one-year war display shelf. This is a wonderful companion piece for your Fat Cat Upscale or Master Grade 3.0 Gundam. For our sixth and final pro. Historically, the Xiong has been a very simple kit in design, mostly due to the lack of legs. However, the articulation here really opens up the door for a lot of expressive, powerful poses. The movable thrusters and extremely articulate abdomen section allows us to pull off any sorts of poses from the series and then some. Of course, the original engineers are to thank for this, but in 1-100 scale, this articulation works just as well, and doesn't have any area of weakness due to the increased scale size. We've come down to the final verdict. I've told you all the pros, the cons, and the mids with this model. I found this real great upscale to be close to the quality of Fat Cat Upscales, but not quite there. With the Xiong, I did experience those really tight parts and that's the biggest downfall with this kit as a whole. It's a balancing act of sanding the joints down to be just right that they're not too tight or too loose. This is a fairly typical thing to experience with knockoff kits, so it's something you'll need to be prepared for if you do end up getting this kit. I did have a lot of fun with this big menace once I got everything sanded down properly. The original engineering and articulation put into this real grade works well here for a 1-100 scale Xiong and does a lot to make this a more expressive model of an iconic design. I'm still waiting for an official release of a Master Grade Xiong 2.0, but until that comes out through official channels, this will do for me. The Xiong is a design that really flourishes with additional surface detail and really gives it an aura that's not to be trifled with. My recommendation to you if you're a newer builder is to consider it. Those tight joints will take some experience to get right. This isn't an easy out-of-the-box snap build experience. This also isn't a kit that will loosen up naturally through articulation and brute forcing movement will break this kit, so definitely be wary. On the other hand, if you're an experienced builder who knows how to sand down joints and make them feeling just right, then this kit is a great pickup and would quickly become the centerpiece of your one-year war 1-100 scale collection. Thank you all so much for tuning in to this review of the Zen Shen Hao 1-100 scale real grade Xiong. Say that 10 times fast. If you made it this far into the video, tell me your honest thoughts on the Xiong. I've always thought it was goofy looking in its older art and action figures. The design really resonated with me though when the real grade came out, so let me know your thoughts on this design. I have to give a huge shout out to all my subscribers. Your likes, comments, and subscriptions do so much to help me in the channel out. You guys really make the impossible possible. Until next time, be sure to stay safe, have fun, and happy building.