One of things about taking a break from the anime fandom is that you end up with a few gaps and blindspots. When this applies to a shounen ninja franchise or the latest fan service delivery system, often the same thing, that's not a problem for me. The anime industry is often cyclical and juvenile, which is why people so often burn out. But then you realise an entire Gundam series failed to register, and modern stuff seems to reference it. Gundam AGE is that series for me, and from a conceptual standpoint, maybe that's a shame. AGE is very much a generational epic, following three successive protagonists and their family robot. It's an interesting idea, although from what I've been able to gather the execution wasn't great.
So what is the Adele? Well, its very much a GM equivalent. Its based off the AGE 1 Gundam, and is a watered-down version for mass production. This sort of thing happens a lot in the franchise, because god forbid a mecha with that name ever be less than unique or mundane. Or indeed fit the technical definition of a prototype. Anyways. With The Adele, I kinda want to slap the writers for almost, but not quite, justifying this trope. The AGE 1 is not so much a singular machine, as a housing for an expert system that creates weapons. Even if the Federation had been able to copy that, its not something that your average pilot needs, so it's not a shock that the Adele wouldn't have it. This is more a copy of the high performance robot bits, even going so far as to retain compatibility with the "wear parts", extra components you'd think would be budgeted out. So the Adele is shaping up to be a pretty good machine, yes? Drastically better than the ill-famed Genoace, which has a worse reputation than even the Leo in the "exploding grunt suit" leagues. Well, maybe not. It took them twenty-five years to get this designed and deployed. A quarter of a century. Granted, Gundam shows often have ridiculously short development times, and this setting has a thing about banned technology, but I have to ask what they were playing at. The answer is probably that the writers just advanced the timeline, and didn't consider the implications.
When viewed purely as a kit however, the Adele is quite well-regarded, because it is literally the AGE 1 with new parts reflecting the visual differences. While obviously having an older polycap style construction, this is a good thing as Bandai designers usually bring their A game to the hero mecha. While nothing leaps out as exceptional, its all quality with a good level of colour separation and minimal stickers. Then again, I inexplicably found myself short of the "1" polycaps, prompting a brief search for spares. Either something was mispacked or mislabelled, I dunno. On the plus side, while there is not a full AGE 1 in this kit, there is an awful lot of one, including two extra beam sabers and the front end of the original beam rifle. Another thing of note is that while it's got this very GM style space helmet head, it's actually got a face underneath it. This isn't an Easter Egg either, most of the sticker sheet is dedicated to it, correcting it from white to grey. It's a welcome touch, something really they didn't need to do, so I tried painting that face. Unfortunately, actually seeing it through the visor is tricky, it's just too opaque. So I broke the visor.
The thing about AGE era mecha design is that it has a very clean, concise, and colourful look. Its not that they’ve gone simple for ease of animation, although it wouldn’t be a surprise, its just that its on the other end of the axis from Iron-Blooded Orphans and more recent UC productions. As such, my usual approach to weathering perhaps wasn’t the obvious choice, and the broken visor puts it into GRIMDARK territory. Mind you, I do like how this came out.
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