1. Perfect proportions, and extremely solid and stable joints.
2. Interesting orange colour scheme not seen in previous Zakus. What other colours could Bandai next release for Zakus?
3. Loads of clear stickers with warning/caution signs that you can use with this, and other kits.
4. Not as fully loaded as the crazy Psycho Zaku II, but enough guns for posing.
5. The backpack looks better when attached the other way round where the side boosters are on top, rather than its original position. The mechanical arm works better above the head than beneath the armpit.
6. The tiny stickers used for the chest/calf thrusters actually look really good.

Overall, it's not as ridiculous as the Psycho Zaku II, but a much better choice than the Thunderbolt Zaku II.
There's quite a few sweet-looking designs from the Thunderbolt series - The Gelgoog with a menacing railgun, the heavily armoured Guntank, and the less-flashy Guncannon/Gouf/Dom. Can't wait, especially for the Gelgoog.

1. Walking tank. Bigass poleaxe. What's not to love?
2. The two-tone purple and indigo armour is extremely vibrant and eye-catching. Totally overwhelms the lighter colours of tri-star units such as Zaku I or Zaku II R1A.
3. Would have been even more badass if it came with a bazooka.
4. Extensor arms on the backpack would have worked better if they were longer and had a wider range of motion.
5. It comes with original parts for you to build a stock Zaku II F2 should you wish to.

Totally worth the extra dough compared to the Zaku II F2, which by itself is a fairly decent HGUC. Not sure how easy it is to find this kit in model stores though, took me a while to find it online and actually had to bid for it via ebay.

1. Sleek and sexy. Looks so much better than the Zeta. The grey pieces make it look very stealthy, but I added a splash of red to spice it up.

2. Joints are quite solid which means poses are fairly sturdy, but this means that taking them apart to partsform into the waverider is a pain. The shield however attaches to the forearm without any polycaps, meaning it can get very loose with time.

3. The nub on grey parts are actually quite difficult to clean. Bummer.

4. Articulation is somewhat limited due to the design. The hip abduction is limited by the bulky waist cannons, which means dynamic aerial poses aren't easy to achieve. Despite not being able to transform, it doesn't have much waist movement either. Head rotation is limited by the short neck too. Wings do not swivel nor rotate much in MS mode. Piss poor in this aspect.

5. Waverider mode is sweetas, and since its a partsformer, there are no loose, floopy parts when you pose it as a jet. And it bloody looks like a jet.

6. Quite pricey. At 2400 yen, it's not a cheap HGUC. It doesn't really have that many pieces to justify its price tag, and to be honest the MG Zeta Plus A1/C1 at 3000 yen seems like an absolute bargain compared to this. Really made me wonder why did I not get the MG instead.


Conclusion:
Where to from here? There's already an expo special with A1 colours, although it's pretty much a recolor and comes with the wrong rifle. The pricetag is ridiculous due to its "exclusivity". HGUC C1, maybe? But with a larger beam cannon i.e. more plastic, how much extra is Bandai going to charge?

Should you buy this? I'd probably still say yes esp for those who are collecting 1/144 Unicorn kits, but every now and then you'll wonder why you didn't spend the extra 600 yen for the MG.