The Sazabi Ver Ka is one of the best selling and most beloved gunpla kits and it lives up to its reputation of being huge, a good build and all-round impressive. It does have its flaws, however.
Cons:
1. There's a lot of surface nub marks, the worst ones being on the black plastics, where any sort of file (even a glass file) WILL leave marks. Also a dozen or so mold lines to deal with.
2. There's a sheet of rubbery and fragile color correction stickers. They only turn some red parts into another shade of red, so it's not a huge deal, but it is surprising that such an expensive kit couldn't divide a few more parts up between runners.
3. The hands and wrist joints are only barely good enough to hold the huge weapons - They look great with their fully articulated three joint fingers, but they're annoying to work with and they fall out of the wrist socket a lot (there's a reason Bandai gave up on this type of hands).
4. Articulation is limited as the limbs are heavy and its parts get in the way of themselves. Posing the weapons is especially cumbersome.
The higher the price, the more important it is to explain what to expect. You can resolve these issues yourself by thickening joints and painting the model, but you shouldn't expect a posing monster out of this and really that shouldn't be a huge surprise considering the bulk.
Aesthetics: It's designed by Katoki and it's red: Awesome. There's a good amount of color separation and tones of red, but without waterslide decals, it looks like a walking fire hydrant. You *need* to put them on, which isn't the case for all gunpla kits which just needs a couple of decals. This one needs all of them to break up the overwhelming amounts of red. All the thrusters have a yellow color separated inside (something they usually don't give you).
The lens and eye on the head have water slide decals which is an odd (bad) choice. I advise using a green marker and simply coloring the clear plastic.
The weapons could've used another color to break them up, they're too mono-toned - The shotgun is almost entirely black and the rifle is almost entirely grey, both with a speck of red.
The beam effects vary, the sword ones look great, the mixed sword/axe head effects are decent and the axe head effects are plain.
Mechanics:
Most of the armor is able to 'split' in some way, to reveal the inner frame and colored metallic frames. It helps break up the red color when it's in this 'split' mode.
The head opens up so you can turn the eye left or right.
There are several flaps around the kit that are posable, to make it look a lot more dynamic. The butt-flap especially has an impressive split that opens it up to reveal the insides and you can flip a set of additional thrusters to show through.
There's a pair of extending clamps on the bottom of the feet. I'm underselling what all of this does to give the model more life, it's a lot more impressive than it sounds.
Two pods on his back can each be split open and lift up a rack holding a row of three funnels.
The entire head and neck section is removable and have a slot for a Bandai LED light to be installed, which makes the head (or more specifically the eye) light up via light piping. I would recommend getting your own mini LED kit as the bandai ones tend to be weak and expensive.
Equipment/extra:
Beam shotgun with pump action.
Beam rifle with a clamp to underslung the Sinanju bazooka (I THINK it's the MG OVA Sinanju, but I'm not entirely sure), which makes it look absolutely insane.
Two beam sabers mounted inside his wrists (you get them out by placing the beam effect in and then pulling them out).
A beam "tomahawk" (more like a two headed axe) which is made up by two individual axes that can also be put end to end, to make a 'Darth Maul style' double ended beam axe.
A shield that can hold the "tomahawk" on the inside, but you can't equip the beam effects while it's on there. The shield can be hung from the shoulder flap or attached to the back of either arm.
2x3 funnels, which are indidivual flying units with a laser, placed in the two pods on his back. They can be squished to open the four panels and reveal the beam laser inside. You close them by carefully squeezing the panels back together.
There's a transparent cockpit ball with a pilot and seat inside, separate from the model. The one in the head is an opaque red with nothing inside it. You can not replace the one in the head with this one, which would've been a neat gimmick, especially with the LED function.
One sheet of water slides.
Conclusion:
If you love MG's, this will be one of, if not the prime model of your collection. It's a great building experience (take your time, enjoy it) and has a huge presence.
However, if you're fine with 1/144th scale kits, then the RG Sazabi is in some ways the superior (and cheaper) choice with none of the problems. Note that they have different appearances.
