Kit Review: Moderoid – Trails of Cold Steel – Ashen Knight Valimar

– Build quality: The build experience is amazing, pretty good for a GSC Moderoid. Well for as long as they have been making kits and the price they asked for this one, the expectation are pretty high. And in my opinion, they fulfilled the requirements pretty well. The plastic quality is still not Bandai-tier, but the snap fit is very satisfying. But as with many magical/knightly mechs, the Valimar is one pointy boy, so you should be careful the Ashen Knight don’t taste your blood. There are a lot of spiky parts so caution is advised when building the model since there are no safety nubs like Bandai’s HG. One issue I ran into is one of the backpack connectors are extremely loose – so much so that Jobby would have a field day swiveling it. I managed to fix it but it’s a pretty concerning problem.

The painted details are very good. There’re no blemish that I can see, the colors are vibrant and I hope it is the same with the other kits as well. Too bad the ornamental patterns on the armor aren’t painted, but I reckon it would be a very expensive process. All in all, it’s a very satisfying build.

– Articulation: Well in the Northern War anime, Valimar has shown to be a decently acrobatic mech, but not too much. And the kit reflects that as well, with decent – but not amazing posability. The elbows and knees aren’t double jointed and their range are also hindered by the armor, so there’s not much dynamic going on. Fortunately, the shoulder armor can slide in and out to allow for more range of movement that allow for more dynamic poses like the Obari Sword pose and other similar ones. The feet pivot however is very nice and you can balance the giant pretty easy. There are definitely ways to engineer more into the kit, but they didn’t and basically kept it at an acceptable level.