When I was at a videogame store recently, they were selling a Bandai kit I hadn’t heard of before. It’s still robots, but it’s not Gundam, so I was interested. Let’s see how many hours of fun I can wring out of this so-called “30 minute” mission.

The 30 Minute Missions series appears to be all cool robots. Like the other 30 Minute kits, they can be built quickly and have interchangeable parts (within their own series.) This guy is a Roundnova, a name that’s on the verge of fat-shaming. I’m not sure what the lore is around these kits – the box just claims he’s a planetary exploring robot – so I jumped right in and started painting everything.

Inexplicably, several parts of this kit look like cloth. You’ve got stitches and belts on the shins and boots, which is a little ludicrous for a death robot this big. For the entertainment of my readers, I went ahead and did some math on the claimed 1/144 scale: his little fanny pack would be over 2.88 metres (9.45 ft) tall in reality. What is he storing in there, and how do his short little arms reach it?

To start with, I checked the manual for the major bits and glued together parts that made sense (forearms, etc.) Then I sorted by colour and started processing for paint. Bandai has put a bunch of effort into making deliberate seams to hide assembly gaps, greebles to hide uncut gate nibs, etc. I used a glass file where it made sense to clean up the gate marks, and mostly didn’t worry about it otherwise.

I decided to paint the armour pieces, and leave all of the connectors unpainted. This saved me a lot of time, but also I was worried about fitment issues. All of the green-yellow parts got a coat of Tamiya lacquer, in a colour that was so close to the original plastic that I wasn’t sure if I got adequate coverage until the third coat.

For the lower parts and accessories, I ignored the parachute-colour moulded into the plastic and instead painted them in Mr. Hobby German Grey. I was worried this would be too dark, but when fully assembled, it looks really good. To try and break up a bit of the monotony of the bags, I dry-brushed the upper bags with brown and tan, and used a silver Sharpie to do some of the enormous clasps on the lower bag.

Before I put the kit together, I went nuts with the Tamiya orange-brown accent colour. This was to simulate rust from sitting water, but I went a little bit too far. I’m still a rookie at weathering, and the most important skill in weathering (as in life) is knowing when to say no. Still, I think it looks fairly good.

There is, of course, the classic warning against using panel lining on already-assembled Bandai parts. I ignored this warning, and I paid the price. The Roundnova’s left thigh blew open when I was trying to install it into the hip joint.

To try and fix it, I stuck a ton of super glue around the remnants of the upper pins and then clamped it shut. It’ll be fine.

Once the robot was assembled, I used some of the Mr. Color yellow wash (sparingly this time!) with a brush to add a bit of a sunbaked effect in places. I didn’t like how this was coming out, but I did like the effect that putting a bunch of bright yellow wet-brush on the claws did:

The Roundnova comes with a little buddy robot named Roy-Roy, and I gave him a pin wash as well.

Now that the robot is standing on his own, I did some dry brushing, using a crappy Home Depot “craft” brush that I got for cheap the other day. This brush is truly terrible; the bristles are so stiff I’m not even sure it could be used for sign-painting. But it sort of works okay here, and I won’t worry about whether or not it gets cleaned properly.

I smacked some flat brown “mud” around the robot’s feet and added some tan and grey weathering around any sharp 90° edge, like the thigh armour.

Doing this kit was a fun, quick build. The design makes it easy to put the robot together without extensive processing, and it’s fun to not have to worry too much about what it’s “supposed to” look like and just do whatever. Although I ran into the classic Bandai-plastics weathering mistake of exploding major assemblies from the inside, I think it came out pretty well regardless. I’ll probably pick up another Missions kit if I get the chance, and I feel a little braver about getting a more expensive Gunpla in the future.

Thanks for reading!