The joints on this model are rather odd. The shoulders rotate in the normal way, but the upper arm swivels around at the shoulder. The elbow only bends a short way, meaning the upper body isn't really capable of a great many dramatic poses. There's no joint at the waist, and the hips are quite limited. The knees are just terrible, though, and coupled with limited movement in the ankle, it's basically impossible to have Viper II in any pose other than 'standing to attention'. Of course, given a little stand, or some form of suspension, Viper could be in his element, gliding...

Of the two Virtual On characters I own, Fei-Yen is easily the most posable... but also the most difficult to stand. She's very well jointed until the ankles. The individual 'skirt' pieces can move a little, her arms are nicely jointed, and the knees even have some twist to them. She takes quite a bit of balancing, though.

Some of the pieces (notably the boosters on the backs of the legs) don't fit properly, and some of the joints are a little loose, but it's not bad. Tends to feel like it's going to break while it's being transformed, though...

I like the use of metallised plastic on this model, and I wish they'd used this technique for some of the Gundam Seed models, because the shiny 'metallic' stickers don't work half as well.

Getting this fella to stand is the real chore. Some looseness in his leg and ankle joints, and the extra weight of his flight pod thing tends to make him lean backward and fall over at the slightest provocation. Using the shield and gun should bring his centre of gravity forward, but his elbow joints are so loose, his arms always drop to his side.

I've read that clear nail varnish is a good solution to joint looseness issues, so I might try that at some point.

Some incredibly loose and saggy joints cause problems for standing this figure, let alone posing him, as - like the Zero - the additional gear on his back tends to make him fall over. Holding his gun should fix this also, but his fingers are so loose, the gun drops out all the time.

While this would certainly benefit from painting - if only to make the colour scheme completely anime-accurate - the few stickers go a long way toward completing the look of the finished model.

Again, this one could do with having some of the finer detail painted in, but the stickers are fine by me.

This one really does need some level of paintwork, because the finished model doesn't quite work as well as some of the others.

The Freedom Gundam is probably the only one I've bought so far which really requires a proper paint job to complete it. The supplied stickers just don't do it justice, and some areas  - notably the hip- and wing-mounted guns - don't look finished without some more colour. The gold part of the crest looks pretty terrible as sticker-detail... particularly since the stickers don't stick very well.

Through clever use of smaller parts, this model is less in need of a paint-job to make it look finished. The only problem I had in making is was with the yellow helmet crest, which almost completely broke as I cut it off the frame.

With a couple of transparent plastic stickers adding some good detail to this model, it works quite well without a paint-job... but it would definitely look better with some paint.

There's quite a variety of coloured pieces in the body of this one, but the jet pack thing certainly needs painting to make the most of it. The wing stickers just won't stay put.

The feet of this one are particularly impressive, in terms of posability, but the rest of it is about average for the series. Which is good.

The supplied stickers mostly do a good job of filling in the details, but the stickers on the hip pieces look like they might peel, and the huge sticker on the shield would certainly be better off being replaced by paint.

As with many of these models, the stickers supplied to add colour really don't do it justice and have an annoying tendency to peel. Still, until I decide to start painting these things, they're all I've got. One of them - the orange patch on one of the armoured shoulders - looks as though it's meant to indicate a door, but sadly there's no 'open door' version of that piece, so I've no idea what's inside. Probably improbable missiles.

The colour scheme of this one suggests that it wouldn't look much better if it was painted, but some detail might become more apparent.

The Abyss is another of the Gundam series' rather basic transformers - that is, stand it up straight, close up the shell and flip down the 'toes' and you have a strange-looking hovercraft-y thing. Bizarrely, it kind of reminds me of TransFormers Gen 1 Scourge - the blue/grey hovercraft created for TransFormers The Movie, to be one of Galvatron's minions.

Its only hand-held weapon is a sort of beam halberd, but there are two guns mounted on the back, which probably only come into play when it's in 'hovercraft' mode.

Primarily red, this guy looks pretty much standard - he comes with a shield, a rifle, and two beam swords (yawn). Transformation is not only typically simplistic but, due to the size of the model, cheats quite significantly - the gryphon's front legs are actually separate pieces!

Gryphon mode puts me in mind of a cross between Victory Leo and Skylynx... it would almost be tempting to get another and give him a Gen 1 TransFormers makeover, just to see how close he can be.

It does seem that, by comparason to some other Gundam models, this one is slightly less posable due to its transformation. The feet in particular don't have the range of motion that some others do, largely because they have to be the gryphon's feet as well as the robot's.

Feels very flimsy, so it's going to be 'on display', rather than being actively played with. Also, for best results, it needs to be painted, as some of the stickers aren't very good. Another advantage it has over the WG0 is that all the parts fit nicely, so gluing isn't a necessity. Still, I may just glue some parts, just to make sure it stays together.

Instead of painting, I tried adding some line detail with an ink pen. It was messy, and didn't work very well... but it could be worse.