Review:75087 Anakin's Custom Jedi Starfighter/NovaHawk

Joined: December 29, 2006 № of Reviews: 2 № of Featured reviews: 0

Warning: This review contains some spoilers to Star Wars: Clone Wars. But it's been out for 10 years and is now only a part of the Legends continuity, so it shouldn't matter to you that much.

Background[edit | edit source]

Please skip this section if you just want to read about the set.
Anakin's Custom Jedi Starfighter is the first (and currently only) set to be based on something from Clone Wars (not The Clone Wars). For those that don't know, Clone Wars was a cartoon series that ran between 2003 and 2005. There were two volumes (or seasons) made, each volume lasted about an hour each. In general I loved this series, and it's probably the main reason why I found The Clone Wars so disappointing- even though it only ran for about two hours all up, there were were probably more wide-scale battles on Clone Wars than all six seasons of The Clone Wars. Instead of in The Clone Wars where the Jedi were made out to be slightly stupid, and all the Councillors were for some reason weaker than Ahsoka, Clone Wars made the Jedi look cool- Mace Windu's skills in the Battle of Dantooine may have been slightly exaggerated, but it was funny nonetheless. The fight between Shaak Ti and Grievous was also very well done. Plus, the ARC troopers actually acted like highly trained special forces units instead of just slightly superior clone troopers (and Fordo was just awesome). It also had a very nice final scene that led directly into Episode III.

The Azure Angel (the name of Anakin's ship) was a Delta-7 Jedi Starfighter that Anakin customised and used throughout the earlier stages of the Clone Wars. Instead of the standard two flimsy laser cannons, Anakin upgraded his ship to have four heavier cannons and also had a missile launcher equipped. The speed of the Azure Angel was also enhanced, and a hyperdrive system was built into the ship so the Angel didn't have to have a hyperdrive ring to jump into hyperspace.

But, enough about Star Wars trivia, let's get into the set.

The set[edit | edit source]

Minifigures

The set has three minifigures- Anakin Skywalker, Asajj Ventress and R4-P22 (or as LEGO calls her- "Astromech Droid"). Here's a shot of the figures below, with a comparison to what they look like in the TV series (sorry for the stock images of the minifigures, my photos of the figures came out very badly):

Back view of the minifigures.

All in all, I'm very happy with the minifigure designs of the two main characters- Ventress' body printing is excellent, in fact she appears slightly more detailed in minifigure form than her character design in the show, but not so much that the detail is distracting. I would say that her face is also pretty spot-on, and since she can only have one expression (since she's bald), I believe that the expression chosen is fairly fitting. It's also very nice to have a Ventress face that doesn't have weird The Clone Wars eyes. The only downside is the plain black legs. In the series, Ventress wears a dress most of the time, but using legs is a much better option to me, especially for characters that have weapons and move around a lot. But what I don't get is why the rest of the belt wasn't printed on- sure, it's cheaper to produce unprinted parts, but for such a great figure, it's slightly disappointing that this is lacking.

R4-P22 is, well, just an astromech droid. All the bits are there, and, although in the series R4-P22 is just a head hardwired into the Jedi Starfighter, she gets a body. Not that I'm complaining, I prefer my hardwired astromechs to have bodies so they can be taken out if needed, provided that when they got into the ship it looks like they are hardwired into the starfighter (which this one does). However, as you can see, R4's main two lights are both a bluish shade in the TV series, whereas they are black and a yellowish-green colour on the minifigure. A reused R4-P17 head would have been more accurate. But, R4's not exactly a huge character in the series, so it's not a big deal.

Anakin's minifigure is the same as the one used in the 2013 version of the Republic Gunship, which was based on Episode II. But this figure still suits a Clone Wars Anakin very well, and there's absolutely no need to make a whole new figure for him since this one works so well. The only thing I would suggest is giving him a gold right hand for the prosthetic arm that Padmé gave him at the end of Episode II. However, people not familiar with the show would probably be wondering why he had a gold arm, so it's probably a good decision to leave it as is. Also, I wasn't really sure how fitting Anakin's alternate face was for Episode II, but I'm very glad that they used it now as it seems particularly fitting for the final part of his duel with Ventress which happened at the end of Volume I:

Bag 1

In addition to Asajj, the first bag of parts is used to make up the centre section for the starfighter. There's not a whole lot to it, as you can see. The leg for the landing gear is part of this bag which folds down in the same way as most other starfighters like this, and you can see all the places where the other "modules" attach to the centre- the clips on the sides for the wings and the tiled part at the back is for the cockpit. In the centre is a place for R4-P22 to sit. Even though you can't really see them in the final model, the golden binocular pieces on each side are a nice little detail and not a bad part to have have. Stickers are used on the front blue area. Although printed parts would be infinitely better, something is definitely needed in that area- apart from accuracy with the ship, the model looks so much better with the stickers on than off.

Bag 2

Along with R4-P22, the second bag has parts which help to build up the starfighter. The first few steps have the parts directly attaching to what was in the first bag, with the area around where the astromech droid sits built up, and the back area gets a few more parts as well. A ejection mechanism is also installed for the astromech droid, where you can hit the lever underneath the starfighter to send an astromech droid flying. Personally I'm not really into the ejection systems for most of the starfighters, but I don't mind this one- it seems fitting as you can replicate R4-P22 being blown to smithereens when Ventress blew up the Azure Angel towards the end of Volume I.

Top view (left), side views with the lever pressed (top right) and sitting down ready to eject a droid (bottom right).

The next step is to build up the underside with two... round things. I've tried to find out what these things actually are and while I'm not completely sure, I believe these are the two hyperdrive thursters (unlike other Delta-7 starfighters, the Azure Angel can make short hyperspace jumps). Anyway, whatever they are, they help distinguish this ship from normal Jedi Starfighters, and apart from the fact that they use stickers, they look pretty close to how they should. Putting them on, I thought they were slightly oversized, but once the rest of the ship comes together they look fine.

The final part of the bag goes into building up one of the wings (I can't remember which side, but apart from the Republic logo on the right-hand side, they're exact mirror images of each other). The wings look great and the blue and white pattern works really well when attached to the rest of the ship. Each "wing" comes in two parts- the normal part which is on all Delta-7's, and a smaller bit which points the opposite way and clips to the front via a single ball and socket joint. These wings are easy to clip in, but it may take a few seconds to move the front parts around to get them in the "perfect position".

Obviously, the starfighter has to have weapons, and as you can see below, the set does a pretty good job of replicating this armament. It also has two launchers for [[Transparent Blue}transparent dark blue]] spring-loaded missiles so the ship can "really fire" lasers. I know some people don't really like these things built into their sets and prefer a more "realistic" look, but I think it's a nice play feature, and the way the launchers are built into the wing, they don't look out of place, even when there are no missiles in the launchers.

Bag 3

After building the Anakin minifigure, bag 3 continues right where bag 2 left off, with parts for the other side of the wing. There's not much to say here that I haven't already mentioned for the wing in bag 2.

The starfighter with both wings attached.

After this, there's only one bit left until the starfighter's complete- the cockpit. The transparent bubble folds up to allow you to access the inside, and some electrobinoculars are included in the back storage area.

The control panel, while a sticker, is a nice little reference to Asajj Ventress' Fanblade starfighter, which she used to lure Anakin to Yavin 4.

Once built, the cockpit simply slides in to the rest of the ship and locks in via two pins. In my opinion it's a nice easy way of building the cockpit and there's no obvious gap between the cockpit and the rest of the ship.

The cockpit area sliding in to the rest of the ship.

So, that's it! Here's a few more shots of the overall set:

Bonus: comparison shot with the Blade of Dorin (8093). As you can see, the Angel's a lot more heavily armed, and to me, just looks more interesting in general.

In my opinion it's a really nice looking starfighter and very well built, probably the best designed of any of the Delta-7 (and 7B) starfighters we've had to date. If you're a fan of Clone Wars, this set's a must have. If you're just looking for a nice-looking starfighter, I'd definitely recommend this too.