The class was nearly quiet till Johnson starts to talk: "Well Ms. Hatashi, you are indeed right. Gunpla is freedom. No doubt you take the ideas passed by the Meijin. I know what we ask for you, for all of you to do may be something you're not used to. However, just by having a unit that goes beyond the limits of imagination, does not mean you are always guaranteed for success in battle."
This was based on personal experience the two had encountered. A while back, they had witnessed a fight where one piloted used an HG model of a Geara Zulu, just straight built and nothing added on, and it fought two customized units from the After War Gundam X timeline... and the Zulu defeated both opponents without much damage to it. Taking the boy who won under their wing, teaching some hidden tricks, training with time in straight assembly units and soon combining it with a Gunpla he would later customized, he was nearly invincible.
Even Alex was aware of how the slightest changes could improve performance, since he had fought most of his battles with his Star AGE gundam being almost nothing more than a recolored AGE-1 Normal. Even after adding both the Starlight program and also the Glansa armor, the AGE was still technically close to being a straight assembly model.
Ran explains as well: "But not everything ever goes perfect. Anything that could possibly go wrong will go wrong, and that's when you must trust on the skills you have yourself, but if you trust on the equipment too much, that will cause you to fail. We should know. After all, we saw a straight assembly model of a Geara Zulu take on two custom Gundams from the Gundam X series, and defeat them both with only light damage to the suit."