Mecha Monday: It's a Gundam!

Also know as a minute and half long video of people crapping their pants at the sight of a Gundam. Fair warning, there's a bit of language near the end.




IT'S A GUNDAM!!!!

Mecha Monday: Windmill Gundam is truly the best Gundam

Gather around, children, and hear the tale of a godawful Gundam series called Mobile Fighter G Gundam and it's entirely ridiculous Gundams. The show's premise was simple: Every country on Earth emigrated to an orbital space colony that bore the name of their nation, but with the "Neo" prefix. In order to decide who would rule the colonies and Earth, these nations hold a tournament every four years and each sends a Gundam "modeled" after their culture. In actuality, the Gundams are based largely on cultural stereotypes. Neo-Mexico's Gundam, for example, wears a poncho, a sombrero, and is called Tequila Gundam, but that's a post for a different day. Neo-Holland's Nether Gundam has always been one of my favorites from the series for no other reason than because it can transform into a windmill.

Now you see it...
Credit: Gundam Wiki.

Now you--hey, where'd it go!?
Credit: Gundam Wiki.

In fact, Neo-Holland's entire strategy in the tournament was simply not to fight. Their Gundam pretty much just stayed in windmill mode and progressed to the finals by default. Not surprisingly, when you have a Gundam that is also part windmill, it's not going to very good at fighting and it got curbstomped.

Mecha Monday: Giant Gundam statue? Giant Gundam statue.

Because what better way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of your flagship anime franchise than with a sixty foot tall statue of a goddamn Gundam?

It lights up too! Batteries not included.

I wrote a post about the statue last year on my nerd blog, Giant-Size Nerd-Thing!, which you can check out right here. They did disassemble it after a while and laid the dismembered mecha on an artificial island. But fortunately, decided to reassemble and station it in Tokyo, presumably to ward off Kaiju attacks.

Did I mention that this fucker is sixty feet tall?

Pictures via TechCrunch, Pink Tenticle, and Punyari. Hat tip to Geekspective.

Pacific Rim is one of those "looks so bad, you have to see it" movies

But hey, it's got mechs! Plural! Kaijus! Also plural! GLaDOS too for some reason, but it's nice to see Aperture Science lending a hand in defending the Earth. Probably could have used Gordon Freeman too.



I'm intrigued by the control system and the fact that each mechs takes two people to operate. Normally, you only see the latter with Voltron and the various Megazords of the Power Ranger franchise. I don't know if casting Ellen McLain as the AI and making her sound like GLaDOS was just a coincidence or a sly wink at the geek/nerd community, but I approve.

A little something different for Mecha Monday: Who wants to watch the original Gundam?

Because, as it turns out, the entire series is on YouTube for free! I feel a tad dumb for not knowing this sooner, especially since it's been on there for two years. I'd suggest muting the sound for the first minute or so on each episode. All of them have a commercial for the Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn DVD at the beginning. Then there's the music. I mean, if you're into listening to a guy singing the theme music overly-dramatically in Japanese, then you're day is made.

If you've never watch Mobile Suit Gundam, you are in a treat. The whole premise is that it's the year 079 UC - Universal Century) and a good chunk of the human race is living in giant space colonies orbiting the Earth, called Sides. Well, at the beginning of the year, a group of colonies, Side 3, join together as the Principality of Zeon, declare independence from the Earth and proceeds to commit acts of genocide that, if real, would made the Holocaust look minor by comparison. Both Zeon and the Earth Federation employed nukes, but the former went further. Zeon forces would actually wipe out the entire population of Federation-allied colonies or ones they suspected supported their enemies by pumping nerve gas into their air supply. Oh, it gets worse, believe it or not. I guess the writers really wanted to make Zeon totally despicable, because these guys would use colonies themselves as weapons against Earth. Believe it or not, Zeon would drop a colony into the Earth's atmosphere and completely wiped out Sydney, Australia.

Space colonies as kinetic weapons. Damn.

In any event, before the year was over, half the populations of the two sides were killed and common sense finally came to them. Horrified by what they'd done, Earth and Zeon signed a treaty in Antarctica agreeing not to go extreme like that again. The show opens in the eighth month of the One Year War. Anyway, check out the first episode below.



That awkward moment when a teenager with no prior experience at piloting a mecha manages to destroy several experienced veteran pilots.

Mecha Monday: MS-05A Zaku I Early Type from Mobile Suit Gundam

Seemed appropriate, since it was the first mobile suit the Principality of Zeon mass produced prior to the One Year War.

Gundam Wiki.

While the MS-05A Zaku I Early Type was the first mobile suit to be mass produced, it was not the first to be deployed. By the time the OYW erupted, the Zeon military had already moved on to the Zaku IIs and the Is were relegated to construction and support jobs in the rear. They were ultimately deployed near the end of that war as Zeon had lost a considerable amount of its mobile suit force.

Gundam, it's a Gundam!

Check out what I snagged at a yard sale last Sunday.

Toyarena.

According to Toyarena and several other websites, this thing retails for over a hundred smackers and I got it - and hold on to your britches, boys and girls - for five dollars. Clearly, the Nerd Gods like me. The Strike Freedom Gundam is a beast of a model that when completed, will measure 1.7 feet in height and just shy of 2 in width. I've never watched Gundam SEED, but this sucker looks like a real badass!

Progress, however, has been slow. I'm not going to lie, my enthusiasm for this project has been sapped a bit by the amount of wire work required. You see, the thing comes with LEDs for the head, arms, and chest, and it took several hours just to assemble the head (which required assembly of its light and battery compartment), right arm, and base (another battery compartment assembly). The latter came with two long, flat metal pieces that run up from the base to the pole that the Gundam will sit on. I'm going to work on it again tomorrow and try to put the left arm together and make progress on whatever comes after that.

I have no idea where the heck I'm going to put it. I don't even want to consider that yet.

There's that Gundam again

(Via comicbooksexlife)

RX-79 Ez8 Gundam

Gundam Wiki.

The Gundam Ez8 appeared in the anime Mobile Suit Gundam: 8th MS Team, which followed a regular, non-newtype (uber pilots) military unit as it fought against Zeon forces on Earth. The Ez8 was originally a RGM-79, a variant of the RX-79 Gundam used by Amuro Ray, but aimed at being mass producible. However, the Federation opted to go with the less expensive GM mobile suit and diverted their resources away from the RGMs.  This proved to be a problem when Shiro Amada wrecked his Gundam in battle and so engineers were forced to rebuild it using leftover spare parts from the original Gundam. The result was the above.

The Ez8 is one of my favorite Gundams and mobile suits in general. It doesn't look ridiculous like later Gundams (I'm looking at you, SEED) and has a more rugged, realistic appearance. Unfortunately, the Ez8 was destroyed in the final episode of 8th MS Team. A real shame.