As you may or may not know, the first episode of the Gundam Unicorn OVA comes out next month (although you may be able to find it around ye olde internet now, hint, hint). It’s set in the same universe as the original Gundam, as well as Zeta Gundam and a few other things and it’s set to have 6 50-minute episodes.
Now I realize that you may want to watch it, when it comes out next month of course, but that you may be a little lost if you haven’t seen all the other stuff that comes chronologically beforehand so I thought I’d put down a little primer here so you don’t have to sift through Wikipedia. Which doesn’t really have a good synopsis of Gundam plot-lines anyway.
I guess it makes the most sense to start with the first series. It takes place during the year Universal Century (UC) 0079, which by the way is why you hear this universe called the “Universal Century” time-line. During the course of the war the Earth Federation is fighting the Principality of Zeon, which had recently declared a war for its independence, which would later be called the One Year War. Despite the noble intentions, the war was really started by the head of the Zabi family, who killed the previous leader of the Republic of Zeon, for the purpose of furthering his own ambitions. Early battles resulted in the complete destruction of numerous space colonies (named “sides”, depending on where they were located).
Flash forward a little bit to where the series protagonist Amuro Ray finds himself a Gundam after an attack on Side 7. Amuro manages to save a good portion of the population of the colony even though the colony itself gets destroyed. Amuro and the rest of the civilians board the prototype battleship “White Base”, commanded by officer Bright Noa. The ship and its ragtag crew somehow manage to survive despite the best efforts of Zeon and one of its ace pilots Char Aznable, “The Red Comet”. Over the course of the story, it is revealed that Amuro (and possibly a large portion of the crew aboard the White Base and Char) are “newtypes”. A newtype is the supposed next stage in human evolution and is brought about by an adaptation to life in space. Therefore, Spacenoids can be newtypes but Earthnoids cannot. Newtypes exhibit some amount of psychic power, which changes from newtype to newtype.
We can safely skim over the rest of the story until the end where Amuro, Bright, and the White Base are instrumental in the war effort, ending in the final battle of the war at A Baoa Qu. It is during this battle that Char’s plans are revealed, the revenge against the Zabi family for killing his father, the previous head of Zeon.
So the war ends and the Zabi’s are all killed and there’s peace for a while until UC0083 where remnants from Zeon try to crash a satellite into the Earth. The plan is successful but the only result is the Earth Federation decides to create an elite force called the Titans in UC 0084.
Zeta Gundam chronicles the fight of previous Earth Federation troops, who are aided by Char, as they fight against the oppressive and un-regulated Titans. Eventually, most of the main characters from the first series, including Amuro and Bright, team up to take down the Titans.
Long story short, they are successful and a new elite group is formed called Londo Bell. This time however it is a just group and is led by Bright Noa, and whose ranks include Amuro Ray. Char disappears during the final battle.
In 0093 Char returns and wants to crash a giant asteroid into the Earth, rendering it uninhabitable so that people will be forced into space to evolve. Char in his Sazabi fights against the Londo Bell units, and specifically Amuro. Amuro defeats Char by using his Nu-Gundam built by Anaheim Electronics, which is a “psychoframe”, meaning it has a system in place (”psycommu” system) that allows the pilot to control the Mobile Suit telepathically, or rather, in the same way they would move their own body. Since this requires some telepathy, only newtypes can use this system.
Even though Amuro wins, he is seemingly too late to stop the crashing asteroid. That is until he uses his newtype power, amplified by the psychoframe to telepathically push back the asteroid. Both Amuro and Char possibly died at this point.
Which leads us to Unicorn Gundam in UC 0096, and which you should hopefully now understand provided I made this clear enough. I leave you with the trailer and the unrelated statement that animetake.com is really cool.
-Tony
First, I don’t really know why Volks calls this kit “The Bang” when in the manga there’s more than one and they’re called “bang dolls”. Maybe that sounds too sexual.
Second, I’m apologizing right now about the quality of these pictures. As I’m about the describe, I was just overjoyed that it was in one piece and had to snap a few pictures to share. I didn’t even have my nicer camera with me at the time, so I had to settle with the one on hand. Just FYI, the last picture accurately shows the colors on him since that’s how I arranged the lighting the best. The other pictures are just to show you other angles.
I could go into the specifications on the machine, but you might as well just go to this page if you’re interested. He’s from the manga “Five Star Stories”, which you should all read. Suffice to say that it’s one of the most powerful machines in the series, and the pilot of the one seen in the series is pretty bad ass as well.
This was an early Christmas present from Jen and I want to point out first that I do love the kit and the mech itself because I’m about to complain for a while.
Now to the details of the kit. It was a pain in the ass! Seriously, I haven’t done a PG Gundam model yet, but I assume they are for the most part easier than this. First, it doesn’t snap together like a Bandai kit. Every piece is held together by a generous amount of plastic cement. This wouldn’t be such a problem, but he does end up seeming fairly fragile. At any one point it seems like he could fall apart. I know he won’t but still. The main problem with this is that sometimes the pieces don’t even feel like they fit together properly. So, you have in your hand a fragile piece, and then you’re jamming another piece into it. Something is bound to brake.
I actually lost a incredibly small piece on the underside of the headdress that holds those “floating” pieces in. I was jamming the metal piece in and the really small hole piece flew off somewhere. Why couldn’t they have just build the hole into the main piece? Why did you have to cement a piece that small onto a larger piece?
But the worst part, by far, is the fact that they wanted to make the piece movable. But it didn’t work, they joints that are supposed to be movable just fall apart when you’re trying to move them even a little bit. It actually took me like an hour and a half to put the arms on and attach the shield/sword. This really should have taken like 5 minutes.
Then there’s the fact that he won’t stand. Hence the box he’s leaning on. What I’m going to do is try my hand at making a diorama for him. I had him standing for a minute but then a small bump into the table made him face-plant.
But again, don’t take all this as meaning that I don’t like it. Quite the opposite. It’s a great kit and I had a lot of fun putting it together. I just think Volks could have done some things better.
And, as you can see, he still isn’t “finished” I need to do some lining and touch-ups, and then of course the decals and the diorama. But I really like him, so I wanted to share :)
-Tony
As posted on Tomopop.
Now Gather round children while we hear,
Tales that make famous this time of year.
Tonights star is the greatest the Pricipality of Zeon ever knew,
Yes, thats right, it’s the story of Santa Claus’ Custom Zaku II.
He’d bring gifts to all of the faithful who’d come,
and swift painful death to those Earth Federation scum.
What kind of gifts you ask? What did he bring?
Well child it really could be most anything.
GN short and long blades to Exia he did leave
“Sweet, with these think of all the heads I could cleave!”
To one hell of a butler, one hell of a cat,
And the promise of a certain soul on top of that.
On his way back through the factory he stoped and took note
This place could use an air compressor since air cans are too damned expensive to keep buying when you decide that you want to be more sophisticated and use your airbrush instead of just buying cans of spray paint, which you just can’t get the same effects with. And now that I think of it, I need to find a place that sells thinner in bulk since that stuff is expensive too. . .-ote.
I million such stories I’d gladly tell you
but I ran out of figures so you’ll have to make due.
What’s that? There’s no such thing you say?
Well I’ll prove it to you, I know a way.
If you just stop to listen, through the distance you might hear him say.
I’ll destroy that trojan horse! I’ll destroy them some day!
Merry Christmas everyone! (or whatever you celebrate, have a good one!)
-Tony
Thanks 7-Eleven, now I need to start smoking.
What is this you ask? Well, 7-Eleven is teaming up with Bandai to make weird but awesome Gundam merchandise. The result? Awesomeness. More specifically:
The Zippo up there, as well as this one:
The inappropriately named, but still cute “Half-age girls” figures (The figures include Sayla Mass, Frau Bow, Meer Campbell, some blond girl with a hat that I can’t place, Allenby, Rain, and Nastasha):
And more.
Thanks Ngee Khiong!
-Tony
Short post today since I need to do quantum mechanics homework. Ngee Khiong posted a list of all the Gundam kits to be released this month. On top of 00 Raiser, the MG Qubeley Mk. II looks pretty cool. I wish that Vent Savior Gundam were MG instead of just 1/100 non-grade though. It looks pretty cool but I doubt I’ll get another non or high grade kit again.
But anyway. Here’s the link.
-Tony
And now an exciting time where I highlight some really cool Gundam models that I unfortunately did not do. Let’s revel in their awesomeness.
The first couple come from naowks.
Kshatriya from Gundam Unicorn
Unicorn Gundam (Destroy Mode), "Banshee" mod
And now a freakishly cool Zaku diorama by figure.fm user nath. O_O
Wish I could do that.
-Tony
So I finally was able to track down the trailer for the Gundam 00 Next Mission movie. Enjoy!
00 Quan[T] (pronounced quanta) looks pretty cool. I love the blade dragoons/bits/funnels/whatever you want to call them. But Tieria steals the show, by being able to materialize?! I still can’t tell if 00 Quan[T] has two drives again or not. It doesn’t really look like it. Does that mean it was destroyed when 0 Gundam blew up in the last episode? I never really thought about it. If it is a single drive Gundam I hope it’s as powerful as 00 was. It would kinda suck to have there be a weaker Gundam in the movie than was in the second season.
And I don’t really know what to make of this, but I like it.
-Tony
That’s Zero Gravity Maneuver Fighter by the way. Just in case you care. I don’t really, but you might.
As I previously stated I bought my newest Gundam model off a sale on Tomopop from Stella. Well, I got the chance this weekend to put him together and I think he turned out quite well. This is definitely the cleanest looking one I’ve made so far.
Here’s how he came from Stella:
Here's the whole package I got. She even included some pocky-like candy.
I really like the Kenshin envelope
And a nice hand-written note
Didn’t bother to take any pictures of the building process. So here he is finished, and showing off his weapons. Again, click the images for larger versions.
I used metallic paints again, just like with Exia
Beam spam mode
Double beam saber
The double saber splits into two individual ones.
The two guns combine to form one big one
And here’s the final pose I decided on.
And the top of my shelf now.
The image quality for these are a bit odd I know. The problem is that the two lights I have are of different spectra. The one on the left is a natural spectrum bulb with a filter, while the one on the right is a normal bulb. So the point is, the left half looks better than the right half (except in the last photo where the two lights are switched. I really need to make a photo box.
Now I have a bit of a rule that I need to have seen the anime of any figure/kit that I get. In this case, this meant that I needed to watch both Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny, which I did. I liked Seed quite a bit, even though I thought it moved way to slow at the beginning. Destiny was. . . not the best. It was alright when the characters from Seed were in it, but whenever it centered on the new characters the whole thing went to hell.
I normally like swords over blasters with my Gundams, but I couldn’t in good conscious give him beam sabers when his signature is to beam spam. So guns it is. I like the double beam sword that he came with, but that’s more of a Infinite Justice thing. So whenever I get Infinite Justice he’ll have a double beam saber.
-Tony
First off, they finally put up pictures of the PG 00 Raiser. :)
Note: The images below are scaled down. Click on the image to see the bigger versions when applicable.
I finally got a few Action Bases (Celestial Being Version) a few days ago, and spent a little while painting one of them. This took way longer than had originally planned, but I think it turned out pretty nice.
And here’s everyone on their bases. You’ll notice that I need to paint the other two.
So today I decided that while I had a little time to kill between classes, I would finally light up my MG Exia.
At first I wanted to stick the LED into his GN Drive (this would effectively light his stomach), but the light didn’t really shine through the way I wanted to. So next I thought the head lighting up would be pretty cool. And it was, but unfortunately my LED wouldn’t really quite fit in:
So, I decided I’d mount the LED behind his head. The effect was still pretty good this way, and you can’t see the LED unless you look at his back:
So now I needed to wire the thing. My wire was pretty thick, which was an eyesore, but thankfully the wire was threaded, so I just separated the wire into threads:
The left me with very thin wire that you really can’t see unless you’re up close. Now I needed to power it somehow. Again, my original plan was to have everything inside the GN Drive inside Exia’s stomach but that didn’t work out. So what I did was I taped the batteries underneath the Action Base and ran the wire up the part where the clear stand goes into the base:
Then I had to hollow out a hole in the clear stand so that the wires could run up through it. I just used my X-Acto knife to do that. Here it is before I cut out the little tunnel:
Then I decided that to light up the body I’d just put another LED on the clear base. This is in parallel with the other LED. You can also see that I just ran the wire up the back the the clear stand:
So here he is lit:
Everything right now is set up in a pretty temporary state. I lent my soldering iron to a friend and need to get it back before I can make things more permanent.
Here’s some more pictures of all of them, I turned on the LED’s on OO Raiser as well. The one’s on him were built into the kit, I didn’t do anything special with him:
I’m pretty pleased with how everything turned out. What does everyone else think?
-Tony
Again, this was posted on Tomopop.
I recently bought my first Master Grade Gundam figure, and the honor(?) went to GN-001 Exia. So, when I started this I thought that I wanted my Exia to look a little different than the right out of the box kit So I decided to make a few color alterations. First thing I did was chose all metallic colors for spray-paint, and the second thing I did was decided to make him in trans-am mode. The trans-am part was me airbrushing a coat of metallic pink on the already painted model. Since it was one of the first things I did with the airbrush, I think it turned out rather well. So, without further ado,
Front:
Back:
Me trying to do something more interesting with the lighting, this would work better if I stuck an LED in his head or something.
I really liked/ am impressed with the Master Grade kit. It was a lot nicer than the two 1/100 HG ones that I had gotten. Even the packaging and the instruction booklet seemed nicer. Really, at this point I double I’ll get many below MG quality. Next up is the MG Strike Freedom.
-Tony
