Banpresto Evolve Gundam 45th Anniversary x Hatsune Miku Collaboration Figure

Lately, Bandai Namco has been running a number of brand cross-promotion or "collaborations" as they call it for Mobile Suit Gundam and Hatsune Miku, the world famous virtual idol and mascot for the Vocaloid software. We looked at the special Mobile Suit Ensemble figures a couple of months ago and I figured why not take a look at this somewhat kitschy idol figure as well? This particular Miku-figure was released under Bandai Namco's Banpresto label in December 2025 and is based on original artwork by Mai Okuma for a virtual concert in the "Gundam Metaverse" space (don't ask me about any details, I only review figures...).


I have to say, these are some really vibrant graphics and an explosion of colours, far from the dull single-colour boxes we see so often from Premium Bandai. There are also a gazillion of different logotypes clogging up all four corners of the front cover and on the backside we have the JAIA-logo of the Japan Amusement Industry Association betraying the figure's origin as a claw machine or UFO-catcher prize-item. I purchased mine from - you know it - Mandarake which has been flooded with this item as of late. Expect to see it at prizes somewhere around 1500-2000 yen but beware, this is a large box and so shipping will be at a premium.


The box interior is split up into two different zones, each containing plastic bags with components, the flatter sections being wrapped around a slab of cardboard for additional protection.


Most of the assembly has been done for you and you are left with attaching the hair, left arm and plug the microphone into the right hand. All pegs are shaped to only attach in one specific way but you may still need to exercise some caution as paint or excess plastic may have crept into the peg holes partially obstructing the process. I noticed this with both of the hair pieces and also chose not to plug them all the way in, to avoid any issues when disassembling the figure again. The left foot has a large support that wraps around the sole of her boot and you also get a couple of clear support parts to help prop up the hair and avoid the plastic bending if you plan to actually keep the figure up on display for a longer period of time.


Well, here she is... fully assembled. There are a lot of things going on here and the first impression really screams Macross more than anything else to me. As a low-range prize item this figure may be a low-end display piece compared to fancy figures with five-digit prices but it clearly sets out to do a number of things and also accomplishes it really well. She's a big star too, more than 20 centimetres tall and way out of the league of posing with the Miku-themed Ensemble figures I'm afraid... Let's continue the walk-around.


The colouring and details are looking quite crisp all-over, see those narrow golden trims on the jacket and skirt for example? How many percent of the P-Bandai Converge figures would you expect to uphold a similar standard? Not many, is my answer. I'm not sure I like the translucent rainbow effect of her hair though. While it is well executed Miku's turquoise hair is perhaps her strongest brand identifier and I think I would have preferred the same opaque hair-colour throughout.


Here we see the figure with the supporting stands for the wild twin-tails deployed. The support pieces do not attach to any specific point, you simply have to pick a spot where the two components will meet up and synergize. Will it protect the figure from deformation over prolonged display? I don't really know - what I do know is that the connecting pieces for the hair are quite small and I wouldn't want to display the figure without them unless it was for a quick photo shoot like this.


By the way, on the topic of details. The reason I was curious about this figure was all the interesting little Gundam-themed gimmicks in her outfit. Look at this adorable little beam saber slung over the shoulder. I don't know how it stays in place but this should definitely have been a holster for a cordless microphone although I have to admit that the jazz-diva mike on a tripod is pretty cool too. Below you can see other little Earth Federation insignias attached to her attire as well as a sphinx-type crest on her left shoulder. I don't know where this insignia hails from, perhaps it is related to the Sphinx-like appearance of the White Base carrier? (The style and colours first made me think about Gjallarhorn, come on Bandai, that would have been a really sick combo rather than the E.F.S.F.)


In conclusion, this is a neat and colourful figure full of attention to detail. Just compare its looks to the artist's rendition from another side of the box cover, the likeness is extremely close (now that I think about it, it would have been cool to have only the background Gundam on one side of the box so that you could pose the figure in front of it). Having said that, this is a really niche product and I wonder if there really is a lot of crossover appeal here. Also bear in mind that the figure is very large compared to most Gashapon and Shokugan figures and so doesn't really mix with those at all.

Mobile Suit Ensemble Requiem for Vengeance

The Netflix mini-series Requiem for Vengeance premiered in the autumn of 2024 to a rather mixed reception among audiences. While this is par for the course in entertainment this day and age the show certainly had some things going for it and a whole lot of things that didn't work out at all. While I mostly suffered through the series just for the hell of it I really appreciated the fact that we got some new mobile suit types out of it.

The Gundam EX is especially wild but I have always been a mass production-type fan myself and so seeing no less than four Zaku II variations roll off the Bandai production line in the summer of 2025 really whet my appetite. From then on it was a long waiting-game trying to get my hands on the figures on the secondary market, a task that I can now finally report as completed.


All of the figures in this review come in these online distribution-style plastic bags and as far as I am aware this is also the only way to acquire them. I don't even think they were sold separately but only as a full set of five but I could be wrong. What I do know however is that I have been painstakingly sniping them one by one through the secondary market and it took me about eight months to finally collect them all. I expect a similar miserable experience trying to source the Black Knight Squadron figures from SEED Freedom that began delivery to pre-order customers this March.


Box-packaging or not, the booklet edition looks exactly like any other Mobile Suit Ensemble retail set, with five different and individually numbered figures to collect. Let's go through them one by one as usual.



196 : RX-78(G)E Gundam EX


One of the main gimmicks of the RfV-show is that the Gundam is the main antagonist (and a terrifying one at that), stalking the Red Wolf Squadron at every turn. While its looks are not as intimidating as on-screen it certainly looks capable and more than able to handle a couple of spacenoids. Look especially at that beautifully sculpted shield with its multiple colour applications - good stuff.


The anatomy of the Gundam EX is very much standard for the Ensemble line, if you have assembled any of the previous RX-78 figures you will feel right at home. The figures in this wave all use the current anatomic standard with swivelling attachment points for the arms that allow you to tilt the shoulders up and down, provided of course the head is not obstructing the movement (which it tends to be on all Ensemble figures).






197 : MS-06F Zaku II F Type (Iria Solari use)


The remaining four figures in the set make up the individual units of the Red Wolf Squadron and are all Zaku II F-Type machines with some minor variations. These are (thankfully) factory fresh and not the patched up field-modified mobile suits we see later in the show (which reminded me of the A-Team whipping something up inside a barn using tractor parts and a conveniently available welding gear). Captain Solari leads the team and her uniquely coloured machine Red Wolf Alpha has a secondary antenna which I assume is a variation of the U.C.0079 commander antenna since only her unit has one. I originally planned to paint her wolf claw pattern on the toes of the feet but the strange shape of the feet made it less obvious where the stripes should go so I decided against it. If you approach the task with a plan I think it could turn out really cool.


While these figures are no bog-standard U.C.0079 Zaku IIs they are mostly similar and you will feel very much at home assembling them if you have been messing with Ensemble Zakus before. The side-turning monoeye is available as usual and the various tubes that run across the torso and on the legs are also present although the designs have been face-lifted a bit. The only frustrating detail is that you have to attach the front- and back-facing spikes on the left shoulder separately and the shapes are not symmetric and I had a bit of trouble figuring out which way they should actually go.


There is no separate equipment pack in this set and so each figure comes fully equipped. Having said that, there isn't a whole lot of extras going on in the set either; the Gundam EX gets one of the generic Ensemble beam sabers and Iria Solari has a transparent colour heat hawk. You can get a really nice effect going on the axe if you paint everything but the blade in an opaque colour and then apply a transparent marker pen effect on the blade itself.






198 : MS-06F Zaku II F Type (Kneeland LeSean use)


While there are still three more figures to describe in this set I don't really have a whole lot of additional comments that I can make about them. This machine belongs to first lieutenant LeSean and it is painted a bright green instead of brown and the shoulder shield has the same colour as the body unlike Solari's bright red counterpart. This is not a dig at the figure though, I love having multiple colour variants of the same figure and I would love to see Bandai lean more into it when pumping out Ensemble figures; imagine if we could have basic sand-coloured Desert Zakus or Blue Team Zakus and Gelgoogs for example.


This particular figure is the one that most closely resembles a bog-standard Universal Century MS-06F Zaku II. Still, there would be no issues blending these figures in with your other Zeonic mobile suits.






199 : MS-06F Zaku II F Type (Reid "Chubs" Gelfi use)


First Lieutenant Gelfi also has a green Zaku although this one is slightly darker and has a very unique looking fat red stripe painted across its head. Unlike LeSean and Zavaleta's machines this machine has a skirt armour matching the chest colour rather than the arms and legs. I like little creative touches like this although it would make very little sense from a realistic force deployment point of view of course.


We are looking at mostly the same parts composition as for the other Zakus in this set but did you spot the difference on Gelfi's machine? Check that left shoulder again; the number and shape of the spikes is unique to this figure. I find it a bit strange that Bandai didn't opt to thrown in more weapon choices with this set, such as a secondary heat hawk for one machine, a secondary bazooka for another and so on. Perhaps the Ensemble bazooka is simply too large to include in a capsule also containing a mobile suit but then again, were these figures even available in capsule machines?






200 : MS-06F Zaku II F Type (Kale Zavaleta use)


Lastly we have the junior member second lieutenant Zavaleta occupying the impressive number 200-slot in Mobile Suit Ensemble history, but no fanfare or jubilee has been reserved for marking this occasion, Ensemble just chooses to soldier on as usual. Kale's machine has an interesting bright green colour with blood-red hands (which do look a bit toyish here unfortunately).

I didn't mention this before but all the mobile suits in this set come with an extra sprue with coloured hands, so you end up with spare black hands from all of the sprues which is quite handy. I myself made use of these extra holding hands by attaching them to various weapon options such as beam sabers or bazookas that I had lying around, so that I can switch weapon on another Ensemble figure by replacing the entire hand rather than trying to remove and re-insert weapons into the same tight grip (which usually results in the hand or maybe even the arm coming off the figure anyway...).


Here you can clearly see the little mini-sprue with the two red hands in the left corner. I realize that bling like this eats up a lot of the available budget but imagine if said sprue had also included a pair of expressive hands for each figure - that would have been superb. Notice also the green-painted detail on the tubes that attach to the figure's sides, care was taken to add some extra colour here. This was probably not a cheap action but welcome and it increases the flair of the figure even further.


Red Wolf Squadron ready to deploy, sir! Excellent, now see if we can wake up the Cyclops Team next! Imagine a set with three Hy-Goggs and the Z'Gok-E, that would be divine! I also wouldn't have minded seeing the Gouf Custom from RfV making an appearance in this set, but for now the Zakus are more than plenty enough.






Conclusion

All-in-all, the Requiem for Vengeance set is a fantastic showcase for Ensemble and I wish that Bandai would continue to focus on sets like these with multiple mass-production type suits rather than fancy and in my opinion often over-produced EX-figures with convoluted special components and enormous ugly bases to display them. The soul of Mobile Suit Ensemble is the simplistic capsule figure and there are so many types still available all over Gundam-lore waiting for a chance to shine in this format. I do suspect that Bandai would happily go down that route if it was profitable enough of course, and have to accept that dream-projects like this one will be few and far between.

The Requiem for Vengeance set is unfortunately a major pain to find on the secondary market, this is what happens when you decide to skip the retail-market and sell directly to customer (I might be wrong on this but I believe this set was P-Bandai only). If you have a problem and if no one else can help - and if you can find them - maybe you can purchase... the Red Wolf Squadron!

Gashapon Senshi Zero: Another new brand enters the fray

A reader comment introduced me to Bandai Namco's latest effort in the string of Gashapon super-deformed format. The couple of centimetres tall charming compact figures with large heads have been around for more than 25 years at this point but the past decade have seen them gradually perish into obscurity. The producer of the Senshi Forte line did his best to keep that line going for as long as it could but it lived its life in the shadow of the axe due to its high production costs - especially for painting. I would also hazard a guess that the increased complexity of the figures - as more and more joints and articulations were introduced - may have had something to do with it. Personally, I would like to see the return of the old simplistic SD Gundam Full Color format with tiny but decently painted figures without any articulation if need be, there are so many Gundam series that have been released since those days to add to the line-up after all.

I guess you could say that the newly unveiled Gashapon Senshi Zero brand is scratching that itch to an extent. The figures are clearly a step down in complexity from their Senshi Fortre ancestors but look at that first line-up. Are you telling me there will be fifteen figures out of which only three will be fully-painted? What am I supposed to do with the other red and blue junk (some of which are also copies of the painted figures by the way)? I think it would have been more sensible to release a smaller but fully-painted set with higher individual prices - maybe with A- and B-version equipment to force customers to spend more of their hard-earned cash but hey, what do I know? Senshi Zero seems doomed to fail from the start. The series debuts in the Japanese Gashapon arcades in late March.


On another note Capsule Index is apparently finally getting its third volume this July. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty convinced the brand had been terminated already; there were two sets in July and November last year and all quiet since then. I wouldn't be surprised if the third set will be its last hurrah, Bandai often kills off a series after the initial three volumes. The line-up consists of the Xi Gundam (again?), the Gustav Karl Type 00, a Destiny Spec II (which is also everywhere right now) and the White Gundam from GQuuuuuuX. Not a terrible line-up but not particularly novel either.

SD Gundam Impact 01

What do you do when your product has gone stale or your sales are in decline? Well, you reinvent yourself. Wouldn't it be great to come up with a new way to sell the same product to your customer all over again? Well it appears Bandai may had this idea back in 2008. With the SD Full Color Custom series winding down after its 20th set a period began when the company would toy with brand Spin-offs in the popular Gashapon format. Impact was one of the first such lines and premiered with this set in October 2008.


At first sight this looks very much like your average SD Full Color figure set but there are some notable differences in the conceptual design. The figures are smaller, feature less paint applications and have very little to no articulation, instead being propped up on little action bases in dynamic poses. The impact of this change differs from figure to figure.



01 : GN-0000 00 Gundam


You can easily date the Impact-brand based on its first slot being occupied by the 00 Gundam which was the current hotness in the autumn of 2008. It is as you can see from the images a very unremarkable looking thing. While the sculpting of the figure is at least somewhat decent the paint applications are as minimal as possible. Care is generally take to the face section and maybe shoulders and torso but from then on you won't get a lot to rejoice about in the SD Gundam Impact line. Notice also the two feet that are fused together.


Side-by-side with what I presume is supposed to be Trans-am colour version of the double oh, released in Impact 04 in February 2009. There is also a 00 with the 0-Raiser in Impact 03 as well as a late entry into the Full Color Custom series celebrating the 30th anniversary in 2009.






02 : GN-006 Cherudim Gundam


Another fresh face! The Cherudim Gundam joins the SD line-up in what must be said is a very... green appearance. Man, the colouring on these figures is really pathetic. The suit itself has a fairly vibrant mix of white and greens but here we only get a couple of splotches in the face and that's it. Perhaps at some point I should have these figures commission painted and they could probably end up looking pretty good but I don't really know how suitable these soft PVC figures are for permanent paint applications in the first place.


Again, another Trans-am colour variant from Impact 04 and yes it isn't much to look at either. However, as far as SD Gashapon are concerned, this is a unique mobile suit choice for SD Impact, not available anywhere else to my knowledge.


The Impact-series collects the main four successor-suits from the second season between volumes 01 and 02. There is also both an 0 Raiser and the combined 00 Gundam + 0 Raiser available in Impact 03 and Mr. Bushido's Ahead Sakigake in volume 05 but I haven't stumbled across these so far and don't expect to anytime soon unfortunately.






03 : ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom Gundam


When you are producing a low end figure series on the cheap you might want to focus on simplistic mobile suits and not try to squeeze in something fancy like the Strike Freedom with its man different colours. Besides that beam shield on the arm I guess you could convert this figure in to the base X10A Freedom Gundam by repainting that golden dot on the chest red instead. Notice also that oddly shaped mini-base underneath the right foot. It is supposed to create a more interesting pose I guess but it just blends together with the figure in general.


Teaming up with the Infinite Justice Gundam from Impact 02. There are a couple more SEED-theme figures in the Impact line, the Destiny, Akatsuki and somehow the Aegis but not the Strike Gundam (perhaps it was intended to have followed if the line didn't fold after only five sets).






04 : RX-93 Nu Gundam


Whenever there is a new figure series being launched you know there is a pretty good chance of the Nu Gundam and the Sazabi being dragged out to garner some interest. This figure comes across just as flat as the others. Still, the detailing of the sculpt itself is quite good - look at the fin funnels for example - but the end result is still a tiny white figure with huge feet.


To be fair to the Impact figure it is not as if previous SD-releases have been a sea of colour either (the fun funnels especially) but notice how just a few more colour applications make the previous versions that much more interesting to look at.






05 : MSN-04 Sazabi


While the assortment of mobile suits is pretty much all over the place for such a small figure series several units are coming in pairs or little groups so that they can spar or support each other. Here we have a Sazabi ready to subdue the Nu Gundam wielding not only its large Beam Tomahawk but also a regular beam saber. The signature shield is there as well but it disappears in a red lump of plastic on the backside of the left arm which is a shame, the shield is usually what adds some flair to this otherwise very red looking plastic figure. There are no yellow details painted on the figure anywhere not even a dot.


Again, the forerunner SD Gundam Full Color version of the Sazabi wasn't a marvel of painting either but you could at least see its shield clearly. Note also the general difference in sculpting, the old figure is bulky and static while the Impact figure is slimmer in an effort to be more dynamic.


It's duelling time! None of the pilots seems to give their shields any thought, they are simply hanging limply from their arms. If it was me sitting in that thing I'd curl up behind the shield - actually no, I would equip the long-range weaponry...






MS-06 Zaku II


Next up we have a good ol' mass-production type Zaku II. This figure is a bit of an oddity in Impact since it isn't really matching up with anyone. An RX-78-2 Gundam will eventually arrive in Impact 05 together with the Zeong, and Johnny Ridden's High Mobility Type also makes an appearance in Impact 03 but beyond that it sits very lonely here. This figure clearly show why the supporting base needs to be of a distinctly different colour. This is one of the better looking figures to come out of the Impact-line in my opinion.


Size-comparison with some of the many Zaku IIs that have appeared in the Full Color-line over the years. I deliberately picked some of the smaller figures as well as one of the large and fairly primitive ones from the early days of the Full Color-era.






07 : Shin Musha Gundam


Impact does that same thing that Gashapon Senshi Forte used to do, which is sprinkling in character Gundam figures here and there in the sets. Each set features one such figure except Impact 02 which has two of them. The samurai-style Shin Musha was given the honour of being first and while it suffers from the same problem of limited paint applications as the other Impact figures it at least has a couple of interesting colours in place. However, if you look at the detail on the figure's back you can make out a lot detail and the extra weapons that just scream to be painted up. A good painter should be able to elevate these figures to a completely new level.


The Shin Musha Gundam hanging out together with some of the other characters. On the left we have the Musha Zeta Centaur Mode from Impact 04 and on the right the Knight Gundam and Musha Gundam Mk-II from Impact volume 02.





Conclusion

Coming from the history established by the SD Gundam Full Color and Full Color Custom lines it is hard to whip up any enthusiasm for the Impact line, it seems to me it was doomed to failure already from its inception. The only reason to seek out this series in my opinion is to find the couple of esoteric mobile suits that did not make it into the older series. While Impact figures aren't that expensive prices have gone up significantly the past couple of years (this appears to be a general trend for Gundam Gashapon in general), the main problem is the availability. I'm really curious what would happen if Bandai decided to revisit the Full Color line in 2026, reissuing older figures as well as mixing in new figures from the television series that weren't even invented back in those days.