Gundanium Gateway: MegaHouse Gundam Military Generation

Oh dear. Can I just say, before we go any further; this will - hands down - be the best figure reveal of all of 2021. My jaw dropped when I was casually browsing the latest inventory and stumbled on this new Gundam-themed action figure line. Come again? Yes, that's right, action figures of people, not mobile suits. I have been dying for this for soooo long.

What's that you say? They made figures not of Amuro, Char or Lacus but gear-humping, trench-crawling, mud-stinking Zeon soldiers of the line? And not one or two but three completely different figures? Please, if this is a dream, do not wake me up.

Nice packaging all around and as you will see the components are very well protected. I do have a couple of words for unnecessarily large packaging though but we will get to that. Let's just dive straight in.

Zeon Soldier 01

Now, first of all, I'm sorry if these figures are made to the likeness of characters present in any of the various mangas or Japanese games that are completely beyond my radar. I can well imagine that these are based on characters from e.g. MS IGLOO, 0079 Side Story, Zeonic Front or similar.

Here is what the basic figure looks like when you grab him out of the box. You can immediately see that he is super-articulated with ball joints everywhere, swiveling thighs and upper arms, dual hinged elbows and arms and even some of the hands and the toes are hinged. The utility belt has several slots for equipment. Ah yes, speaking of equipment...

Here is the full range of gear included with this figure. We have four different types of hans. Notice that several of the hands are jointed with swivel action at the wrist for some extra posing power. We have a lose bandoleer with a couple of extra pockets that you can gently hang over the chest and four items that can go into any of the pegs in the belt.

Alright, my man has attached the ammo pouches to the belt together with a holstered gun and a pineapple grenade. These look cool and all but you will quickly find that the slightest upset will have them falling out of their sockets. Attaching gear to the figures is just as frustrating as it is cool.

There is no way you can get the backpack on without first disassembling the figure. While most components are made of soft plastic everything feels extremely fragile and I was really afraid to apply the force needed to take the figure apart. I cannot stress enough that you should be very gentle with these figures since many parts are so tiny. Once I put this backpack strap on I decided it is staying there, period.

With the straps for the backpack in place you can attach the sleeping mat using a t-shaped peg which is common between the three figures so that you can freely rotate the equipment between them. The straps themselves though are shaped specifically for this figure and the accessory has the number 01 to clearly identify which figure it belongs to. Carrying only a sleeping mat might seem a bit on the cheap, a full backpack would have been preferred. This is effectively countered by the lack of action base compatibility of the figure and so it would just topple over. I realize the difficulty in giving such a complex figure a suitable action base but that also means it will be very hard work to get to the really dynamic action poses.

I'm sure you noticed the different face. Man, this is so cool, while the faces are very similar tis still means you can get two different characters out of a single figure. You know what that means... I'm going to want doubles.

The MegaHouse GMG figures are rated at 1:18 scale which places them on the smallest edge of the Gundam figure spectrum. MegaHouse is otherwise known for making huge statue-style figures of Gundam heroes (and villains) and they have released a stellar line of Gundam-themed figures lately. In the comparison shot above we see the Zeon soldier next to your average size Star Wars 3.75" figure, a pair of Gashapons from Macross and Gundam SEED, Crowley Hamon from Bandai's slightly larger EF collection and Anavel Gato from the Mobile Suit Gundam series that made it to the U.S. and might be more familiar to the North American readers.

Zeon Soldier 02

Alright, so what did I just say? I said the figures are really fragile and should be treated with care. Cue me taking the second figure out of the packaging and managing to snap the left foot balljoint in less than 30 seconds. GAAAAAAAAHHHH. I knew it was fragile but that joint was just completely stuck. So, in the end, I managed to loosen up the joint and break a brand new ¥3500 figure right off the bat. Mind those joints.

The figure didn't take very well to super glue either so this guy will not be doing any interesting stunts but at least he can stand upright. Perhaps that is why he looks so grumpy. While overall similar to the first soldier you will notice several sculpt differences in his body which is a really cool feature. Someone really designed this series with a lot of ambition.

Soldier 02 has a somewhat different loadout compared to the first guy. You will notice that the have the same submachine gun but here we get a really short shotgun instead of a sniper rifle and the larger backpack straps now accommodate a flight pack. The belt-themed accessories are almost the same with the exception of the grenade being replaced with a water flask. I have to say it feels a bit stingy to not just give every figure a full set of belt accessories, how much would it cost MegaHouse to give this guy the grenade for example?

This gentleman is really stern looking in both his poses. It appears to be the same face with the addition of a helmet and beard on variant one and visible hair and a clean-shaved chin on the other. Small things but they really help flesh out your army. You will notice that I put the second face on the body of soldier one here; they are of course freely interchangeable. However, the reason for me doing this is that when I tried to remove the helmeted head from the figure the entire neck section came out with it and instead of trying to separate the two I just ignored it for fear of breaking anything further. It will be interesting to see if my second copy of this figure will have the exact same problem or if it was a manufacturing fluke. I am telling you, these figures are really delicate...

Zeon Soldier 03

The last figure is the smallest of the three and features a female soldier. I am almost certain I have seen this face somewhere before, possibly in a cardgame illustration of some Zaku II team members from a game I have never played.

With figure two being bulkier this is of course the exact opposite, the entire torso is smaller and the legs slightly shorter. Overall though it has a nice realistic vibe to it, these figures look absolutely excellent.

Soldier three sees the return of the pineapple grenade but she loses out on the gun + holster instead, and she also only gets one ammo pouch for her belt. Come on now, MegaHouse, this is a cheapskate move. I am not exactly sure what her unique belt-mounted gear is supposed to be, possibly flares or some type of grenades. What I do know is that they like to fall off. Her backpack straps are the tiniest set (if you squint hard you can see the number 03 inside it) and she has a radio pack to attach to it. The submachine gun is her only weapon but the box also features a nice binocular on a tripod and the upper section of a large M2 Browning style heavy machine gun.

Here are the two face options. Each soldier in this set comes with both a helmeted and a bare head. I am sure MegaHouse could entice me to by a third set of these figures if they were to offer a set wearing caps. :)

Finally we can assemble the heavy machine gun. The ammo belt and box belongs to solider one, the tripod to soldier two and the gun itself comes with soldier number three. It is a nice accessory but I wouldn't rate it cool enough to warrant purchasing all three figures just to get one.

Conclusion

As mentioned previously this set caught me completely unprepared and I have been rather thrilled by it for quite some time now. The figures do have some flaws and miss out a bit on some fun without action base support and their fragility could become a problem down the road. Still I absolutely adore the design, attention to detail, the full customizability and most important of all; the ability to go beyond statue-style Gundam figures. Yes, technically there have been a couple of Gundam "action figures" in the past but nothing near this precision and playability.

I sincerely hope that this series will be a big hit because I want to see it explode onto the market. The price is of course a concern - these are currently selling for ¥3000-3500 and so do not come cheap. Best of all though; we have already seen previews of a similar Federation soldier trio and even a Zeonic mobile suit pilots including Char Aznable himself. This series has so much potential, hopefully it will stick around for a long time to come.