Mobile Suit Ensemble : Gundam Café Limited

About a year ago Bandai released two special Mobile Suit Ensemble sets as exclusives for the Gundam Café, presumably the Akihabara branch. I don't know much about the situation in Japan in August 2020 but considering the rarity of some of the Gashapon releases from that time I imagine they may have been performing poorly based on how far between the figures are on the secondhand market.


This set consists of four reissued figures that have been touched up a little to persuade you to buy them. I picked up my figures piecemeal from Mandarake over an extended period of time. I had to wait an additional five months to finally get my hands on the RX-78 which appears to be the most sought after. The prices on the secondary market at that time were about double that of a regular figure, ¥1000-¥1200. I have never seen any figures sold in cardboard boxes and would guess that they were only sold in this capsule form.




RX-78-2 Gundam


If you weren't onboard the Ensemble train from the start, chances are you have been having a fair bit of trouble finding the early figures. While Ensemble figures are pretty much never reissued (two of the EX figures got a chance for a second life last year) they sometimes return as colour variations. The Café Gundam here is a really good stand-in for the old RX-78 although it of course goes a bit heavy on metallic color and has some nonsense but discrete markings for the hell of it. Now that I think about it I must admit that I am curious why Bandai didn't pull a fast one with Yokohama Gundam Factory special release.


With the Café reissues going without the equipment packs you will of course only get the basic beam rifle + shield loadout in the box but chances are you may have a Hyper Bazooka or one of the many toothpick style Beam Sabers on hand should you want to use them.


Here is a line-up together with the past RX-78 releases from Ensemble (not including the special colour versions from the other limited Gundam Café-pack). As you can see the likeness to the original RX-78-2 from Ensemble Part 01 is quite good. The two are flanked by the Gundam in rollout colour from the gimmicky Ensemble Part 00 promo set from 2016 and the G3 Gundam from the Part 1.5 reissue set. It is sad that this whole Equipment Pack concept Bandai is going for seems to be effectively preventing novel or interesting reissues such as a "Char's Rick Dom vs. G-3 Gundam", and instead you have to wait for Bandai to decide they want to reissue the entire Part 09 as a 9.5 edition, which will in turn force the team to dream up "special marking versions" of the other figures in that wave.





RX-77-2 Guncannon


The Guncannon appeared in Ensemble Part 06 and even though the series had been running for over a year at that time there is still something weird about it. The whole sculpt just has this awkward size and proportions that doesn't match the other figures that well. Then there is that psychotic staring face that is impossible to unsee. Other than that, the reissue features darker gray parts and some nice white markings. A yellow scope light would have a better improvement in my opinion.


The original Guncannon figure featured optional rocket pods for the shoulder mounts but these are of course not present here. A testament to how consumer-unfriendly the "equipment pack philosophy" of Bandai continues to be.


Here the Café limited figure is flanked by two units from Ensemble Part 06, with the two optional shoulder weapon systems.





RX-75 Guntank


The Guntank was relegated into the humiliating support unit category and thus had to wait for a slot in Ensemble Part 06, being preceded by Hrududu fighters and big stupid wheels with guns. :) When it finally arrived however it was quite a nice figure. While it is obviously not as articulated as a mobile suit it is also not as flimsy. The Café limited metallic colours are quite close to the original and the extra markings aren't too much of an eyesore (the strongman sailor-style anchor tattoo on the overarm is a bit amusing however).


You are obviously not going to get any accessories with this figure but it is a refreshing build without having to fiddle with the usual Ensemble frame and joint components.


Here is a side-by-side with the original Guntank from Ensemble wave six (May 2018). The two are as you can see pretty much interchangeable.


Line-up of the full White Base team from the Ensemble Café set. Again reissuing this basic trio seems like another dead easy way to make a quick buck. Especially if you go the evil route and toss in a P-Bandai exclusive G-A.R.M.O.R. or the like. Notice again how absurdly huge the Guncannon figure is compare to the RX-78.





MS-06F Zaku II


The Principality of Zeon only gets one slot in this set which is a bit poor. While you can never have too many mass production-type Zakus in your collection this would have been a perfect opportunity to partner it with a red custom for Char Aznable. The MS-06S hasn't been seen since the promo set released in late 2016. The green mass production type Zaku II on the other hand has already been reissued once before in wave 1.5 as a "Marking Plus" version (which was idiotic compared to doing Char's Custom machine). This new green Zaku II is nothing special, it is very similar to the figure from the 1.5 set so at least they go together nicely.


All basic Zaku II figures come with a Zaku Machine Gun but hopefully you have some leftover options in your collection to draw from.


Not counting High Mobility variants we now have four MS-06 machines in the line-up. The original Zaku II (center left) is also from Ensemble Part 01 (December 2016) and carries an impressive price-tag these days. The Part 1.5 reissue (seen here with a Heat Hawk) was released in May 2019 and the Gundam Café variant (here with a Zaku Bazooka) followed on in August 2020.





Conclusion

While this set s not too exciting on its own it offers a cheaper way for latecomers who were not around in the early days of Ensemble to build their collections. The superficial cosmetic changes on their own are, as is usually the case with this type of reissue, a change made for the sake of change itself.