After a minor interruption we continue investigating the second volume of this self-released guidebook series documenting Bandai's tiny Gashapon SD Gundam figurines (and as we shall see, some not so minor entries as well...). Rather than repeating myself needlessly again I refer to the post covering the first volume in this series for the background lore and history of these publications. In short, these books were self-published by a fan and released through the 102th Comic Market exhibition in Tokyo in August 2023.
The first book covers the original SD Full Color figure series and clocks in at 156 pages. This second volume focuses on various spin-off series and figures released overseas and is about half the size with a total of 74 numbered pages. I was very surprised to find that the important SD Full Color Custom successor series is completely omitted here, as are many of the other later series published by Bandai such a Bind, Data SD or Impact. The author didn't address this in the forewords (not as far as I could tell anyway) but does mention how the project kept growing so I assume it is possible he had to scale back the ambitions for the book series and perhaps will return to cover them in the future. So at current, we still don't have a through bible covering all figures in the Full Color and the Full Color Custom series.
The book is sub-divided into a couple of chapters that loosely group different figure sets together. Chapter one here features the SD Full Color Extra series which are together with the larger SD Full Color DX series technically part of the SD Full Color series I suppose. We also have a couple of limited promotion releases at the end.
Each chapter starts of with a little summary - here mostly talking about the history of the series - tables showing the names of each figure in each set as well as tiny pictures of the Gashapon vending machine cardboard mounts that are a bit tiny to try and read and mostly included here for reference.
Each figure set will be covered in detail as seen above, typically with two photos of each figure from front and back, usually shot at a bit of an angle. The SD Extra figures that we see here were actually released during the life of the original SD Full Color series and were interjected between the regularly numbered sets. All figures represent characters or monsters from the Sengokuden, Gundam Force or similar spin-off Gundam fantasy-universe that I know practically nothing about.
Some figures have more elaborate gimmicks about them and at the books will usually throw in a couple of extra images to show how a figure may feature an additional display mode or in cases where two figures connect together can form something different.
The SD Full Color DX series consists of two volumes of slightly bigger figures, most of the mobile armours of some sort and each also comes with a little pilot figure which is really neat. It would have been really cool if these tiny pilot figures had been a thing of their own as they would have been really fun to collect.
Many of the DX figures feature gimmicks such as Sayla Mass' G-Armor which can combine with the RX-78 figure to combine the usual forms of G-this or G-that. I had no idea that the Elmeth figure has a little "cockpit" for Lalah Sune to climb into but it doesn't look like she will fit inside when it is fully closed up. I haven't tried it out on my own figure as I have no idea where it is located at the moment. :)
Here we see another couple of gimmicks for the Devil Gundam and Ramba Ral's Gallop-class Land Battleship which is now sporting the turret of the Magella Attack Tank figure (which is a regular SD Gundam Full Color figure).
The chapter closes off with some promo figures like the G-3 Gundam here which was released through the Comic BomBom magazine. The figures in this section are displayed together with images of the basic figures they have been derived from; the basic RX-78-2 Gundam in case of the G-3 and non-pearl colour versions of the Knight Gundam RX-78 on the opposite side.
Bandai also cooperated with Comic BomBom to produce six larger boxsets featuring translucent-colour figures with boxes that could be cut up to function as mini-dioramas. Here we see the three main figures from the White Base crew, there is also a troika of figures from the Cosmic Era timeline including the Freedom, Impulse and Destiny Gundams.
Here is a novel item I had never seen or heard of before; a Perfect Gundam released as a little box-set of its own. I am not entirely sure if this is the same figure that comes with the SD Gundam Full Color Official Collection Book published by Kodansha.
Next up we have a couple of the large space battleship playsets that are intended to swallow up the mini-figures inside their hangars and that typically also contain bridge sections that can be opened up and even feature miniature character figurines of the crew. These figures are of the same type as the ones released together with the DX figures. The playsets regularly show up on secondary market sites like Mandarake but are very expensive now and sell out very quickly.
Here are another two playsets of the Minerva in two different colour styles. We also have images of the product retail boxes on the side there. Personally I have not been trying to get these figures as they are so large (and not entirely in the spirit of SD Gundam I feel) even though it bugs me that it is the only way to get hold of the tiny crew miniatures. :)
The cylinder-shaped O'Neill-type Space Colony is another odd promotional release for the 30th Gundam anniversary that I have never seen available for sale anywhere. The premium edition is filled up with a whopping 30 Zaku II figures (exact type or types unknown to me), it would be fun to get my hands on this item one day.
Here we have another transparent edition of Char's Musai-class vessel and a promotional box set that recycles various Gundam-figures from the SD Full Color line.
The book then shifts focus onto the Overseas market to display all the awesome figures released for the U.S. market that for some reason were never released in Japan. In part I believe this is due to television series like Mobile Report Gundam Wing being much more popular in the U.S. than back home and so there are many cool designs from that show that are impossible to find in Japan unless you want to purchase them as scale model kits. Just look at the Bird Mode form of the Wing Gundam for example; you'd think it would have been a staple in Gundam figure series yet we have not seen it in either SD Gundam Full Color, Gundam Collection 1/400, Gundam Converge or Mobile Suit Ensemble even though all series are rife with various forms of the Wing Gundam. I find this really strange.
I get really envious when I see these Aries and Maganac mass-production suits here. At least we now have the Leo in Gashapon Senshi Forte but so many of the Oz mass-production type suits have never been seen in SD form after all these years. Gundam Converge spends an awful lot of time on obscure one-off figures but never seems to address important figures such as the Leo or Virgo for some reason.
The SD Gundam Fight sets feature many of the incredibly obscure figures form the G Gundam show that would be fun to collect but these figure sets are so incredibly rare in Japan that you practically never see any of them for sale. I don't know what the market looks like in the U.S. but I can imagine you would be able to score used figures in random lots in yard sales or perhaps on online auction sites (presumably at a considerable mark-up).
We actually have a fairly nice Gashapon release of the Devil Gundam mobile armour mode released in the somewhat larger Gashapon HG line but it is dwarfed by this enormous thing.
Just look at this box-set, imagine getting it as a Christmas present when you were a kid. My eyes would have popped out of their sockets in awestruck disbelief. Yeah, good luck trying to find any of this type of releases these days.
More novel items here from the Gundam Force sets. Unfortunately I do not own any of these types of figures so they are unlikely to ever make it onto the catalogue section here on the blog.
Holy-moly, a black Gunperry! These box sets truly are something extra! The only U.S. releases that tend to show up on Mandarake are the character figure series which typically go for several thousand yen and sell out more or less immediately. I couldn't even imagine the price tag on this thing if it were to show up there but I could guess it would easily be in the 20 000-40 000 yen range somewhere.
The Americans have a couple of space battleships of their own too. Here is the Ra Cailum-class battleship that goes together with the Chr's Counterattack figures that were also produces for the Overseas market, although these are completely different from the SD Gundam Full Color sculpts and look nothing like them.
The Rewloola is also available seen here with a couple of the U.S. Char's Counterattack figures for scale. Notice how much better painted and sculpted the Overseas edition figures are, these being sold as traditional retail item sets is also completely different to the random-distribution Gashapon-thing that went on in Japan. The book finishes with a somewhat random inclusion of the one Gashapon figure set Bandai produced for Armored Trooper VOTOMS television series. In a way it makes sense though, as the figures feel very similar and you could easily imagine them being some custom force, mercenary or otherwise. This marks the conclusion of the flip-through of these two exciting publications but the author also has one last card to play and so we will return to this book-series shortly.
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