Gashapon HG Mobile Suit Selection 36

We're closing out the year 2024 with yet another vintage review. I didn't get to go through as many sets as I had planned this year but regular work and duties had to take precedence. In focus today is another of the late Gashapon HG sets, released in March 2005 when the series had really found its groove but it was only a matter of time before the line was permanently shut down. I really miss these simpler and sturdy figures compared to the frail build-a-crap Bandai releases today.


As usual here are the figures as they came out of their respective plastic bags. This is not a complete breakdown of parts but just how they happened to be partially assembled straight out of the packaging. Soft PVC-pegs on older figures like these can often be a bit unwilling to cooperate, opting to change shape rather than attaching like they are supposed to, so I prefer not to pick figures apart needlessly.



ZGMF-X56S/β Sword Impulse Gundam


The Sword Strike Gundam sits in the middle of the Force Impulse Gundam released in selection 35 and the Blast Impulse which followed in selection 37. It has an impressive and sprawling pose which doesn't go well with a Gashapon capsule so expect your dual blade to require a fair bit of stretching out. Depending on your luck you may find that the figure stands firmly on its two feet without the ugly white support. I wish these stands were always made in clear plastic or at least another colour than the leg they support but that is what you can expect from these really cheap figures. I have toyed with the idea of making custom scenic bases for these figures but that adds to their storage footprint so for now I have let them be.






ZGMF-1001/M Blaze ZAKU Phantom (Rey Za Burrel Custom)


The second entry from SEED Destiny in this set is the wonderful ZAKU Phantom in the custom white colour of Rey (no not that Rey from Disney...). This figure also sports a really beautiful action pose and it has been allowed to float above the ground on the typical Gashapon HG stand. Notice the peg holes for replacement ammo drums on the undersides of the shields - I wonder if these were supposed to have been included in the original design. I also wish Bandai would have completed the range with the machines belonging to Heine and Dearka but at least we can find Yzak's blue Slash ZAKU Phantom in the related Mecha Selection range.






RX-78-2 Gundam


Well, it has been six sets since we last saw the RX-78 in selection 30 so I guess it was really urgent to pump out another variant. Speaking of which, this figure comes in a really neutral standing pose pretty similar to the figure from wave 30 except that the previous figure was a bit of a jubilee thing that came on a square black podium. A complete waste of space in this set if you ask me but hey, at least the figure looks tidy and doesn't unnecessarily flail around with its arms which makes storage a breeze compared to the nightmarish SEED figures with their many wings and limbs all over the place. Again a small stand is provided which may or may not be required.






FA-78-1 Full Armor Gundam


next up we have a random Full Armor Gundam showing up for the first time, just made it in the nick of time before the series was cancelled. We do not have a blue variant in this line but I guess it wouldn't be too hard to repaint this figure should you want to. Again, notice the green support piece available. While I can understand the increased cost of producing clear supports for figures that do not use clear plastic anywhere else, how about if they switched things up a little? Let's say they would have made the support for the RX-78 in the green colour of the FA-78 and used a white stand for the FA-78, would it have looked more interesting?






RX-178 Gundam Mk-II (A.E.U.G.)


The last three slots in this set are reserved for Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. These follow a wave of Z-themed figures released in selection 32 and a couple of stragglers in 34 and are actually reinterpretations of figures we have seen in this series before. First out is an A.E.U.G Mk-II armed with a beam rifle and shield. Interestingly, no leg support is provided for this figure and of course mine has really crummy legs and can barely stand up. The joys of collecting the Gashapon HG series in a nutshell. :) Other than that the figure looks really good and has a really neat gimmick in two optional right arms. You can see them used alternately in the images above. This is a really simple but effective trick that would have been nice to see on more figures of this line, especially army builder types.






RX-178 Gundam Mk-II (Titans)


Next up we have a colour-swapped Mk-II for Titans use. There is no unit marking on the shoulder this time, had it been released today there is a good chance Bandai would have made three variants with different numbers forcing you to go through many more coins to obtain the full set. :) This Mk-II figure also replaces the rifle with a beam saber, more or less straight as you can see...


Both Mk-II figures have grey hands and so you are free to mix and match the weapon options and bent or straight arms to find your favourite pose combinations. This is such a simple trick but it really brings out a lot of fun in the figures and it would have been great to see it employed on suits like the GM, Zaku II or Rick Dias to name a few.






RMS-106 Hizack


The last figure in this set is also my personal pick of the lot. The Hizack returns to Gashapon HG in fantastic form. Look at the details and paint job on this thing, absolutely superb for such a cheap Gashapon figure. Notice specifically the exquisite sculpt of the heat hawk weapon - it is not often we get to see so fine detail in a cheap figure. Many smaller Gundam figures would just have a big flat shape where the blade would become one with the handlebar.


The first version of the Hizack was released in selection 14 in the year 2000. A third variant which is based on the selection 36 figure but armed with a machine gun also pops up in selection 39 (together with a blue Federation version) released in December 2005.






Conclusion

The later Gashapon HG figures are really little works of art and the evolution from the series' humble beginnings in the late 1990s is a real treat to the eye (and wallet, since these things remain very cheap). Your main issue will be to deal with various issues where the plastic has been bent over time or due to careless storage or packaging. On the plus-side, these figures are rarely (I can't even think of a single example but I might remember wrong) subject to the sticky and oily residue which can sometimes haunt older Gundam figures.

Mobiru suitu surprisu!

From time to time I like to ponder on thougts like "What if Bandai were to bring back the SD Full Color series today, would it stand a chance?" or "Which ten never-before-seen mobile suits would I select for production if Gundam Collection 1/400 came back to life for a jubilee release?"


While the Gundam Gashapon experience has been on a rather steep decline in the past couple of years the collectibles thing itself seems to be doing rather well. On my frequent trips to Bangkok I have seen in recent years how the Gashapon phenomenon has blown up and entered the mainstream; specialized stores are popping up in shopping malls selling expensive blind box stuff from China, take Pop Mart for example. These stores often resort to queueing lines limiting the amount of customers who can browse the shelves simultaneously.


So yes, the collectibles market is surviving and Sunrise keeps releasing new Mobile Suit Gundam series (although they seem to drift farther and farther away from the origin). For some reason though, we have no SD figures in production and the Shokugan corner for prepainted figures is pretty much carried by Gundam Converge. I don't think Ensemble, Gframe or Mobility Joint compete in the same niche since they aren't really figures but lower complexity model kits. I don't really want to build blocky kits with pieces that keep falling off or stickers that peel off in a year or two, I want fully painted and pre-posed miniatures like every other franchise seems to be able to supply. Instead, Bandai continues the trend of releasing half-hearted stuff, the last of which has to be the new Choco-Capsule Surprise. I mean, really... this is what we are doing now? Unpainted Kinder-surprises?


The first (and possibly only) volume was just announced for release next summer and as you can see it is a 45th Anniversary-jubilee set featuring the usual suspects form the original television series. The buildable Mini Kit Collection series from 2016 comes to mind as the most similar product. That range at least contained many unique and never before seen mobile suites, ships and mobile armors - here it is just a rehash of things you have seen so many times before. I don't see a single figure in here that piques my interest. Release is in july and recommended prices is 350 yen plus tax.


In other news, the full set of Converge #27 is also announced for June next year. I'm really looking forward to the Gelgoog Cannon but the rest of the set seems a bit ho-hum in my opinion. Did we really need a Char's Zaku in High Mobility form or Johnny Ridden sporting a shoulder cannon? How about doing Garma Zabi or Gabby Hazard instead? And don't get me started on that Evangelion-hybrid thing...


What else? Well, if you have been pining over a crossover with the Hatsune Miku vocaloid you can look forward to a set of badges to be released in May. Mobility Joint Gundam also keeps soldiering on and will release its ninth regular set in March, this time themed around Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. The set features zero mass production suits which is a real bummer but I am ready to forgive if volume ten comes out with a Hi-zack, Marasai, Gabthley and Galbaldy-Beta... Apologies by the way for a long delay in getting reviews out for the MJ series, I have an enormous backlog of figures to assemble. I keep telling Bandai I want prepainted figures ready out of the box but they just don't seem to listen. :)

Bandai Spirits / Banpresto Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom : Lunamaria x Meyrin

The Banpresto SEED Freedom prize figure series was launched by a trio of Kira, Lacus and Athrun in early 2024 and here come the to follow-up figures of the Hawke-sisters, released in late spring/early summer. No further characters are planned as far as I know, so it sucks to be Shinn or Cagalli or any of the new lot for that matter. Everything feels rather uninspired to say the least.


The box art follows the same style as see on the previous three releases, except that the camera has zoomed in a bit on the character portraits on the sides.


If you are familiar with the previous Banpresto prize figures there are no news here. The box size is fairly compact and doesn't leave a lot of empty space like say how the Bandai Glitter x Glamours figures love to waste space. Assembly is a simple affair and those same old circular bases make their return which means you will not be able to pose the two figures together like, you know, on the box cover?


Here we have the sisters with their enormous bases, these footprints prevent any interesting poses and the two can barely fit in a photo. Forget doing any interesting poses with the entire cast unless you go out of your way to create custom bases with foot supports because these figures have no hope of standing upright by themselves.


I thought SEED Destiny was creatively bankrupt and Freedom is clearly drinking from that same well. The character design evolutions from the previous show are really uninspired and at a single glance you will be hard-pressed to determine what show this figure belongs to. I can't fault the figure sculpt or painting for this obviously but the whole thing is just a bit underwhelming when you consider that this energy could have been spent on a brand new character instead. Well, the Compass insignia on the right shoulder looks neat I guess...


Now, I still haven't watched Freedom but this strikes me as a really boring choice of outfit, couldn't she have got that cool flight suit instead? The lame pose doesn't help either and mostly reminds of early SEED Destiny Meyrin where she ran around on the Minerva like a frightened mouse. The hairstyle reminds me of the "wet-look" of the 1980s, only the denim jacket is missing. This figure is a completely underwhelming in my opinion.


My studio isn't big enough for the full ensemble display but here are the five boxes together instead... Overall I was not terribly impressed with any of the Banpresto SEED Freedom figures but they are nicely sculpted and painted at least. In the future I would prefer to see smaller figures with less obstructing bases and with a wider range of characters. Surely no one really needs another Lacus or Lunamaria figure for a while?

Bandai Carddass BattleSpirits Collaboration Starters

I am always on the lookout for more Gundam-themed official artwork and so this quest also covers various Gundam-themed card games. The turn today has come to the multi-IP card-dueller BattleSpirits premiered by Bandai and Sunrise in 2008. More specifically, I had the opportunity to purchase the three "Operation" starters you see on display below, numbered 52, 53 and 54 respectively. This should give us a fair idea of the scope of this game, where Mobile Suit Gundam can simply be considered a bit of a guest appearance. The three starters were released in March 2020 and I have only ever encountered them this one time.


As you can see we have three distinct eras to pick from, the Cosmic Era of SEED, the Anno Domini-timeline of MSG 00 or the Universal Century in the Unicorn phase. I am really liking the artwork on display here and I was curious about what to find inside. Let's crack them open!




SD52 : Operation SEED


Starting in numerical sequence then with the Operation SEED package we find the following inside: A pre-assembled deck of 43 cards, a handful of blue tokens plus a larger five-sided one (these are cores and a soul core I am informed), a play area slash rules-sheet and a quick reference sheet showing which card classes the various cards belong to.


The play area is printed in dull greyscale and sports a turn of play-sequence on it as well as a deeper full-colour introduction of the rules on the flipside. I would wager you can find these online because it would be a bit annoying having to table-flip each time you want to reference the rules.


Here is a closer look at the different cards found in the box. It is pretty much exactly what you expect it to be. We have Athrun and Kira with a couple of the G-project mobile suits joining in. The top five card-types are full-foil while the rest have a plain finish to them. The iconography is really a mess and the card colours not entirely obvious at first glance but there you go. Judging from the card numbers the cards found in the box appear to be unique to this particular starter with the exception of the Lacus-card which seems to be pulled from a traditional random booster series of cards. A companion set of 86 different cards was released in 6-pack booster packs (released in May 2020) but I have yet to ever come across such a pack unfortunately.




SD53 : Operation 00


The contents of the 00-package mirrors the set-up seen in the previous box, although the exact configuration in regard to card types and distribution is a little bit different. Here the focus of course is on the four classic Celestial Being machines - the Exia, Dynames, Kyrios and Virtue - and their pilots. We even have a pop-up appearance of the Gundam Nadleeh.






SD54 : Operation UC


Lastly, we have the Unicorn-set which features the Unicorn pair and a surprisingly large number of mass-production type suits, making this set the most interesting out of the three in my opinion. Other aspects of the box contents mimic the previous two boxes, I assume these are fairly well balanced against each other from a gameplay point of view.






The three card lists with the different card rarities can at the time of writing be explored in greater detail on the BattleSpirits site here. Can't say I understand the whole thing about placing different rarities on cards in a fixed starter however.


A quick comparison of the BattleSpirits card-size compared to some of the similar Gundam-themed card games and collectibles out there. From left to right we have Gundam CrossWar, Cardbuilder UC, Gundam TryAge, BattleSpirits, the classic Gundam War, Gundam War NEX-A and Duel Company.


If you are interested in exploring this series further, here are some useful links to other sets released with a Gundam-theme:

[CB13] Collaboration Booster Gundam Fighters of the Universe (2020-05-30)
[CB16] Gundam Collaboration Booster Iron Flower's Battlefield (2021-02-27)
[CB25] Collaboration Booster Pack Gundam The Witch from Mercury (2022-11-26)
[CB27] Collaboration Booster Pack Gundam The Witch’s Awakening (2023-03-25)
[CB29] Collaboration Booster Pack Gundam -The Witch’s fate- (2023-12-16)
[CBX01] Collaboration Booster EX Gundam -DESTINY And FREEDOM- (2024-02-03)



All in all, I don't think it is worth the hassle for Gundam card-collectors to bother seeking out the BattleSpirits decks. Pretty much everything we see here has also been released in other games. The card designs are great though if a bit artistically hodge-podge as the basic card-aesthetic doesn't necessarily lend itself that well into the mech battle theme in my opinion. Perhaps save your money for that elusive Gundam War Dramatic Starter pack instead.