Gundam fans are usually hyped when Bandai announces a new life-sized recreation of one of the franchise's iconic mobile suits, but the latest statue has some fans asking for a do-over.
The latest mobile suit to get the 1:1 scale treatment is Amuro Ray's RX-93 v "Nu Gundam," which appeared in the classic Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack movie. The mecha is one of the most popular mobile suits in the franchise, which is why some fans in Japan were unhappy to see Bandai's preview renders of the new statue, which features a new redesign of the iconic mobile suit. As reported by Kotaku, the original suit's silhouette defining array of remote-guided funnels and its monochromatic color scheme are gone, replaced with a single massive "long range" funnel and a new blue and red color scheme that more closely matches the original RX-78-2 Gundam. The new redesign was supervised by Gundam series creator and Char's Counterattack director Yoshiyuki Tomino himself, but some fans still expressed their disappointment at what they see as an overly simplified take on the original, while others noted that original mobile suit's elaborate design might not be feasible in a massive 1:1 scale statue.
Char's Counterattack debuted in Japan in 1988, and for over three decades it was the most successful movie in the long-running Gundam franchise, having only recently been usurped by 2021's Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway, which serves as a direct follow-up to its story. The movie tells the story of a renewed conflict between the Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon, and the final battle between the original Gundam protagonist, Amuro Ray, and his long time rival, Char Aznable. The movie introduced Amuro's new Gundam, the aptly named "Nu Gundam," which features new "psychoframe" technology that augment Amuro's latent Newtype abilities.
The redesigned Nu Gundam statue will be installed in a shopping center located in Fukuoka, Japan. Bandai has previously installed multiple life-sized Gundam statues throughout Japan, including a life-sized version of the RX-78-2 Gundam in Yokohama that can actually move. A 1:1 scale figure of the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam recently received worldwide attention when it served as the backdrop from several events during the recent 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. While Tokyo's RX-0 statue isn't capable of the full range of movement as its Yokohama counterpart, this version of the Gundam is capable of transforming into its flashy "Destroy Mode," a feature which apparently caused the BBC to mislabel the robot as one of Hasbro's Transformers. The producers of the new statue in Fukuoka are promising that the new Gundam installation will have some unique gimmicks of its own to show off when the statue is officially unveiled sometime in spring of 2022.
Source: Mantan Web, Kotaku