Gundam 0079 - Tumblr Posts
Top 10 Anti-Heroes in Anime: INPO
10. Greed - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
9. Ai Emma - Hell Girl
8. Lelouch - Code Geass
7. Ciel Phantomhive - Black Butler
6. Amuro Ray - Mobile Suit Gundam
5. Kikyo - Inuyasha
4. Nico Robin - One Piece
3. Miyu - Vampire Princess Miyu
2. Ryuko Matoi - Kill La Kill
1. Yami Yugi - Yu-Gi-Oh!
A fun project I took on after I realized I didn't have the shelf space for all the gunpla I would like. I'll just make em battletech scale instead. Here's my 6 standard Zaku ii I printed n painted
My Master Grade Gramps has been taunting me at 90% completion for weeks while I fuck around with Magic card and MechWarrior so I finally finished him last night
I didn't really grasp the height difference between this monster and a normal 1:144 HG or RG kit, the sheer mass of the panels had put me off for a while after I built him
It's a good kit, but the dedication to having removable core section for the fighter means the midsection is a little iffy, I'd have preferred a solid skeleton
Anyways back to disappearing for another month or whenever I finish a project next
RX-78-2 Gundam illustrated by Kazuhisa Kondo
An absolute treat.
Suletta and Miorine in 79's Gundam style
Lalah Sune illustrated by Yuzo Takada
Huh. It’d be kinda ironic if the really good Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury got shafted by having its episode length cut down mid-production.
Because what happened to the original Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979?
How to get into Gundam
Because fuck it, I was gonna do one of these sooner or later anyway.
So you want to know what this Gundam thing’s about, maybe you like the mecha design, maybe you caught part of an episode one time and want to catch up, or maybe you saw a nice piece of Chamuro fanart and want to go to the source.
But there’s so many shows and timelines that it can be quite daunting on first look, so this guide is intended to give a rough overview.
I would however like to stress two four things beforehand however:
This guide is not intended as “The One True Way” or anything. There’s no harm it coming into it a different way, and these are only my own opinions.
There’s nothing stopping you from just watching one show and leaving it there. You don’t have to watch every single show going, even I’ve only seen most of these, not all. Gundam typically has variations on similar themes - it’s very nice watching multiple shows because they complement one another, but it’s not necessarily required.
I am very much an insider looking out here, so let me know if there’s any details I’ve missed.
I’m not gonna recommend these on a “if you like X, then watch Y basis”, mostly because I don’t personally find genre recommendations helpful, so I’d recommend picking based on promotional material (vibes, if you will).
I’ll be using this chart, supplied by the excellent@l-crimson-l, to illustrate everything.
Gundam as a whole can principally be divided into three sections: Universal Century (or UC), the Alternate Universes (AU’s) and the Build Series.
The AU’s are below the light blue line, near the bottom of the Chart, the Build Series is within the bright green line at the top-right corner of the chart and UC is the big line in the middle. We’ll talk about each of them individually.
The AU’s
The Alternate Universes were conceived as a way to get away from the continuity-heavy nature of Universal Century and provide an easy jumping-on point for new fans. The AU’s are standalone and require no prior knowledge, and are thus an excellent place to start. Honestly, I’d recommend quickly searching some promotional materials (like posters) and just going with the one you find most appealing based on that. They are (in production order):
Mobile Fighter G Gundam (1994)
New Mobile Report Gundam Wing (1995)
After War Gundam X (1996)
Turn A Gundam (1999)
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (2002)
Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (2007)
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE (2011)
Gundam: Reconguista in G (2014)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans (2015)
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (2022)
There’s side series and movies and other things besides, but these are the mainline shows, if you will. I have specific notes on a few of them:
Witch From Mercury - It’s of a shorter length than is usual for mainline shows, so consequently it’s a much smaller time investment than the others.
Mobile Fighter G Gundam - While undeniably rad as hell, I would recommend watching another AU first. G Gundam differs from its stablemates in a few key areas, and I find it helps to have a contrast to fully appreciate those differences.
Gundam AGE - is probably the only one I wouldn’t recommend. I didn’t like the art style and the technical explanations just got on my nerves, so I stopped watching.
Turn A and G-Reconguista are technically part of UC as well, but it’s not really crucial information so don’t feel like you have to watch UC first (I’m only including this detail for completionism).
I’ve found all the AU’s I’ve seen to be pretty good, so I’d say that which one you start with really just comes down to personal taste.
The Build Series
Is just kind of doing its own thing. The Build series is basically Buy Our Toys: the series. It’s got a far lighter tone, and I’ve had cause to compare it to pokemon prior. It’s also chock full of references and in-jokes to the other series.
Build Fighters and Build Fighters Try are the ones I’d recommend - they’ve got actual stakes and the fight scenes are really good.
Build Divers and Build Divers Re:rise I can’t recommend - I just find Build Divers aggressively boring. Build Divers Re:Rise is just okay - neither standout good or particularly bad. Its main flaw is that it’s a sequel to Build Divers.
The OVA’s are pretty much bad across the board - I’d particularly recommend avoiding Gundam Build Metaverse.
Universal Century
Universal Century is the big main timeline of Gundam, and is the timeline the original Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979 takes place in. There’s a tendency among certain fans to place UC as the one-above-all of Gundam, but I wouldn’t really go that far. It’s all pretty good, but I wouldnt really say one timeline is better than another (save personal preference, anyway).
Because UC is so big, it can be subdivided a couple times. The primary division is “Mainline” UC versus everything else. Basically there’s four-five shows in Universal Century from which everything else flows. As long as you know roughly what happens in these shows, then you can watch basically anything else in UC and have a good idea of what’s going on. These are (in order):
Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) - sometimes called Mobile Suit Gundam 0079.
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985)
Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (1986)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack (1988)
With Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (2010) as a nominal fifth (honestly I feel like you could argue either way).
The rest of the shows are:
Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (1989 Three-Episode OVA)
Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (1991 Movie)
Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory (1991 Thirteen-episode OVA)
Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (1993)
Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (1999 Twelve-episode OVA)
G-Saviour (2000 Live Action Movie) - nobody ever talks about or acknowledges this one, it’s just here for completionism.
Mobile Suit Gundam MS Igloo (2004-2009 Three OVA’s with three Episodes each)
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (2015 Six-Episode OVA, adapted from the Manga of the same name)
Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt (2015 Eight-Episode Series, adapted from the Manga of the same name)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Twilight Axis (2017 episode, adapted from a light novel of the same name. Later rereleased as Gundam Twilight Axis Red Trace, with additional footage)
Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative (2018 sequel movie to Gundam Unicorn)
Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway (2021 ongoing movie series, very much adapted from the novel Hathaway’s Flash)
Most of the other series relate to events in the aforementioned “mainline” shows in some way, but a lot of the sidestories set during the One Year War require very little introduction (Thunderbolt, 0080 and 08th MS Team). Similarly, works set in “Late UC” (F91 and Victory Gundam) carry on from the other series thematically but don’t have any plot connections, so they can all be watched without any background knowledge of the rest of the Universal Century.
Compilation Movies
Just a quick note here - many of the Gundam series have compilation movies, where either a whole series or part of one are compressed down into a movie. While each movie compares differently, they usually boil down to this: Compilation Movies usually have worse pacing, but really nice animation.
One of the great things about Gundam is that different shows offer variations on themes, so seeing how different characters react to similar situations, or how different settings change their approaches can make it incredibly rewarding.
I haven’t seen enough of SD Gundam to make any sort of recommendations there, and Manga is something I might touch on another day.
EDIT: Oh hey also: You can watch a good chunk of these on YouTube, for free, officially. The Official Gundam.Info YouTube channel rotates the series shown on its channel periodically. I think it’s got F91 and SEED on there currently? But it’s had Wing, 00 and Witch From Mercury before. Also all of the Build Fighters series are there.
So yeah, that’s a thing.
Zaku I by Hirotoshi Sano
Some Kycilia's from over the years
The Zeong illustrated by Mecha Designer Kazuhisa Kondo
Char and Sayla reuniting at Texas Colony. Illustrated by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
Gundam UC + The Onion Headlines
I haven’t seen much in art of Cecilia Irene (I think she appears in MS Era Pictorial), which is odd for somebody so close to Gihren. This piece is a delight, however.
Gihren Zabi with his secretary (and rumored mistress) Cecilia Irene. Illustrated by Hirotoshi Sano
Huh, there’s an idea. I wonder what the overall casualty rate for Gundam Pilots is?
*The Following Contains Spoilers for pretty much every Gundam series, though I’ll try to keep them non-specific*
I’ll list each series, the number of Gundam’s in that series, and the amount of Gundam pilots that don’t make it to the end of the series. (Watch me regret this when I get to the really Gundam-Heavy series). However, I’m not including:
After War Gundam X and Turn A Gundam - I haven’t seen either of these yet.
G-Saviour
Igloo - No Gundams.
Gundam the Origin - Feels like cheating.
Gundam Thunderbolt - 1 Gundam Pilot in the OVA versus 9 at present in the Manga, which is still ongoing. It feels awkward to qualify.
If a pilot appears in multiple series, I’ll count them separately for each series, but they only get one mobile suit per series. For Example, Kira Yamato appears in Two Series, and has three mobile suits. Thus, he only counts twice.
In regards to what counts as a Gundam -
“Why is that?”
“Because I said so”
Delling Rembran, father of statistics, everyone. “What is a Gundam” is a delightful question, but it isn’t the focus of this exercise. My definitions of “Gundam” and “Gundam Pilot” exist because I needed a metric, they’re not really designed to stand up to much scrutiny. I’ve worked with enough statistics that I’m aware you can usually skew them without too much bother, which is also why I don’t feel too bad about leaving out Turn A and Gundam X.
Lastly, I’ve almost certainly missed something here, so feel free to message me and I’ll adjust it accordingly.
Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 - 1 Gundam (RX-78). 1/1 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam - 6 Gundams (Three Mk-II’s, Zeta and Psycho Gundam’s 1&2). 2/5 Pilots Survive - 40% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam - 4 Gundams (ZZ, Zeta, Mk-II and Psycho Gundam Mk-II). 3/4 Pilots Survive - 75% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Char’s Counterattack - 1 Gundam (Nu) 0/1 Pilots Survive - 0% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket - 1 Gundam (NT-1 Alex). 1/1 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam F91 - 1 Gundam (F91). 1/1 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory - 3 Gundams (Gp01,2 and 3). 1/2 Pilots Survive - 50% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Victory Gundam - Could someone who’s watched Victory lately come back to me with how many Gundam’s are in that series (and their pilots), because I’ve genuinely no clue off the top of my head. I know it’s at least Six (V, V2, Other V2, then at least three Victory Gundam Hexa’s).
Mobile Fighter G Gundam - 50 Gundams (Fuck that). 22/38 Pilots Survive - 57.89% Survival Rate.
New Mobile Report Gundam Wing - 11 Gundams (Wing, Deathscythe, Heavyarms, Sandrock, Shenlong, their upgrades and Epyon). 6/6 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz - 5 Gundams (as above, minus Epyon). 5/5 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team - 4 Gundams (Three Ground Types and EZ8). 3/3 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Gundam SEED - 11 Gundams (5 first gen, 3 second gen, Providence). 4/9 Pilots Survive - 44.44% Survival Rate.
Gundam SEED Destiny - 11 Gundams. 6/10 Pilots Survive - 60% Survival Rate
Gundam SEED C.E. 73: Stargazer - 4 Gundams. 3/5 Pilots Survive - 60% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam 00 - 14 Gundams. 5/11 Pilots Survive - 45.45% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Awakening of the Trailblazer - 4 Gundams (00 Quanta, Zabanya, Harute and Raphael). 5/5 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn - 3 Gundams (Unicorn, Banshee and Delta Plus). 2/2 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative - 2 Gundams (Phenex and Narrative). 1/2 Pilots Survive - 50% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE - 5 Gundams (Four AGE’s and Legillis). 3/5 Pilots Survive - 60% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam Twilight Axis - 1 Gundam (Tristan). 1/1 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam G-Reconguista - 3 Gundams (G-Self, G-Arcane, G-Lucifer) 4/4 Pilots Survive - 100% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans - 12 Gundams (Barbatos, Gusion, Kimaris, Flauros and Bael). 1/6 Pilots Survive - 16.67% Survival Rate.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury - 10 Gundams (Aerial’s, Lfrith’s, Schwarzette, Pharact and Calibarn). 5/11 Pilots Survive - 45.45% Chance Survival Rate.
Total Number of Gundams - 163
Overall Pilot Survival Rate - 85/138 Pilots Survive- 61.59% Chance Survival Rate.
(As above, not counting Turn A and Gundam X). That is lower than I expected. I believe it’s because most series either lose around half their pilots or few-to none at all. So either the series that keep all or most of their small amount of pilots will push the average up to over halfway, or the series that kill half or more of their pilots will pull the average down.
Highlights and anomalies.
All those odd little decisions that mess with the metrics of this exercise.
Pilot Survivability - Any cases where the survival of a character is ambiguous, but a later work clears it up, I went for the later interpretation, since I’m looking at overall survivability, so Milliardo and CCA Amuro get to count as alive and dead, respectively.
What is survival? - continued sentient existence, flesh not required. I really wasn’t expecting this to come up as much as it did. Tieria Erde (00) and Ericht Samaya (Wfm) both continue living as a virtual consciousness, so are classed as surviving for the purposes of this exercise. In the same vein, Kamille Bidan is counted as surviving (because I’m personally fond of the idea of him getting better).
Best Available Pilots - due to the precise shakedown of pairing pilots to mobile suits, both Lieutenant Quattro Bajeena and Lasse Aeon are on this list, under Zeta and 00, respectively. Quattro because he pilots one of the stolen Gundam Mk-II units briefly, and Lasse because though the 0 Gundam’s “main” pilot to my mind is Ribbons Almark, he already has the Reborns Gundam, and thus Lasse qualifies for the 0 Gundam.
SEED Destiny - I was really bad at remembering how many Gundam’s and how many pilots for this one. I fully forgot about Andrew Waltfeld and Mu La Flaga, and about how many Destroy Gundams the Earth Sphere alliance pulls out later in the series. I eventually just split the difference and added Andrew Waltfeld and a single Destroy Gundam (It was something like a 0.2 percent difference to the overall survival percentage).
Gundam 00 and Innovades - You can single-handedly mess up this entire excercise if you expand your qualification of Gundam to encompass the GNZ suits used by the Innovators in Gundam 00, since that includes the Gaga. You know, the suit that has a 95% casualty rate across literal hundreds of pilots? I’m not saying you should, but it was on my mind as I made this list.
Mobile Fighter G Gundam - was more complicated than expected. I was fully aware SEED Destiny would be tricky, but I forgot about G Gundam in the process. I’m reasonably confident in my count of Gundams - I only counted the Devil Gundam and Master Gundam once, not the Kowloon or Ultimate Gundam, and I didn’t count any of the combined units (like the Grand Master Gundam). I’ll list my Gundam Fighter math in a re-blog, since this is already a bit long.
I truly do not understand where the idea that most Gundam protagonists die came from. I’ve even seen self-proclaimed fans warn newcomers that almost every Gundam protagonist dies, when that is patently not true!
I'm not gonna pretend I have anything super new or innovative to say about Mobile Suit Gundam. It's one of the most-analyzed anime ever, and I pale in comparison to some of the people who *have* analyzed it, but here I am, thinking about it regardless.
For context, I am watching this as part of a---as she called it---"comet swap" with my good friend @charaznablespeteevee, where I watch a mecha anime she is obsessed with (Gundam) and she watches one I am obsessed with (Code Geass). I'm not sure if I'm going to write a big long post like this about every episode (since I'm going to *try* to watch at least one per day, that would get quite exhausting), but I am liveblogging it more informally over on the worst website on Earth, if you're willing to put up with that Nazi-infested hellhole long enough to read some posts from yours truly.
In any case, Gundam and Code Geass. are many differences between these, the main ones being that Code Geass is more recent and also not widely hailed as a masterpiece of its form. It does *draw* notably from Gundam though despite having very different artistic aims and a different tone, so watching this makes sense in a way. I spent way too much of my teenagerhood obsessed with Lelouch, and now I'm watching the anime that his archetypal grandfather came from. (Goddess have mercy on my soul.)
My experience with Gundam as a franchise prior to this is very limited, but I do have some. For reference, I have seen all of:
Gundam 00, back when it aired on the SyFy channel when they had an anime block many years ago. I really liked this as a teenager but I don't remember it super well.
The Witch From Mercury, lesbian space combat, with a notable Code Geass staff connection. WFM was not perfect or anything but I loved it a lot and Suletta is very dear to me. I actually bought an Aerial gunpla a few months ago that is currently sitting unassembled in my closet.
the first Gundam 0079 compilation movie. Now, it might seem weird that I've seen this and am now going back to watch the TV series. But, while I remember the general outline of what happened, I was SUPER sick when I watched it, and I only remember what happened really, really vaguely. While I have some idea of the general outline of what's to come, I'm mostly going in genuinely blind.
like 4 or 5 episodes of Victory Gundam, which I liked but kind of fell off of. So we're giving the franchise a proper second go here.
I'm a mecha fan more generally, and I'll get into some of that as I write these, but for now that's the relevant stuff.
Anyway, my main impression of 0079's first episode is actually a structural one. It's REALLY well put together. We introduce the setting, we introduce our main characters, and we introduce the main conflict, all very economically and with a lot of style---more style than some shows with significantly less room to work with manage, in fact---and I'm immediately invested in the fate of our main character, Amuro Ray.
From what I gather here (and a little bit from outside information), my impression is that of a kid who loses his innocence very, very rapidly over the course of this story. Here, the space-hab-thing he lives on is attacked, and he ends up in the cockpit of an experimental superweapon called a Gundam (maybe you've heard of them?). I LOVE how the Gundam is framed here, like some kind of genuinely scary war machine. It's an intentionally othering effect i mostly associate with later mecha anime, especially those with outright monstrous mecha like Evangelion or even The Big O, so to see it here in such a comparatively early series in the genre is impressive.
The episode's climax sees him kill two soldiers from the enemy nation of Zeon, but it's not a triumphant thing, really. He's portrayed as kind of not really knowing what he's doing, flailing around inside this gigantic walking tank / mechanical war god. But then when he *does* figure things out, well, he has to deal with the fact that he just killed two dudes. Going by the cliffhangery ending here, it doesn't seem like his troubles are over, either.
Hoo boy, it was a mistake to play Ace Combat 7 before watching this.
I could probably just leave it there honestly. But I’m going to explain this.
Quick review of Ace Combat 7 - it’s not great. I really enjoyed Ace Combat - Assault Horizon when I was younger, so I bought 7 a little while after it came out and I just found it lacking. Half the missions seem to have you more at risk from environmental dangers than actual enemies, plane selection’s rather lacking unless you grind up some of the few enjoyable missions to unlock new ones (the lightning II is particularly guilty of this) and I was forced to rely on dlc planes for a good chunk of the game (there’s only three dedicated ground attack planes in the base game, all of which need to be bought, one of which is terrible). I will say that the base attack missions - get a certain amount of score within a time limit - were absolutely wonderful, some of my favourite missions in the game (especially the Snider’s Top mission), but because they’re also the easiest way to grind up currency, you have to play them over and over and over again, so the appeal wanes somewhat.
And the story…. Okay. Why are Erusea and Osea at war? Anyone know? Because I sure don’t. Yeah, I’m sure it’s explained in some backstory or other, but I would really like someone to just mention it. Because literally all the intercepted chatter is whatever the opposite of humanising is, because none of them express anything except a hatred for the enemy and a desire to attack them. So why are we fighting? Ace Combat’s cutscenes seem to think that they’re incredibly mature and weighty, but all they seem to be is people just staring at the sky and saying “what does it mean….. to fly” “what does it mean…… to fight”. Forgive me if I’m used to more than that.
I will say though, I actually really like how your wing-mates in 777 “spare” squadron are characterised (Mage Squadron just kinda sucks, moreso that you just never see them again after mission 3), I honestly wish we had more time with them because they’re just such a treat to listen to and fight alongside, since they very much don’t want to be here and are quick to remind us of that (I’m genuinely toying with plucking High Roller for use in Lancer). Also the voice cast is genuinely excellent, any fan of Persona 5 will feel right at home here, and it also led to the absolute wonderful feeling of assaulting an enemy base, and going “Lelouch Vi Brittania, is that you!?”.
Anyway, why did I feel the need to bring it up before talking about the new Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance trailer? Because it feels like it’s around the same ballpark. If I didn’t already know *why* the Federation and Zeon were at war, it’d feel like the whole independence thing would be swept under the rug.
“Why do we fight?” “Because those are our orders” - hey, wouldn’t it be more interesting to characterise someone as actually a true believer in spacenoid independence? Wouldn’t it be interesting to have them talk about what spacenoid independence actually means to them? Wouldn’t it be interesting to engage with the propaganda told to the population of Side 3 to motivate them to war? Wouldn’t that be relevant to an audience living in a world where the media is all-pervasive, and “alternative facts” are rife? Oh, the main character doesn’t believe in Newtypes and has a “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do” attitude to proceedings? Alright then. It just feels like a missed opportunity. Were I feeling especially uncharitable I might even call it cowardly.
To be honest, I think the main thing that’s bothering me here is just the line delivery for the Pink-Haired Character and the Doctor - they’re just so flat, and their lines are just blindingly obvious. “The Federation’s new mobile suit. This could turn the tide of the war” - it’s not foreshadowing if you just state what’s going to happen. “The Feds you save will just come back and kill my people, Doc!” - yeah, but you’re under the Antarctic Treaty, governing the treatment of POWs in wartime. Leaving them to die would likely constitute a war crime (I know Zeon’s got a lot of those, but still). It just feels like baby’s first moral dilemma. Also when Iria Sorari’s giving an explanation on newtypes, she just sounds bored, like she’s reading from a cue card. Y’know, it’s only one of the central precepts to the war for independence, don’t sound too passionate or anything.
Lastly - and I’m aware these are super nit-picky - when the Zaku slashes the shell in the last part of the trailer, it should have just flown off and penetrated anyway. It doesn’t lose all momentum just because you cut it in two. Also, I get that Japanese-to-English is never gonna be a 1:1 translation or anything. But Gundam’s had a bunch of series translated prior that can act as a cheat-sheet for pronunciation and finer details, so it’s really annoying to catch slip-ups here.
Right, now that’s all the negativity done with, what did I actually like?
Mobile suit designs are still top-notch, I really like the Gouf Custom and Guntank designs (it’s an Igloo-style Assault Guntank) in the new trailer, and I really like the new GM design - it feels like it extrapolated out what a GM based on the new Gundam would look like, and also remembered that the Federation’s mobile suits were derived from captured Zaku’s, hence the visor resembling a monoeye - it’s a really good way to take the design is what I’m getting at, and I fully expect we’ll see a model of it. However, it is just very odd seeing the more modern Zaku design side-by-side with the older Gouf Custom and Guntank designs. They had to model them anyway for the new engine, so why not go the extra mile and give us a greebled Gouf Custom or Guntank? (Yeah I know it’ll be a cost thing, and you *could* argue that a more “modern” Guntank would be the Assault Guntank, but come on) I really liked seeing the new Zaku I design also, I just don’t have an awful lot to say on it - it’s nice.
I do expect that we’ll get models of the new Zaku I and GM, but I couldn’t say on the Gouf Custom or Assault Guntank.
EDIT: Okay, so I posted this and had two immediate realisations:
Iris’s Zaku appears to have been repaired in several scenes in the trailer, so it’s likely it’ll get trashed at some point (there may also be another kit of it).
The reason the Gouf Custom hasn’t been given the greebling treatment like nearly every other mobile suit is likely so they can just make a coulor variant of its existing high grade kit, rather than having to make entirely new runners (plus they’d likely feel compelled to completely update the internals too, which would be rather expensive). It’s likely that the new Zaku II (boy I wish this thing had a proper name) will be at least partially based on the most recent Zaku II hg kit internally, again as a cost-saving measure (and a practical one too, come to think of it).