Gundam Side Story Missing Link - Tumblr Posts

Alright, since I did a post on all the Gundam Units running around in the One Year War, and since I also just finished my big long post on Gundam: Code Fairy, I should probably do one on the Pale Rider series, shouldn’t I?

Being that they’re also very popular, and thus show up in a lot of places. I should note that I’m working off second-hand information for most of these, since I haven’t played the Missing Link Games.

I’m also going to talk about the original pale rider first, then I’ll deal with the others in (in-universe) chronological order in a second post:

The Original RX-80 PR Pale Rider (later retconned into being the 4th unit in the Pale Rider plan). First appeared in the Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story: Missing Link videogame. It’s first known deployment was against the Slave Wraith Team, an Earth Federation MS team made up of condemned criminals, often used as an internal disciplinary unit (read: taking out traitors and political enemies of the group’s controller, Grave) after they were judged too much of a liability (betrayed). It was later heavily damaged in battle against Zeon’s Marchosias Corps (basically a bunch of pilots that Zeon doesn’t fully trust due to possible ties with the Earth Federation, but who are too good for Zeon not to use) and captured (along with its pilot) at a Baoa Qu, at the end of the war. What happens to it next depends, since the Videogame and Manga diverge here. In the videogame it is eventually refitted into the AMX-18 Todesritter by Neo Zeon (in UC 0090, around the time of Char’s Rebellion), which I’ll get to later. Whilst in the manga it’s customised into the Pale Rider (VG) in UC 0080, then used by Vincent Gleissner, former member of Marchosias, and fought against the Pale Rider Dullhan, which I’ll also get to later. The Pale Rider (VG) is stated to be repaired using Gelgoog parts, but really the only notable difference is it’s weaponry. Notably, the name Pale Rider is implied to be something of a sick joke - in normal mobile suits the Pilot controls their actions as if they were riding a horse, with the Pale Rider, it’s the other way around.

So there it is, the unit that started it all. While I do understand it’s popularity I confess I’m unable to really appreciate the design. Why is this? Well…. The original Pale Rider design could be described as taking a bunch of existing cool elements from the Gundam Sidestories and mashing them all together. While not a bad method of designing a suit (especially one that you want to feel threatening, or a culmination of that which came before it), it does mean that the design is going to have a certain stitched-together quality to it.

First off, the mobile suit itself takes several design cues from the GM Sniper II (some of the chest and most of the legs and skirt armour) stated to be one of the best suits in the war, and it equipped with a HADES system, a derivative of the (strictly-limited) EXAM system used by the Blue Destiny Units, from which it also appears to derive its head design and general colourscheme.

(I’ll talk about it another time, but the EXAM system is essentially a super mode, where the suits limiters are released, but it places incredible stress on the pilot, since they’re essentially being used as a biological cpu. It is limited to three minutes, otherwise the suit is put under too much stress).

Armament wise, it has multiple weapon loadouts, all of which use weaponry cribbed from other machines. The ground type armaments uses the same 180mm Cannon as the Gundam Ground Type, and is also equipped with a Spike Shield used by the GM Striker. Whilst the Space use version uses the exact same armaments as the Gundam G05 - Giant Gatling Gun, Hyper Beam Rifle, Shield and this is also where the Pale Rider gets it’s beam guns which are built-into it’s arms.

When customised for use by Vincent Gleissner, it’s equipped with the Beam Machine Gun from the Gelgoog Jäger (essentially the best beam weapon available at that time) in addition to its Beam spot guns in the arms, to replace it’s destroyed beam guns. It gets twin beam naginata’s from the standard Gelgoog, and has twin missile pods added to the legs (I assume they’re standard Zeon equipment, but the only other suit we see them on is the EXAM Efreet).

This isn’t meant to call out the Pale Rider as a “Bad Design” or anything. I think it does a good job of blending its influences together. It’s just that I generally find myself preferring it’s component units over it (particularly the G04 and G05).

I’ll talk about the other Rider units in a follow-up post.