Gundam Unicorn, TWC Version.

Yeah, naturally Japan built another huge robot; well a huge robot statue. For many years, the granddaddy of all Gundams: the RX-78-2 stood tall in Odaiba, Tokyo; attracting many Gundam lovers from all over the planet.

In fact, it was one of the first item in my “must see or die” list; so it checked it out on my very first week in Tokyo. I remember that it rained that day, but it didn’t stop me from seeing it. At least the area was devoid of crowd due to the rain, hence nice photos of the huge statue sans-crowd.

Last year they decided that they wanted to replace it something more “hip” and “popular” than the iconic Gundam from a series that many pretended to watch (because if you haven’t, you’d be judged, hard). So, they went with the titular RX-0 Gundam Unicorn from the Gundam Unicorn series. It took them weeks to take apart the RX-78-2, and months to build up the new Gundam.

Not only the new Gundam would be slightly taller than the old one, it would be ‘somewhat’ transformable too. I said “somewhat” because it’s not fully transformable like the anime; only certain parts of it would be transformable. Sad, but eh, cool enough I guess.

So, I went to see it 2 weeks before it’s official launch date and the official launch date itself (24th Sept 2017).

2 Weeks Before the Launch

2 weeks before the official launch date, all the parts were fully assembled and they were left with affixing highly detailed decals on the huge white model; something that I suck at when dealing with the plastic models. From the pictures, you can see that it was done with extra care.

Official Launch Day

We went again to see the statue on its official first date, and expectedly, it was crowded. Very crowded. It looked kinda almost the same since the last time we saw it, just with completed decals.

Now, let’s appreciate the amount of detail that has been poured into the huge piece of art.

As mentioned before, it’s a transformable statue. In its Destroy Mode, the Gundam outer plating exposes in the glowing red internal psycho-frame but by default, the statue is already in semi-transformed mode. Didn’t manage to see it transformed, but I saw many videos of it online; didn’t feel like I missed much as it was not a full transformation.

At night, the statue glows red, leaving visitors in awe. Yeah, it looks impressive but I.. felt slightly disappointed as I felt that the red hue was slightly off. Naturally, it’s pretty hard to capture it with my camera.

So yeah, that’s the Gundam Unicorn. I’ll be back again in the future, when I’m free (when I have the willpower to go to Odaiba, that is) so I can see it transforms.