Welcome back to the second installment in our Build Fighter journal article where we take a look at the designs used in the highly popular Gundam Build Fighters Anime.
This may jump around. I'm going to try and break it down by the way it should have shown in the animes and not the way it actually came out, so if you're a fan of the show, try not to send hate mail, ok ? :) I'm a huge Build Fighters fan though just FYI.
Grab a coffee, grab a beer or just grab a comfy place to sit and read away.
It was touched on in the last entry but I just want to spend a little time talking about the genius mechanical designer for the Burning Gundams, Kunio Okawara.
He has had an amazing career when it comes to mecha design, starting even before the original Gundam 0079 series. I don't have enough time to list out all of the Mobile Suits he has designed for the series or enough space in this entry, but we may come to a whole entry on mechanical designers some day.
He has designed the Iconic RX-78-2 Gundam, and the MS-06 Zaku which he admits Char's is his favourite mobile suit and took him about a week to design! I'd probably still be at the drawing board around 30 or so years later, lol. He has designed the Gundam F91, The RX-79[G] Ground Type Gundam and a range of Mobile Suit Variations as well as collaborating on a plethora of suits like the Zeta Gundam (transformation portion), the Gundam Mk-II and the Hi-Zack! This man is just too damn talented.
Now back onto the topic, Build Fighters. From this point on, there will be spoilers for the second season, the GM/GM Counterattack and Try Island Wars films.
So if we go to the beginning, of the Burning Path we'll call it. We go to the Build Fighters GM's counterattack OVA, the sequel to the first season of build fighters. We find ourselves a little while after the end of the Plavsky particle and the last season but Gunpla Battle has survived thanks to the efforts of Nils Nielsen and the Yajima Trading Corp. They have discovered the particle and now run the GBWC. Without ruining the entire move Sei has designed a new completely scratch built Gunpla of his own design, The Star Burning Gundam.
We can see the above still has the RG system of the previous Gunpla and it is a little more UC looking in design with the squareness of it, but more than that you can see hints of the Impulse Gundam in there which is a fav of mine from Gundam Seed Destiny. It retains the beam sabres on the side skirts and the forearms are now sporting some interesting gauntlets reminiscent of the God Gundam/Burning Gundam depending on where you watched it from Mobile Fighter G Gundam..... All this is is because you guessed it! Kunio Okawara was the Mechanical designer of these suits too!
The Star Burning Gundam has a Beam Rifle, Shield and 2 beam sabres as weapons, it was designed by Sei for his friend Reiji to fight with so considering he likes the hand to hand style we can see how aspects of the Burning Gundam from Neo Japan were chosen with that in mind. In real life, there would be some serious kit bashing and scratch building going on to make this, but it is achievable.
After Reiji uses this to fend off the Gunpla Mafia, Sei redesigns it again and makes improvements transforming it into the ..... BUILD BURNING GUNDAM!
Just like that, you can see an evolutionary process taking place. I tend to think that this one still borrows heavily from the Impulse Gundam's chest, but it is now more of an original design built for fighting but now more streamlined for agile movement.
This was then hidden in the trophy Sei won disguised as a Dom waiting for Kamiki Sekai to find it in Build fighters Try; the second iteration of Build Fighters. It doesn't end there though for the Burning Gundam. It has 2 more redesigns in Build Fighters Try, though the second is very minor and adds a weapon.
For the Try Burning Gundam, it has beefed out a little on all fronts, and now sports even more clear parts to store particles up! In the third image, you can see it in the Burning Burst form where it would release all particles.
A lot of people write the Build Fighters series off as childish and not worth viewing; I'm the complete opposite. Even if you don't, watch it for the fun factor and who the hell doesn't dream of fighting Gunpla with your friends? You could watch it for the kit-bashing and design ideas it could bring to you.
Hopefully you've enjoyed the second entry in the Build Fighters journal, with GBWC looming for myself in Australia, I will try and have another Gunpla/mecha blog up soon, but don't hold me to it, guys!
Have fun, build Gunpla and remember to enjoy yourself. :)
Mark
