In my last post on Chinatown, I mentioned revisiting Gundam Factory while in Yokohama. It was on my list of 2022 highlights, too, but it closes next month year, so there’s not much time left to see it. For me, seeing this 59-foot robot swing its arms and legs in a walking motion and do deep knee-bends was the culmination of a 12-year (now, 13-year) journey. I had already seen plenty of Gundam in Japan, beginning in 2010, as I followed around various life-sized versions of it, saw it draw famous visitors like Guillermo del Toro, and saw it evolve into a dynamic, quasi-ambulatory mech.
Screenshot via Prime Video Japan/Bandai Namco Filmworks
I recently went back and started watching the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime series, which gave rise to one of the world’s highest-grossing media franchises after model kits and movie compilations helped it bounce back from cancellation in 1980. Though they both started before my time, in the late 1970s, and soon encompassed a vast toy and merchandise empire, the scale of Mobile Suit Gundam makes Star Wars look like a small space rebellion (which is technically what its “Rebel” heroes are fighting, anyway). Droids like C-3PO and R2-D2 are dwarfed by Gundam and the giant Zaku robots it battles.
First Gundam Sighting in Shizuoka
In 2009, for the 30th anniversary of the Gundam franchise, a full-scale statue of the giant robot went up in Shiokaze Park on Tokyo’s manmade island of Odaiba. By the time I moved to Japan in 2010, this Gundam had taken up a sword elsewhere, in Shizuoka, which is where I first saw it. They had it set up in East Shizuoka Square outside JR Higashi-Shizuoka Station. If you were lucky, you could see Mount Fuji behind it, but the day I was there, there were only clouds to behold.
Gundam Cafe and Gunpla-yaki in Akihabara
Another thing that sticks out in memory from the Gundam site in Shizuoka is a snack they had there called Gunpla-yaki—basically a pancake-like thing, similar to dorayaki. Only this was Gundam-shaped and filled with heart-healthy bacon and mayonnaise instead of azuki bean paste. The name was a play on gunpla, the Japanese portmanteau for Gundam plastic models, which are a big part of what built Gundam into the brand it is among hobbyists.
2010 is also the year that the first Gundam Cafe opened in Akihabara, Tokyo. They used to serve Gunpla-yaki there, though it closed permanently in 2022 due to the pandemic.
Classic Gundam (RX-78-2) at DiverCity Tokyo Plaza
Two years later, Gundam would return to Odaiba, taking up residence in Festival Square outside the new DiverCity Tokyo Plaza shopping mall. I caught up with it there in 2013, and I wasn’t the only movie-loving foreigner who came out to see it that year. Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro was also on hand with Japanese actresses Rinko Kikuchi and Mana Ashida, who played the older and younger version of Jaeger pilot Mako Mori in del Toro’s 2013 blockbuster, Pacific Rim.
I could be wrong, but I think the interpreter with del Toro in the Mezamashi TV clip below (from YouTuber “kiyosu jo,” via /Film) is the same lady I’ve seen at the Tokyo International Film Festival before.
It goes without saying that Pacific Rim and other giant robot narratives like it are indebted to Mobile Suit Gundam, which militarized mecha anime like never before. In 2015, I stopped by DiverCity Tokyo Plaza again in both the daytime and nighttime, and I found myself comparing the Gundam statue to the height of nearby buildings and illuminated trees. This first version, modeled on the classic tricolor look of the Gundam RX-78-2, was built to scale at 59 feet. It did move its head and blow smoke, but other than that, it was largely stationary.
Life-Sized Unicorn Gundam Statue in Odaiba
Note: this section has been updated with new pics and information as of May 2023.
In 2017, a new 64-foot “Life-Sized Unicorn Gundam Statue” came to Odaiba, where it still stands tall outside DiverCity. At the risk of getting bogged down in esoteric details, this version is based on the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam from the Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn RE:0096 series. It’s worth mentioning that if only because there are countless Gundam movies and TV shows, and an awful lot of people probably walk by this towering statue or stop to gaze up at it without knowing which one of those it’s from.
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn RE:0096 started out as an OVA (original video animation) series before its seven long episodes were re-edited into 22 shorter ones and TV Asahi broadcast them. I watched the first three TV episodes (which, together, constitute the first OVA episode, “Day of the Unicorn”), but as a newcomer, I found the show’s dense mythology somewhat inaccessible. It almost seemed like the Gundam itself was truly as rare as a unicorn sighting, since it only came in toward the end, but I digress. This is why I like the Mobile Suit Gundam series: because it was the first one, unencumbered by the decades of elaborate mythology that built up after it.
The Unicorn Gundam statue is a chunky monkey, and for the longest time, I had only ever seen it at night, when it was lit up in Destroy Mode. That’s how it was posed when I first laid eyes on it in the summer of 2018. During the day, however, it lives up to its name more, as it reverts to all-white Unicorn Mode, with its antenna blades locked together in a single horn atop its head.
Moving Gundam (RX78-F00) at Gundam Factory Yokohama
In terms of sheer kinetic wow factor, the most impressive Gundam to date is the full-scale moving one at Gundam Factory Yokohama, located on Yamashita Pier just a short walk from Yokohama Chinatown. Take a look at it in action in the video above … and do note the size of the minuscule humans, milling about next to it on the 5th and 6th floor of the Gundam-Dock facility.
I shared the first picture below in a previous post, but it’s worth showing it again here to juxtapose how much larger-than-life the robot looks when you’re surveying it up in the Gundam-Dock tower. This is the closest you’ll ever get to the view of a mech pilot in the hangar, at least until they build another one of these things that’s boardable and rideable.
That view doesn’t come cheap. Whereas previous Gundams, stationed mostly outside shopping malls, have been free to see, you need a separate ¥3,300 ticket to access the Gundam-Dock tower. That’s on top of the ¥1,650 general admission entrance ticket for Gundam Factory, which is also viewable from 30 floors up in the nearby Yokohama Marina Tower observation deck.
During its performances (every 25 to 35 minutes), the Moving Gundam’s chest panel actually does open to reveal an empty cockpit. It’s just for show, but who knows, maybe future advances in technology will make it possible to someday pilot a real-life, walking Gundam.
The backstory for this Gundam involves engineers assembling a new robot out of machine parts leftover from an earlier battle. “Fragments of data from enhancement plans for the RX-78” were “salvaged from the memory of an AI belonging to the original RX-78 series.” So while it shares the look of classic Gundam, it’s a slightly different, upgraded model that goes by the designation RX78-F00.
As mentioned, this Gundam is not long for this earth. Gundam Factory Yokohama closes on March 31, 2024.
RX-93ff v (Nu Gundam) Statue in Fukuoka
Screenshot via YouTube/BANDAI SPIRITS
Yet another life-sized Gundam statue, the tallest one yet, opened outside Gundam Park in the new Mitsui Shopping Park Lalaport Fukuoka mall last year. This statue has a height of 67 feet and it’s based on the RX-93 v Gundam, a.k.a. Nu Gundam, model from the first Gundam movie, Char’s Counterattack.
I know that’s probably too many Gundams for one sentence, and at the rate things are going, it won’t be long before every city in Japan has a Gundam statue and we all go around speaking the same one-word babble, like in Being John Malkovich, but with, “Gundam, Gundam,” substituted for, “Malkovich, Malkovich.” Be that as it may, I visited Fukuoka in 2017, and if I ever go back there, I’ll be sure to check out its Gundam statue.
Char’s Counterattack is on my to-view list, too, since it featured the involvement of Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno and forms an interesting bridge between Gundam and that other giant robot franchise. Honestly, though, even with the addition of one moving arm to complement its turning head, it will be hard for Fukuoka’s counterattack to outdo the one currently happening in Yokohama.