You know what? Let’s keep building grunts:
This is the Gundam Unicorn of the Gustav Karl.
Origins of the Gustav Karl
The Gustav Karl originally appeared in the Hathaways’s Flash novel from 1989. And as far as I can tell, that remained the only place it appeared until it showed up in an SD Gundam G Generation game from the early 2000’s. But that doesn’t really count, does it?
(Actually, it does, but we’ll get to that later)
It’s next real appearance was in the Gundam Unicorn OVA. The show’s production crew was obsessed with cramming in as many weird and obscure mobile suits as they possibly could, and the Gustav Karl was no exception. This, I believe, was its on screen debut in a canonical, animated Gundam story.
Since then, it has also shown up in the Hathaway theatrical adaptation.
This is all going to be important when we discuss the evolution of its visual design.
About the Mobile Suit
Here is what the instruction manual has to say:
The FD-03 Gustav Karl was an MS developed to be a direct descendent of the RGM series, the Earth Federation Forces' main force mass-produced Mobile Suit. The Gustav Karl was developed through a different production line from the RGM-96X Jesta, which was developed and deployed around the same time as the accompanying unit for the UC Project.Its development resulted in the creation of enlarging and applying heavy armor to an MS without hindering its versatility. Large output generators were installed to counteract the mobile suit's weight, and a large number of thrusters and posture control verniers were placed throughout the boy to maintain its mobility and maneuverability.
They were armed with standard armaments seen in Earth Federation Forces mobile suits such as a Beam Rifle, Beam Saber, and shield, adn were mostly rid of fixed arms to obtain high operability. This design allowed the Gustav Karl to have higher capability than the RGM-89 Jegan and was deployed ahad of time in UC 0096, and two units have been confirmed to be deployed at Cheyenne Base. It is said that they were later officially adopted in UC0097.
A lightly armored Gustav Karl unit is also said to exist.
So it’s the EFF’s mainline grunt suit during the “chonky mobile suits” era of the late UC 90’s and early UC 100’s.
Evolution of the Visual Design
Like with most mobile suits from Hathaway’s Flash, the Gustav Karl has gone through some changes over time. Despite being a novel, rather than an animated production, there were sketches made to show what some of the story’s new mobile suits looked like. These sketches were done by Yasuhiro Moriki, and some of them tend to look a little bit out there, more akin to something you’d see in Gaia Gear than Gundam.
Case in point, here is his original sketch for the Gustav Karl:
It was then remade for the Hathaway’s Flash manga adaptation, where it looked like this:
It was remade yet again for SD Gundam G Generation:
I said above that this appearance is important, and the reason is simple: this is the first “modernized” version of the Gustav Karl, and is the version that all later variants are based on.
Case in point - here is how it looks in Unicorn:
And finally, here it is in the Hathaway film:
Looking at these last three designs - since they’re all pretty much the same - we can assess the Gustav Karl properly. Despite the fact that the lore says that it’s from a separate design lineage from the Jesta, it sure looks an awful lot like the Jesta on growth hormone. Compare and consider:
They have similarly shaped heads, chests, and skirt armor, and slightly-less-similar-but-still-kind-of-similar arms and legs. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that they both have their shields slung on the back of the left shoulder. I really think they look like a pair, even if they’re not supposed to be.
Of course, the other notable aspect of the Gutav Karl is its chonkiness. This is entirely in line with the mobile suit design trends of the Universal Century during the events of Hathaway, where MS were getting increasingly (and sometimes absurdly) large. It’s no surprise that the EFSF’s grunt suit of that era would also get bigger.
So yeah. If you like the Jesta, and you like big bois, it’s hard not to like the Gustav Karl.
Why the Color Change?
So you may be wondering - Why is the suit a different color in Unicorn?
You might also be wondering - Why does it also look slightly different in Unicorn?
Or maybe you’re even thinking - Hathaway’s Flash takes place in UC 105. Unicorn takes place in UC 96. So what’s the Gustav Karl doing in both stories?
All three questions have the same answer - the version we see in Unicorn is a super super early prototype, dubbed the “Type 13”. Meanwhile, the version in Hathaway is an overhauled, revamped, production-grade version, dubbed the “Type 00”.
About the Visual Design
There’s a lot to say about this one.
The most obvious place to start is the head. At first glance it might look like the Gustav Karl has a broken V-Fin, but it’s actually an intentional design. That half-V-Fin on the right side of its head is actually an antenna; why it’s positioned that way I can’t say for sure, but I assume it’s meant to be some sort of homage to the Gundam.
Next we have the Vulcan Cannons, which here are stacked vertically on one side of the head instead of being in their usual, symmetrical positions. I’m guessing this was done so that the rounds don’t accidentally collide with the antenna on the opposite side; regardless of the reason, it’s a surprisingly rare site to see.
If you look closely underneath the red visor, you’ll notice that the Gustav Karl has a monoeye camera. And if you look down to the torso, you’ll notice that it wears its shield on its shoulder.
And if you look further still toward the hips, you’ll see that it has what looks to be power cabling running along its skirt armor. These are all very Zeonic flourishes, which would make sense if this MS was produced by Anaheim Electronics and their cadre of former Zeon engineers (I can’t find anything that confirms one way or another who built it).
Generally speaking, I like when opposing factions have their own distinct mecha designs, but it can still be fun for there to be a little bit of cross-pollination (though you can go a bit too far, like in the Zeta era, where Anaheim was giving the Federation mobile suits that were straight up Zeon designs)
All in all, I think the Gustav Karl does a pretty good job of evolving the taking the EFF grunt suit aesthetic into a new era of absurdly heavy mecha.
Weapons and Stuff
Sadly, this is the one area where the Gustav Karl disappoints. It still uses the Jegan’s standard beam rifle as its main weapon, which isn’t exciting or interesting at all.
It also has grenade launchers built into its arms, which is always cool, but not at all unique.
I suppose you could make an argument that its size and bulk are a form of armament, as they theoretically allow it to better tank hits from enemy ordinance. But being an EFF grunt suit, that’s probably not true in practice.
Appearances
This particular version of the Gustav Karl shows up near the very end of the final episode of Unicorn, which probably explains the model’s release date (more on that later).
And sadly, it gets absolutely jobbed. We see one unit as a part of the perimeter guard for the Earth Federation’s Cheyenne Base, and while it’s camouflaged, you can see that the cockpit is clearly open:
Even worse, the pilot was lazing around eating snacks!
Clearly he wasn’t paying all that much attention, which made it all the easier for a couple of Londo Bell Jestas to sneak up and incapacitate him:
This in turn allowed Londo Bell’s boss to walk into the base and stop some fools from firing a colony laser. So I guess it was a good thing the Gustav Karl was disabled, but it would have been nice to see it do something.
About the Model Kit
Usually, when a new Gundam show comes out, it gets its own line of High Grades that is released while the show is airing (with any lingering kits released in the following months).
But that really wasn’t possible for Unicorn, for a variety of reasons:
- It was an OVA that came out slowly over the course of many years
- It features a lot of mobile suits. Even with the OVA’s multi-year release schedule, it probably would have been impossible to get them all designed and released within that time frame.
- Unlike a lot of modern Gundam stories, which take place in alternate universes, Unicorn takes place in the Universal Century, which means its product line is HGUC. And the trouble with that is that HGUC covers the entire Universal Century - and even some non-UC series. That meant that the Unicorn releases had to be spread out among releases from other series, in order to make things fair.
All of which is to say that, though the first Unicorn High Grades came out in 2009, it wouldn’t be until ten years later that they’d release the High Grade Gustav Karl. As far as I can tell, it was the last/most recent Unicorn HG in the line.
In terms of the model itself, I’m very curious to see just how big it actually is. How does it compare to regular sized mobile suits, and perhaps more importantly, how does it compare to other chonky, late-UC units like the Messer?