A certain someone requested I build this because they liked the color scheme, and I couldn’t say no:
It’s the Zaku II High Mobility Type, in the custom colors of the Black Tri Stars.
About the Mobile Suit
The story behind this one is either very simple or very complicated depending on how you look at it.
The Zaku High Mobility Type comes from the original Mobile Suit Variations design series. These are mobile suits from the One Year War that (mostly) canonically existed, but which were never shown on screen.
It’s basically a Zaku II with extra thrusters, as well as extra propellant tanks to fuel them, and that’s pretty much it. That’s the “simple” part.
The “complicated” part comes from the fact that, technically speaking, there isn’t just one High Mobility Type Zaku. Not even close. Here are the ones that I could find on the wiki; there may be even more that I missed:
- MS-06R01A Zaku II High Mobility Type (that’s this one)
- MS-06G Zaku II High Mobility Ground Type
- MS-06R-1 Zaku II High Mobility Test Type
- MS-06R-2 Zaku II High Mobility Type
- MS-06R-2P Zaku II High Mobility Test Type
- MS-06RP Zaku II High Mobility Test Type
- MS-06RD-4 Zaku High Mobiltiy Test Type (this is technically not from MSV, but from Mobile Suit Discovery, meaning this design only exists in Gundam: The Origin)
As is typical for Zeon mobile suits, most of these seem to be nothing more than minor tweaks of the original concept, so don’t feel bad if you can’t keep track of all of them in your head (I mean, I have them all in my head as I’m writing this because I just looked them all up, but give me a few days and I’ll have forgotten most of them too)
For the sake of thoroughness, here is some additional information from the flavor text in the instruction manual (which, as usual, I’ve cleaned up and link-ified from the machine translation):
The "06R Series", including the MS-06R-1A (and commonly referred to as the "High Mobility Type"), are widely recognized as the mobile suit of choice of ace pilots such as "Solomon's White Wolf" Shin Matsunaga and "Crimson Lightning®" Johnny Ridden.Although production numbers were low — fewer than 100 units — they achieved great success, and these highly capable MS were welcomed by many pilots. However, due to the complex operating requirements and high manufacturing costs, they were not mass-produced like the F-type, and procurement was extremely difficult. Veteran pilots even went so far as to say that "it would be harder to acquire an R-type than to sink a Federation battleship."
Development of the R-type began about a month after the outbreak of the One Year War. With the signing of the Antarctic Treaty, it became inevitable that the war would continue for a long time, and so this was implemented as part of efforts to strengthen military capabilities in space. The MS-06 Zaku II was developed from the start with the goal of achieving high versatility, but the R-type was a machine that eliminated that versatility and specialized for space combat. The R-type's operational period during the One Year War was short, but even so, the 06R-1A, which was improved through the 06RP, 06R, and 06R-1, was a powerful machine compared to the previous models. Many pilots favored them due to the relative ease of refueling and other tasks on the ground.
So I guess this was the favorite mobile suit of top Zeon pilots until newer designs like the Rick Dom and Gelgoog rolled out.
Also, I find it interesting that it was specifically designed for use in outer space.
A History of Model Kits
It looks like Bandai has made quite a few Gunpla of the High Mobility Zakus over that years. It is interesting to note, however, that most of them are of the MS-06R01A, just like my kit is. Considering how many other variants there are, and that none of them appear on screen, I’m not entirely sure why or how the MS-06R01A became the “popular” one of the bunch; I think it may have to do with the fact that it saw the highest in-universe production numbers, meaning it was most likely to be used in combat by Zeon aces.
Anyway, here is a non-exhaustive options in case you want a different High Mobility Type model. Starting with the regular retail releases, we have a few color variants of the one I’m building, including one in Shin Matsunaga’s colors:
And one in Johnny Ridden’s colors:
There are also at least two High Grades of the Origin version of the mobile suit:
Then there are the Master Grades, starting with the Black Tri-Stars version:
The Shin Matsunaga version:
And last but certainly not least, there actually was an OG release from 1983:
As for Premium Bandai releases, there’s too many to list, so I’m just going to show you some screenshots from the Gundam Wiki. For Master Grades, they made a whole bunch of them in different pilot’s custom livery:
They also made a Real Grade version, also in a number of different liveries:
I wish they made at least one of these into a retail release, but at least when it comes to Real Grades, these minor tweaks to existing RG kits are pretty much always destined P-Bandai.
There’s one more I want to show you; its the only example I can find of a High Mobility Type that isn’t the MS-06R01A:
In the strictness of technical senses, there are a lot of options out there, though for practical purposes the only ones I’ve seen get semi-regular reprintings are the one I have (and its two color variants), and the retail Origin versions.
About the Build
This looks like it’s a pretty standard Zaku build, save for the legs and the backpack, which are unique molds. And speaking of which:
Both of these new body parts have quite a bit of white striping, leading to the obvious question - what kind of color correction is this model going to need? We’ll find out next time when we dive into the build.