Everybody talks about “MSV”, myself included. But no one ever talks about what it really means (myself included) 😶🌫️
So let’s fix that. Let’s talk a bit about MSV in general, and M-MSV in specific.
So Seriously, What is MSV?
That’s a tough question to answer, because there is no one single answer. MSV is a lot of different things, because it’s really more of a general concept that’s changed and shifted over the years as needed.
The very first thing that was called MSV is fairly well documented, and to this day remains unique in both its origin and its purpose.
To put it very simply, in the early 80’s, after the Gundam film trilogy came out, Bandai had run out of mobile suits to make new models from. To fix this, they collaborated with some very enthusiastic (and very talented) scale model builders to create brand new MS designs. They published artwork and in-universe lore in books and popular magazines, and of course, they made Gunpla from them to sell.
This last bit is what makes this initial MSV series unique. To my knowledge, it was the only MSV for a very long while that was made with the explicit purpose of seeling plastic models.
In subsequent years, the powers that be went back to the MSV well, and while the general concept of MSV remained the same, the intent (slightly) changed. They still made new designs, they still came up with in-universe lore, and they still showed up in magazines and other published works. The difference, however, is that these followup series were never meant to sell new models. As far as I can tell, none of them resulted in contemporaneous model kit releases. Instead their purpose seems to have been to sell mags, promote Sunrise’s current animated releases, and to generally keep people interested in the burgeoning franchise.
This continued to be the status quo for MSV entries all the way into the 2010’s. It was only then, with the release of the Mobile Suit Discovery series, that they once again used it to specifically promote model kit releases.
About M-MSV
M-MSV (AKA Missing Mobile Suit Variations, AKA “The Kuniko Okawara Collection) is a bit of an odd duck. Released in 1990 (between Char’s Counterattack and Gundam F91), it wasn’t used to promote any particular animation production, nor any model kits.
Rather, it seems like it was more of a retro revival of sorts. The powers that be asked master mecha designer Kunio Okawara to come up with more MSV-style designs of “missing” (or otherwise unseen) mobile suits from the One Year War (as well as a few from later on in the UC timeline).
I’ve seen various claims online for why this project was greenlit, though none of them are in any way sourced. One argument is that at that time, SD Gundam was all the rage, and M-MSV was supposed to placate the older, veteran fans with some fresh UC love. The slightly different (and slightly more cynical) version of this argument is that they simply used the prospect of fresh UC love as bait. The evidence for this claim is that the design series was published in the pages of SD Club magazine.
The other thing that’s really intriguing about M-MSV is its overall style. I mean, it’s clearly Okawara artwork, but what’s different is that he’s unleashed here. Since M-MSV’s designs were not intended for model kits, or for adaptation to the screen, he didn’t have to ensure that his designs were easy to animate or mold.
Spend some time looking at them, and you will quickly see that they are far more intricate and detailed than his usual UC fare. Not to the point where they’re unrecognizable as Gundams or Zakus or whatever, but in the sense that they have an extra level of mechanical intricacy.
This, to me, is what makes M-MSV so great. It’s a nice, self-contained slice of UC mobile suits that take typical UC fare and take it in a fun and different direction. It’s a window into what things could have been if Gundam’s mecha designs didn’t have to (understanably) worry about being adapted.
It Was the Style at the Time
I've seen another unsourced bit of speculation that the designs might look the way they do because it was the style at the time. The late 80's and early 90's was filled with highly intricate, detailed mecha and machinery, with a heavy focus on depicting how they might work and operate if they were real.I don't entirely reject this argument, but I don't fully buy it either. While certainly complex, some of the M-MSV designs don't necessarily have much rhyme or reason to them. They are detailed in more of a "Rule of Cool" kind of way.
What’s Inside M-MSV?
This is the question most fans don’t seem interesting in answering. It’s one thing to say “MSV is a design series”, or “MSV showed up in magazines and other publications”. But what do they actually look like on those pages?
I can understand that back in the day it wasn’t easy to obtain the published material to investigate, but nowadays? I feel as if nowadays it’s mostly driven by a lack of curiosity. Knowing surface level trivia about the existence of things like MSV can get you cultural cache, but knowing anything beyond that doesn’t do you much good.
As for me, I like knowing these things, and I’m in luck; someone uploaded scans of most of the issues of SD Club to the Internet Archive, including some of the issues featuring MSV entries. We can finally take a look at some real primary sources!
Now that being said, I’ll warn you ahead of time that they’re a bit underwhelming by modern standards, but put a pin in that for now.
By my reading, it appears that M-MSV began showing up in Issue 8, and definitely went through at least Issue 10 (beyond that I’m not sure, since that’s the last issue there’s scans for). Each of these issues dedicates 6-4 pages to the collection, one mobile suit per page. At the back of the magazine, there is also be a short story showcasing one or more of the designs, though not all of them.
Most of the time each single page entry will contain the following:
- A few different Okawara illustrations
- Basic stats (name, affiliation, size and weight, wepaon loadout)
- A brief paragraph or two of lore and background info
And that’s it folks. That’s all an M-MSV entry is. It’s not much, but I think that’s the point. Rather than be encyclopedia entires, these contain just enough info to get your imagination going.
It … kind of makes me sad in a way. On one hand, I like the idea of filling in the gaps with my own headcanon, and speculating on the setting and what else might be out there in the UC. That can be a lot more fun that having it all spelled out for you.
On the other hand, in the modern era of fandom speculation is a curse. In our efforts to look smart, or correct, or to win debates, we’re extremely likely to label pass guesswork off as fact, which in turn allows misinformation to fester. And in our obsession to counter debate, or engage in powerscaling, or whatever, we may in turn come up with even crazier speculation, which may in turn be passed off as fact, etc.
The only way to prevent all this is to simply spell everything out in clear, canoncial detail, even if it’s far less fun. We’ve basically ruined fandom for ourselves. Good job us …
Legacy of M-MSV
M-MSV doesn’t seem to have had much of an initial legacy. I’ve seen unsourced claims that some of these mobile suits showed up as secret or otherwise special units in various Gundam games throughout the 90’s, but without concrete proof I’m not going to say one way or another.
What we do know for sure is that they definitely started to be repurposed in the 21st century. According to legend, the development team who made Zeonic Front for Playstation 2 needed a Gundam, but didn’t want to make a new one, so instead they dove into M-MSV and repurposed Unit 06 Mudrock for their purposes.
That ended up (seemingly) being a chain reaction, as more and more M-MSV designs would be repurposed for use in additional video games, and eventually manga and even anime productions (including one that appeared in 2026’s big theatrical release). And all these appearances in turn led to many of these designs finally getting Gunpla.
In terms of overall impact to the franchise (and lasting legacy), M-MSV went from long being dormant isolated, to becoming one of the most important MSV’s ever. There’s probably a whole other essay one could write about what, if anything, this says about the quality of the designs, but that’s not for me to write today.
Which Units Have have been Repurposed?
As far as I know, at the very least the following units from M-MSV have appeared in media or model kit form since it's publication. There may be others I missed:- Gundam Unit 04
- Gundam Unit 05
- Gundam Unit 06 Mudrock
- Full Armor Gundam 7th
- Mass Production Nu
- Aqua GM
- G-Line
- Prototype Zaku
- Full Armor Hyaku Shiki Kai
Redesigns
One last coda before we move on. Because the M-MSV designs are so complex and intricate, none of them survived intact when adapted to other media. That is, they all went through some degree of redesign and simplification. By my eye they still mostly preserve the original look and feel, so it’s not the end of the world, but it’s worth noting. And after the next post in this series, I’ll be referring entirely to the redesigned version of Unit 04 as it appears in
In the next post we’re going to take a closer look at how Unit 04 is depicted in M-MSV, but after that, whenever I discuss Unit 04, it’s going to be in reference to the redesign (since that’s what the Master Grade model is based on).