I am apologizing in advance for this pun, or any other ones in this post. Anyway, also shown during the recently concluded Shizuoka Hobby Show are colored prototypes for HG Gundam Zirius, now with official English spelling, the main hero mobile suit from the manga Mobile Suit Gundam Eight. Following this, solicitations have also opened and provided more details about this mobile suit.
As we saw in Shizuoka Hobby Show, Gundam Zirius has a busy design because of numerous armor panels with lots of hard angles. Fortunately, they are mostly white so painting shouldn’t be that hard. There’s also an abundance of fins, from the head to the ankle armors, especially the clear ones mounted at the back.
While I did say details were provided in the solicitation, they barely provided additional information, possibly to prevent spoiling the plot.
What the solicitations mention is how the kit is able to replicate any poses seen in the manga, and the armor panels shouldn’t provide restrictions or collide with each other. Speaking of poses, Gundam Zirius appears to be a dual beam saber-wielding mobile suit, with each stored at the side armors when not in use.
It also has a beam rifle, and does what we usually expect from beam rifles, plus the advantage of having good color separation for the yellow, white, and the same clear parts as the fins on the back.
The one other detail they can probably reveal in the solicitation is being able to strip down the vanilla Gundam Zirius armor to a light armored form. This immediately remimded me of Gundam Barbatos when it first appeared and acted as a power plant. I can’t clearly tell how much disassembly and reassembly would be needed to strip down the armor, but this led me to picking up two copies for each armor configuration.
Okay, I stand corrected as the kit doesn’t just include two beam saber handles, it comes with six, though it only has two beam saber effect parts. You also have a better look of the beam rifle and shield, with each having those clear blue parts.
Gundam Eight is being branded as the first completely new alternate universe Gundam story in Gundam Ace. While some may say otherwise citing previous works, most of them are either side stories or adjacent to an existing continuity. It’s also interesting how it’s being treated with the main mobile suit even getting its own High Grade kit. Are we getting more kits from Gundam Eight or this is just a one-off. Can this possibly lead to a future anime adaptation or it will remain within the pages of Gundam Ace?
Regardless of the answers to these questions, I am getting the HG Gundam Zirius, two of them to be exact.
HG 1/144 Gundam Zirius
July 2025 / ¥2,700
Premium Bandai Exclusive
