P-Bandai Dwadge

Modeling Subjects Science Fiction
1

After many months of waiting, Bandai’s on-line exclusive MS-09G Dwadge is finally sitting on my desk! As mentioned in the “Latest Acquisitions” thread, the Dwadge is a mobile suit from the 1988 TV show “Double Zeta Gundam”. I just love the desert colors and the mods to the base MS (the MS-09 Dom). To me, a desert MS just looks cooler and closer to reality than those gaudy purple or orange space MS designs.

I tore into the kit this past weekend instead of working on the yard (I’m going to pay for that later) and got the major components test fitted. As per my normal approach, all pin sockets were slightly reamed out so that the snap fit parts can be easily separated after test fitting. The kit will be glued during assembly.

Bandai outdid themselves on this kit, as some parts that were really close in shape were replaced with new Dwadge-specific parts. I had to look pretty hard to see the differences in some pieces. Normally, I expect Bandai to skimp on new parts and take a “close enough is good enough” approach, but in addition to the new outer pieces, the ankle, hip and shoulder joints were new as well. So you end up with a box full of unused parts, kind of like a DML kit.

But, among the parts marked not for use there is a complete “Raketen Baz” bazooka (the one above). The weapon is from “Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories”, so I’m not sure which previous issue of the Dom kit had it, as the Dom is from the original “Mobile Suit Gundam”. I’ll find another appropriate MS to issue this weapon to. The standard Dom “Giant Baz” gets a new thermal sleeve and targeting sensor, as well as a grip with retractable pins designed to help the model hold onto it.

Anyway, I’m super happy to have been able to get this kit, and pleased that Bandai took the trouble to make it special.

2

Now there’s an MS I did not expect to see pop up. Nice to see the Dom’s little brother getting some love.

Are you planning to modify it closer to some MSV desert MS or build it straight? Either way I’m looking forward to seeing what you can do with it.

3

Nice kit, I like the 1/100 scale. I have tried the 1/144 but after building a 1/100, it just seemed to suit me better in size. I have only built one but I do have another that I just recently acquired. I am not familiar with timelines and such, they just strike me as interesting kits.

4

Robotism, the Dwadge is actually a desert MSV. I think the show’s creators needed “filler” MS designs, so they went back to the original TV show and modded them. The MS-09H Dwadge Custom is a further permutation, but like a lot of Double Zeta designs, is kind of overdone. Anyway, the plan is to just get this bad boy together and to paint/weather it properly.

NucMedTech, the chronogy of the shows go like this:

Mobile Suit Gundam

08th MS Team

0080 War in the Pocket

0083 Stardust Memories

Zeta Gundam

Sentinel Gundam (actually parallel in time to Double Z)

Double Zeta Gundam

Char’s Counterattack

Gundam Origins basically rewinds the tape prior to the events of the original TV show and represents a soft reboot of sorts.

The shows did not appear in chronological order, and their individual look is quite different from one another.

And a live action movie is due in 2020 from the same studio that did “Pacific Rim”. No telling what it will be like. Maybe the marketing guys will focus on the shows that most US fans are familiar with (Wing, Seed, Iron Blooded Orphans, etc.). Personally I don’t want that, but money sells.

5

Again I know nothing about this universe but that’s friggin’ cool!!!

6

It’s just a fodder mech made by tarting up an older design, but I really like it!

Nippon Sunrise, the studio responsible for the Gundam shows, recycled a lot of MS designs from the original 1979 TV show to use in later ones. They still do it to this day, even more so, as I think the creative minds are running out of original ideas like the Star Wars franchise. I can’t wait for a bunch of reverse color mobile suits…

7

You forgot MS Igloo and if you include late UC Unicorn, Narrative, F-91 and V. Sentinel is questionably canon, it’s in that awkard space with Crossbone where it will probably be animated in some fashion soon but isn’t quite yet. Origin is straight up AU though. It’s like Thunderbolt where it’s doing it’s own spin on UC.

The movies has 2 designs shown, the Gundam and Char’s Zaku. Both got lineart and maybe a kit reveal or at least a kit tease. Came in the 40th anniversary video release a week or two back.

I know it’s a desert design in series but I meant more like mesh filters over things, changing pipes out to be sand proof sort of thing. It’s mostly Zakus that get MSV like that but it’s always fun to see. I’m a fan of the ZZ era of designs myself, have enough gimmicks to be interesting but not quite CCA where everything is huge and has funnels all over the place. Haman’s Neo Zeons under represented by modelers sadly.

RF Desert Dom is what I meant. The original RF dom lacks a lot of the filter vents.

8

Robotism, I confess to being a UC purist when it comes to shows like Igloo, F91, Victory etc. The guys at the anime store coined me a nickname “Mr. Real Gundam”, which is actually where I got my screen name. But, to each his own. The Gundam universe is vast and varied, and there’s room for everybody (and really we’d like more to join).

Sentinel is an odd one, as it really only existed as a running photo story in Model Graphix magazine in the late 1980s to early 1990s. There are no shows of it, although there are manga, including some wacky interpretations by artists like Makoto Kobayashi.

When I first saw the mecha design from CCA, it struck me as an odd change in the direction of the aesthetics. I felt ZZ Gundam had gone over the top in overcooked MS (hey look at the titular mech), so it seemed like the designers had come to the same conclusion and dialed the designs back to 0079, except now they were in the 20 meter plus height range. I do think the Sazabi is a cool MS.

And on the “overcooked” remark about ZZ, I will admit to liking suits like the Hamma Hamma, Geymalk and Doven Wolf. The last one, although fully guilty of the ZZ aesthetic (covered in mega beam emitters, with lots of sticky out bits, and even more weapons) I think it actually looks well balanced.

Oh, so they ARE doing the 0079 timeline in the movie? I am pleased and surprised at the same time. While I am huge fan of the original series, I honestly don’t think it will sell to the masses unfamiliar with the property. The 1979 TV show’s animation was TERRIBLE, so when Cartoon Network aired it, it tanked. I liked the series for its in-depth world background, which was fully fleshed out like the 1977 Star Wars. So what did the Gundam and Zaku look like? I hope not too Transformer-y, i.e. metal garbage blizzard. Too many recent mecha interpretations forget that these things are armored vehicles, so over panelizing and sticky out bits would be bad design.

Regarding the Dwadge (or Dowage), the kit is already pretty good, especially the new upper and rear torso. Lots of layers of parts, including screen mesh molded detail.

After going through the parts, nothing really jumps out to be fixed. Well, the bazooka sensor could use a clear lens, and the leg drop tanks have mounting points only on the outer leg halves. The antennas should be replaced too. But that’s about it. I don’t feel like adding lagging around the joints, even though if the machine were real it would certainly need them.

9

An UC purist? Not many of those around these days, I thought they all died of old age… I’m more of an all in kind of guy when it comes to Gundam. I’ve sat through everything not SD.

Sentinel’s screwed by the author owning the copyright to the characters which is a shame. The photonovel or a light novel is translated if you can track it down. I thought the FAZZ and Zeta pluses shone more than the Sentinel did. ZZ designs got even worse post CCA, There’s now a Doven Wolf which carries multiple arms on it’s back to use heavy weaponry. Just when you didn’t think it could get any messier…

15 seconds in is 2 Zakus and the Gundam They’re not the worst designs ever. They look like Mobile suits at least. I was dreading another Ready Player One where the beam saber was a wiffle bat for all it’s effectiveness. I only hope they can get back the actors from that live action PC game to play the cast. Char just wouldn’t feel right as any one else…

10

Robotism,

I am an older guy, who got in on the ground floor in 1983. I like characters like Ramba Ral, who looked and acted like a mature, honorable man, and was a good soldier and leader.

I see the newer heroes as whiny emo children. Different generations. That got handed to me when I saw “The Force Awakens” with a friend’s kids. We left the theater with me going off on how much I hated Adam Driver’s face, and how his character was unbelievably undisciplined. After that tirade, my friend’s boy very calmly suggested “I dunno. I kinda liked Kylo Ren. I guess he just appeals to a different demographic.”

While I dislike most of the new Gundam series, I understand that it’s a business that must grow. I really bristled when Build Fighters came out, seeing it as nothing but a crass commercial ploy to resell old, outdated model kits. But when I saw that new fans were being drawn in and injecting energy into the property, I had to concede that it was a good thing. And when the Bear Guy phenomenon took off I realized I was no longer the target market. I guess they appeal to a different demographic.

I agree with you that the Zeta Plus and FAZZ were more to the fore than the S Gundam, and I dubbed the Ex-S as the “Excess” Gundam. The Zeta Plus in particular was a really great design, which combined the anime Zeta with modern day aerospace aesthetics. The FAZZ was overcooked, but when I first saw it I thought “Holy bazongas, what the heck is that?!”

I really hate the multi-arm thing that Thunderbolt embraced, but I realize that the Dendrobium from 0083 and the Xeku Zwei from Sentinel had them too.

And yeah, a beam saber is basically a highly focused plasma blowtorch, not a comic relief accessory. I hope the live action movie keeps this in mind.

11

Wow, didn’t know there was a generation gap here. I keep hearing about this new Trek Picard show and well I’m like ‘Kirk is THE MAN, don’t care about no Picard…’ *

*Though I do love Sisko!!!

12

Gamera,

Yep. You have the old guys and new guys in Gundam too. It’s been 40 years.

I started liking Sisko’s character when he punched Q in the face. I started enjoying DS9 more from that point on.

13

Now I’m impressed. I’m usually the old dog around Gundam these days. I started with Wing and immediately got into the other AUs and early UC. I fell for 80’s mecha in general and I’m much closer to your camp than I am the generation we’re on now. It’s more out of habit I follow the modern stuff than passion. Build fighters did a pretty good job of giving some love to older stuff and passsion project scenes are all over the place. G saviour even got a bit of animation which I recall shocking everyone at the time. I have a soft spot for toy robot battling so I was fine with that. The Bearguy III stuff makes no sense to me, the petite Bearguy even less but then if you look at the state of anime sales in Japan it probably makes sense. Slice of life and the leg beard market is the dominant thing, apparently they’re spending more money than the Akihabara crowd is now so they trying to muscle in on that a bit. Not that SEED didn’t already do that effectively until it got train wrecked by internal politics. The UNDERSTANDING stuff in modern Gundam is beyond irritating though, even Newtypes couldn’t understand each other and now some kid can wound a hundred people and the war just stops because of it. I really enjoyed Narrative, it felt like an interesting take on Newtypes and included a lot of behind the scenes grey area politicing which early UC did so well. It was like a 90 minute return to the earlier era of Gundam.

Gamera, like Star trek has it’s generations so does Gundam. There was the original timeline (which they now make yearly movies in for older fans), then in the 90s they started doing alternative universes where each series is stand alone. Real G is an original series only kind of guy, where as I’m a TNG guy. We’ve both had to suffer through the enterprise community and now we’re on the Discovery community where we glare at them scornfully and ask why they’re doing burn outs on our lawn as we carefully build toy robot models. They just announced Super Robot Taisen X/V are getting PC releases on Steam, which I would consider to be a watershed moment. It’s going to bring in a lot of the later generations into the older generation’s hidey holes. Imagine a Star Wars EU fan having to deal with people who only watched the Disney Star wars movies and you get an idea of what it’s like.

Adam Drivers face was your problem with that movie? I can see why but I thought Kylo was the only character with a personality. But I’m more of a prequels fan because I like Star wars as an universe to make games in and the design work as modeling inspiration. I’m wanting to fast forward through the talkie bits and see the cool space ships… Now kids don’t even know what fast forwarding is…

FAZZ being over cooked is the best part. It seemed like the AEUG side of things were making logical steps in MS progression. Instead of relying on 1 super newtype to do all the work in Judau they made defense lines of high mega cannons and had fast MS to intercept attempts to break it up.

How did you source the P Bandai kit? They’re usually pretty uncommon in the English speaking community.

14

I encountered Gundam via model kits, and quite by accident. A friend pointed to a small stack of the ¥300 kits and said “ Me and my brother bought those. They were kind of fun - we put them together in an afternoon and then smashed them against each other to see which was stronger!”

We all laughed, but then I took another look at them and was intrigued. I bought one (the Grablo) to try out, but was super embarassed to be buying a Japanese robot model. When I got home, I built it and thought it was really fun. It was one of the few kits that had a potted history included, so I had my mother read it for me, as I had washed 9 years of Japanese school down the drain as soon as I got out.

So there I was in 1983 wondering what a Gundam was. “That little robot in clown colors on the box art must be it” I thought. And thus the hunt was on to find out more information for a property that became a good part of my hobby life!

Back in the day, it was all pre-internet, so gathering information was difficult and slow. We had to look for things with paper catalogs, using our bare hands. And we had to walk to the model store. Uphill. Both ways!

But there was this little hole in the wall place called Japan Video, which rented taped TV shows and pirated movies. Me and my friends got our first glimpse of Gundam (the 3 reworked theatrical movies based on the TV show) from that place. We were super lucky to get onto the forming tidal wave of the new “real robot” OVAs in the mid to late 1980s.

Another friend gave me a catalog book titled “Hero Robot”, which had photos of model kits of Gundam MSVs, Macross and more. They had toys too, including the ones that would become Optimus Prime and Megatron! This became my holy book in understanding what was out there.

So yeah, me and my friends were ealry adopters. We watched the shows by buying laser discs(!!!) from Japan. None of us understood a thing, but the 9 years of J-school started to creep back. I still can’t read the Asahi Shinbun, but I am able to read instruction sheets and model mags.

Okay so much for the old man’s story. Time to get building.

15

Oh geez, you got the old man so excited that he forgot to answer your question.

I got my P-Bandai kits from several sources: online from GGInfinite and Gentei Kits, and from local anime stores and a friend with “connections”. GGI is defunct, and people complained about them, but I always got what I paid for.

Gentei has delivered the two times I bought from them, but they get poor marks for zero responses to customer inquiries. They had indicated that the Dwadge was sent via SAL Small Pack, but it actually went surface mail. After 8 weeks of waiting, I got antsy and sent them an email and got no response. I sent another email a week later, telling them if it didn’t ship to cancel my order and refund my money. Again no response. And the very next day a crushed box showed up at my door.

I couldn’t decide whether to be happy or angry. I eventually chose happy. If they had at least responded by saying “Hey stupid, the box is huge! We not gonna air freight that!”, at least I would have expected a 2 month wait.

I don’t like asking my friend to get me kits, as I think it’s costing him a lot and he doesn’t let me pay him.

Regardless of the source, pre-ordering is the key. Miss the window and you are out of luck. Guys like Gentei post info on upcoming kits well in advance.

My main concern is that Bandai’s premium online program is going out of control. Stuff that really should be normal retail kits are becoming P-Bandai, like the HGUC Sentinel Zeta Plus C Type. So you can buy the Unicorn A Type at the store, but you can’t get the version that started it all. And if you missed the P-Bandai C Type, so solly. So annoying.

16

Pretty good story time. Here Argos a high street store stocked Wing kits when it aired and there was a local comic shop that got random kits in.

Manadarake is good for “Second hand” kits (someone sneezed on the box so it’s damaged) and I find P bandai stuff pops up there once in a while. I’ve not bought P bandai from them yet but what I have bought arrived fine. Had an issue with Hobby Search who are my standard where a kit took several months to arrive via SAL. Just lost in the aether and then one day it suddenly turns up. For some reason it had come to Europe, gone to japan again then came back to Europe. I was never told why or how. I’ve ordered from them before and after and had the usual 2 week wait and no issues

The AoZ stuff being P Bandai is ridiclous. Especially since it’s got so many variants and add ons. Even the promo material was recommending you buy like 5 kits just to make one MS. It was just lazy more than greedy.

17

Ah you have Mandarake where you are? I have visited the ones in Osaka (Umeda) and Tokyo (Shibuya). I remember the first time I went, there was a teenybopper song playing, which turned out to be a kid singing on their karaoke stage. But it was a guy.

I have been informed by those that know that the reason AoZ kits are P-Bandai is down to copyright. Dengeki Hobby holds controlling rights, so even the mighty Bandai‘s grip on the Gundam gold mine is not absolute. Going P-Bandai might circumvent the legal language that allows Bandai to sell AoZ stuff. Maybe that’s the reason the Sentinel Zeta Plus was P-Bandai. Model Graphix and/or Hajime Katoki may have some rights to the Sentinel property. That may not hold water though, since Bandai has kitted Sentinel stuff before.

While I find AoZ designs interesting, my brain has difficulty telling me what I’m looking at. They are so intricate and unconventionally laid out that often times I cannot even tell where the head is.

18

They do online orders internationally.

I wonder why they can release some of the kits like the Hazel and Gaplant then. Sentinel’s copyright issue is just the characters. That’s why S Gundams in games with a blank pilot.

I like the Titans prototype stuff from them and the kitbashes like the Hi-Zack 2. When you start adding the 12 add on parts, psycho Gundam arms and everything else I tend to just zone out. But damn if that Barzam 2 isn’t a sexy beasty.

19

Oh wow neat stories guys!

I’ve ordered from Hobby Search once or twice but normally go though HobbyLink Japan. Love the fact that though I consider myself a pretty big SF geek I don’t know what about 70% of the stuff both carry is!

20

Very impressive sir!

Your friend, Toshi