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Well heck, I guess I should really get my reviews for Seed Freedom and GQuuuuuux out the door, shouldn’t I?

That aside, new Gundam series upcoming - Gundam XARX-ZERO (Arks Zero?) - and it looks pretty good. It’ll be interesting to see how they play around with post-apocalypse themes (or whatever themes they’re going with).

The setup appears to be an Earth where the ELS/Dark Gundam (from 00 and G Gundam respectively) essentially won, so humanity’s essentially been pushed off the planet and is planning to retake it. Should be good play for a lot of Gundam’s environmental themes.

So, how about those designs?

The Gundam Zero - Or Gundam XARX Zero for simplicity’s sake - is a mobile suit I have two prominent thoughts on.

Thought one - it really needs that additional equipment (shown below) - the base mobile suit is just painfully lacking in the heft department - it looks like it could be batted aside by many a competitor. Partially this seems to be as a result of the series adopting a more humanlike design style à la Gundam 00 but I do think that the animation style might to be to its detriment.

What I mean by that is that from around 2021 Onwards (The Release of Gundam Hathaway) the Gundam series has been moving to have mobile suits predominantly depicted in 3D Computer-Generated Imagery - I’ve honestly not really held any real opinion on it until now but I do think that several of the shots of the XARX Zero in the trailer really don’t help the design - it just looks too much like an action figure and it doesn’t seem to have the weight to it - though I’ll fully admit that we only get around five-ish seconds of it moving like that in the trailer, so I’ve no real expectation of it being an issue.

And honestly I think the additional equipment really pulls the design together for me - the backpack gives it some much-needed weight on the back while leaving the body relatively free to move around. The arm vambraces draw the eye and give it a more offensive feel - it almost feels like a pit boxer or mma fighter. I rather like that the rifle’s underslung because it keeps the silhouette very tight, focusing more on the upper body and arms. When compared to the base form it also has a much greater sense of identity - the original hews too close to the original Rx-78-2 for my liking, especially now that Gqux has so recently shown us an alternate take on the design so it ends up feeling played-out - it’s a brand-new AU, a brand-new Gundam series so for the flagship machine to match so closely with one from a different series feels like something of a missed opportunity.

I do also suspect that it’s relative plainness might be a manufacturing thing. Based on a few of the other designs we see in the trailer - specifically the GM-likes and the Red Gundam unit - it’s possible that Bandai is planning to reuse the internal frame (and maybe a few armour parts) with other proposed model kits in order to cut down on their manufacturing costs. We’ve seen this previously with the Iron Blooded Orphans and G-Witch model series.

Then again it’s possible that, like IBO, other units with the standard frame are gonna get much more ambitious with it.

As an aside, I’m really rather interested in where this Red Gundam’s going - it really reminds me of the F90 Unit 2/F90 Mars Zeon type. My bet is that it’s initially an ally to the protagonist, only to turn antagonistic later on. (Though to completely contradict my earlier thought, it seems to have a very different leg and head structure to the XARX Zero)

Thought Two on the Gundam XARX Zero - I’m really rather interested with how it’s gonna be played when it’s cloaked, as we see in many of the posters - it looks like one of it’s arms has been replaced by apocalypse tech (or some kind of alien technology since that whole spiky inhuman look is typically how gundam’s depicted that sort of thing) and the cloak and bandages are classic “vagrant wandering the wilderness” iconography so I assume that it’s going to result from some revelation about the true nature of apocalypse (which is probably where confljct with the other Gundam unit will arise).

Lastly for XARX’s mobile suit designs - there appears to be a new Zaku-analogue shown at one point during the trailer. On one hand, I’m obviously excited for that. But on the other; Gqux didn’t really do as much with it’s Zakus as I’d hoped so perhaps it would be wiser to hang fire on that particular sort of Speculation.

Moving onto the protagonist - yep, that’s a protagonist alright. Kinda a non-starter really - I don’t dislike the design so much as I just don’t really have a lot to say on it.

Though I must say, naming your Gundam Protagonist Azumi Ray and having him pilot the Gundam Zero does make research and image search a little difficult, because those are not exactly unique names within the Gundam meta-series. Eh, I’m sure I’ll adjust.

Lastly, we got proper design documents for the ARK-10 Gundam Helix and I have to say the designs really grown on me. Not that I particularly disliked it in the first place but yeah, it’s solid. My only real issue is that for the most part it just reads as “I n c r e d I b l y greebled Exia” to me - I’m pretty confident that’s just a me thing, but still. It’s just got a very “modern” feel to it - the design has been designed with modern gaming hardware and fashions in mind and it gives it a real presence, even if it takes your mind a second to process what the design is past a certain level of detail white noise. I suppose the point I’m getting at is that while I like the design I recognise that it is by no means clean or designed with a strong silhouette in mind. But I think those traits do give it a strong sense of identity - and if nothing else it certainly shows what ~95 years of Chonk progression looks like in the A.A. Timeline.

I do like the sword - it is unashamedly channeling Cloud Strife and this gives it a very protagonist-esque bearing for me, even though I expect it to have multiple loadout options in-game (in fact, if my eyes don’t deceive me I think I can spot hardpoints on the arms and thighs). The rifle I can take-or-leave but I’m usually like that with most Gundam Beam Rifles so I’m not gonna hold it against the design. I also like the rounded look of the armour - it gives it a more humanlike feel than Gundams usually have (yes Exia, I see you at the back). It almost looks like a suit of armour over a human, rather than a “just” a machine.

This is particularly prominent with the head, which I particularly love because it has this stretched quality that reminds me of me of some of the Suits from Gundam Sentinel, like the FAZZ and Zeta Plus’es