Gundam the Origin Model Kits

Gunpla Build - High Grade Zaku I (Origin Type) Final 2023-07-31

In the end, I did manage to get this assembled and panel lined in a single night, just as I had hoped.

That being said, in terms of level of effort, this wasn’t my best. I didn’t use most of the decals, I didn’t topcoat it, I didn’t do any detailing on the weapons, and I barely did any painting for color correction.

But hey, it’s done.

Gunpla Build - High Grade Zaku I (Origin Type) 2023-07-30

Recently I found myself wanting to do another build, but I also wanted to watch something on TV. I needed something simple that I could work on on a coffee table with a minimal amount of tools. Something where I didn’t really care how it ended up looking in the end.

And then I decided that I also wanted to try and do the build in a single night.

As it turns out, I had the perfect candidate:

Gunpla Chronicles Local Type - Build 2019-07-15

Runners

This kit has ten runners. You only see nine in this photo because I already used up the one that holds the beam sabers. Subtract that tiny orange runner in the photo, which houses some parts for the head, and you are left with effectively eight main runners. That’s a few less than the Zaku II C6, so I expect this to be a somewhat simpler build.

Gunpla Chronicles - CMWOLFE-07/C1 S-Class Plus (Build) 2019-07-14

Let’s get the build started!

I always begin a build by putting together the weapons, but this time I decided to mix it up by building the body first. After all, if you build the weapons first, you can’t do anything with them, but if you build the body first, you can still post it or stand it up and have it hang out while you wrap up with the weapons.

Runners

We’ve got about eleven runners here, which is a decent size for a High Grade. I expect this to be a good meaty build.

Gunpla Chronicles Local Type - Intro 2019-07-01

This kit - officially known as the Gundam Local Type (North American Front) is the kit I wanted to buy, but I only did so after I let my inner child convince me to do so.

We’ll get into the history and details of this mobile suit in due time, but let’s just get one thing out of the way first - if a generation of pre-teens somehow got hooked on Gundam by watching shows set in the Universal Century, rather than by watching shows such as Gundam Wing or Gundam Seed, this is the kind of mobile suit they would be sketching in their notebooks.

Gunpla Chronicles - CMWOLFE-07/C1 S-Class Plus (Intro) 2019-07-01

Let me begin this post with a rant.

The best and worst thing about the Gundam: The Origin line of model kits is its abundance of Zaku prototypes and variants. On one hand, I love that the Origin OVA basically forced Bandai to make kits out of mobile suits such as the Waff, the Bugu, and the Zaku I. I also love how you can get so many of these kits in different colors, such as in either standard green:

Char Aznable red:

Or the black/purple scheme of the Black Tri-Stars.

In the past, these kinds of mobile suits were either too obscure or too specific to see frequent release, but in the Origin OVA’s they are, in some cases, the only suits to show up during a given episode, so Bandai had no choice but to make new models out of them.