I’ve built a lot of model kits this winter, but I saved the best for last. The final kit in my stack is the High Grade GM Sniper II.
The GM Sniper II is one of several mobile suits that appears very briefly in the 1989 OVA Gundam 0080: War In The Pocket. It deploys inside of a space colony to battle against the Kämpfer (a prototype Zeon mobile suit) and gets completely curbstomped in the process. To use a pro wrestling term, its sole purpose in this OVA is to put the Kämpfer “over”. The idea is to get the audience to take the Kämpfer seriously by showing it dunking on a whole bunch of Feddie suits. After all, if it can do that, then what might it due to its true target?
By all appearances, no one at Sunrise or Bandai expected the audiences to remember the GM Sniper II. In fact, according to the Gundam Wiki, it was the last of all the mobile suits from 0080 to receive a High Grade model kit.
And yet, it was also the first of the “grunt” suits from the 0080 OVA to receive a Master Grade. It seems that at some point in time, fans remembered that despite its poor performance in the OVA, the GM Sniper II is an actually extremely cool looking mobile suit.
By my estimation it is currently one of, if not the most popular variant of the classic GM.
About the GM Sniper II
Notwithstanding its fate in the OVA, Gundam lore tells us that the GM Sniper II is actually one of the most powerful and capable GM variants. How good is it? Allegedly, its specifications are as good as, and in some cases better than, the Grandaddy RX78-2 Gundam.
“But wait a minute”, you might be thinking. “This is a special sniper unit. Usually sniper units are really good at sharpshooting, but poor at everything else. How is it as good as the RX78-2?” ` Simply put, its designers built a state of the art GM (with all the best technology available by the end of the year 0079), and added sniper enhancements on top of it. The result is that the GM Sniper II is a top tier mobile suit in all sorts of scenarios. Long range combat. Short range combat. Space combat. It can do it all.
Thoughts on the Design
The GM Sniper II is an interesting case. It’s overall silhouette and design clearly marks it as a GM. However, at the same time, it feels like one of the more radical departures from the GM line. To my eye, the GM Sniper II resembles a SWAT team sharpshooter more than it does an Earth Federation military weapon.
The blue and grey color palette is very reminiscent of a police uniform, and the dark blue on the chest and waist specifially gives the illusion that it is wearing tactical body armor. Then you have the special targeting visor, which makes it look like it is wearing a SWAT helmet. And I can’t forget to point out the orange-red highlights, which I always expect to start flashing like police lights. The GM Sniper II may not actuallly be “cop as mobile suit”, but it certainly feels like one, and that gives it a vibe unlike any other GM.
If we flip to the back of the mobile suit, we can see another notable feature of the GM Sniper II - namely, it has thrusters for days:
You have two main thrusters on the back that are vertically (rather than horizontally) stacked - with two smaller thrusters flanking them - in what is a fairly small and compact backpack unit. Then you have two additional thrusters in each leg. The overall effect of this design is that the GM Sniper II not only feels incredibly fast, but also incredibly efficient. It gives one the sense that all of the many iterations of the GM line finally led to a notable improvement to the technology.
Cop as Mecha
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the mecha designer for War in the Pocket was Yutaka Izubuchi, the same artist who designed all the mecha for Mobile Police Patlabor, including the legendary AV-98 Ingram:
I have a lot of thoughts on the fact that Izubuchi's designs for _War in the Pocket_ look uncomfortably similar to his designs for Patlabor, but I'll save that for another day. In this case, I don't actually think the GM Sniper II is any sort of clone of the Ingram. They share a handful of minor visual similarities, but that's about it. The fact that I think the Sniper II looks like a police robot doesn't mean that that was what Izubuchi was going for (whereas that is exactly what he intended for the Ingram).
Thoughts about the Kit
After some preliminary research, I discovered that this kit is going to require a lot of painting. In particular, it’s thrusters are meant to be three different colors:
All of that needs to be painted in.
Furthermore, the model’s signature sniper rifle also needs to be colored.
My research also revealed that the kit comes with a little bonus of sorts, namely a mobile worker. These little guys show up in the War in the Pocket OVA to try and help the Earth Federation forces fight off the Kampfer. However, when you see just how small they are, you can imagine that they don’t actually contribute to the fight:
I’m not sure why Bandai insisted on including this in the kit, but I guess it is a fun little addition.