I don’t mean to make this blog post dark and gloomy, but my father recently passed away. Circumstances were such that I had to jump right back into work and parenting as soon as I got home, but this week I finally got to take a few days off to process my grief and take care of myself.
Part of that self care routine involved a trip to the hobby store for a bit of retail therapy, and while there I found a kit to build:
This here is the SD Command Gundam, and while I can’t say I’ve been looking for this for a long time, it has been on my wish list for at least a few months now.
I spent a bit of time discussing Command Gundam back when I built its spiritual successor, the Command Quan[T]. But my research was spotty, brief, and possibly inaccurate, so allow me to try again with some meatier (but still possibly inaccurate!) details.
A Little History of SD Gundam
SD Gundam began with a series of animated shorts in the late 80’s, in which most (all?) of the SD characters were based on existing mobile suits from the Universal Century. The shorts (and related merchandise) proved to be quite popular, enough to convince Bandai to keep it going through the early 90’s with a new line of original SD characters (“original” in the sense that they weren’t based on any specific existing mobile suit).
As far as I can tell, Bandai made at least three different product lines, each based on a specific, original SD Gundam. One was based around Knight Gundam (a stereotypical European warrior with sword and shield):
One around Musha Gundam (a stereotypical Japanese warrior with katana and naginata):
And the final one, SD Gundam Force, was based around Command Gundam (who is a stereotypical American warrior with a f*ckton of guns and ammo).
Each product line seems to have consisted of some combination of manga, toys, and tie-in video games, and each one was largely self contained. The one notable exception to this rule was Musha Knight Command: SD Gundam Scramble, a 15 minute short film that played in front of Gundam F91 in theatres. This saw Musha, Knight, and Command sucked into an alternate universe overrun by aliens, which the trio team up to vanquish.
My research suggests that after the boom days of the early 90’s, SD Gundam fell by the wayside for the rest of the decade, only returning to prominence in 2003 with the release of SD Gundam Force (which doesn’t seem to have featured Command Gundam or his mates). Since then, it’s a had a fairly continuous presence in the franchise, with merch, shows, games, and more coming out on a near constant basis.
About Command Gundam
I finally got a chance to see a translated version of SD Gundam Scramble, which to this day remains the only animated appearance of Command Gundam. The short itself is just “okay”, though Command Gundam himself is clearly the highlight. He behaves exactly as I expected. He has a deep gruff voice, he liberally sprinkles English phrases into his dialogue, and he spends most of his time either cursing or shooting.
As for his depictions in manga and video games, I haven’t found anything definitive. Some sources (including the flavor text on the box of this model kit) imply that he once served as a sort of drill instructor, and was later upgraded for combat purposes. Later on he became injured, though it’s not clear whether this caused him to step down from combat, or simply from a leadership position.
I only bring this up because there are depictions of Command Gundam in which he lacks most of his armor:
I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that this might be his pre-upgrade form.
In any case, after his early 90’s salad days, Command Gundam (along with the rest of the SD Scramble trio) seems to have fallen off the radar for quite some time, not even reappearing for SD Gundam Force. As far as I can tell, he only came back into the spotlight in 2012, when Bandai released new model kits of the SD Scramble trio as part of the “BBLegends” line.
This was followed up by an appearance in 2013’s Gundam Build Fighters, where master builder Takeshi Iori suggests the 2012 Command kit as Aila Jyrkiäinen’s first Gunpla build.
This was my personal introduction to Command, and I have a feeling I’m not the only American fan for whom this is true.
Other Thoughts
If you’re wondering why the 2012 kits are called “BBLegends”, it’s because SD Gundam models were originally released under the SD Gundam BB Senshi branding.
Speaking of which, it took me quite a while to find any photographic evidence of what the original Command Gundam model looked like. The Gundam Wiki has a screenshot of the box, but nothing else:
However, after finally figuring out the right keywords to search on, I think I found an eBay listing containing images of the OG model. Considering this listing was for over $100, I seriously hope it’s the original. Anyway, here’s a pic:
If that is a photo of the OG, I’ll say that it looks pretty darn good considering its age (though who knows how much of that color separation is due to painting. My guess is that it’s most of it).