This is part 2 of an overly long winded deep dive into the Moon Gundam. Here is Part 1 in case you haven’t read it.

Spoiler Preface!!!

This post contains some major spoilers for the Moon Gundam manga, as well as one kinda spoiler for the recently ended Gquuuuuux TV show.

How the Moon Gundam Comes to Be

At the end of Part 1, we established the existence of the AMS-123X Varguil, as well as Psycho Gundam G-Doors. We saw how parts of the G Doors crashed into the Moon Moon Colony. But how do these two things come together to form the Moon Gundam?

The blurb in the instruction manual makes it seem like Neo Zeon just shows up at Moon Moon and puts the Moon Gundam together, but it’s not that simple:

1. The wreckage of the G-Doors crashes into the exterior of Moon Moon
2. A small troop of Moon Moon soldiers make a rare journey out into space on a shuttle. Their goal is to make contact with one of the handful of outside companies that they trade with, to ask for help in repairing the damage to the colony
3. At the same time as their expedition, the Atalante 3 (the Neo Zeon ship mentioned in Part 1) travels near Moon Moon and gets into a battle with a Londo Bell detachment (though not the one Amuro is with. This is a different one)



4. It turns out that the Atalante 3 was secretly transporting Mineva Zabi, and for reasons I don't quite get, she goes on a spacewalk during the battle, and gets knocked off the ship.



5. Some of the Neo Zeon mobile suits - including the Varguil - are tasked with finding Mineva out in the darkness of space. They unintentionally cross paths with the Moon Moon shuttle, who then help them find the princess.
6. Once Londo Bell makes a tactical retreat, the remaining two parties make a deal. Moon Moon will allow the Neo Zeon ship to use their docking bay and make repairs, and in exchange, they'll help remove the Psycholates and patch up the colony. It's one of those situations where no one is happy, but they also have no choice but to deal with each other.
7. The crew of the _Atalante 3_ ask the people of Moon Moon if they can have the head from the G-Doors to replace the Varguil's head, which was heavily damaged during the battle. They say yes of course, since they have no use for it.

   In addition to getting themselves a free spare head, the ship's crew secretly hope that they may also find top secret Earth Federation intel inside the G-Door's computer systems.

   That is how the head of the Moon Gundam gets onto its body.

   

   And for what it's worth, this is what it would have looked like in color, in the Varguil's original paint job, before they repainted it in Gundam colors

   

8. Tensions flare inside the colony, and even worse, the Varguil isn't responding much to commands, even with its new head. That becomes a problem when a Neo Zeon hit squad is sent into the colony by some anti-Mineva faction to take out the princess and her entourage:
9. Throughout the story up to this point, the G-Doors head and the Psychoplates have been doing some Newtype resonating with Jutta. It's something a lot of the cast has been noticing, so when the hit squad invades, they get Jutta to the cockpit of the Varguil in hopes that he might have success piloting it.

   The resonance reaches a critical mass, at which point the Psychoplates - which still hadn't been removed yet from the outer walls of the colony - break free and fly through a hole in the colony's wall created by the hit squad.

   

   The plates attach to the Varguil's back in the shape of a crescent moon, at which point the Moon Gundam is officially born:

   

From this point on, the Moon Gundam basically belongs to Jutta. That’s not to say that Neo Zeon just lets him walk away with it; it’s more like circumstances prevent them from exerting any semblance of control over the boy or his mech (though not for a lack of trying).

And like I mentioned in Part 1, from here on out they largely take on a similar role to Banagher and the Unicorn Gundam. They spend time with the different factions, learn about the outside world, and try to keep people from hurting each other. It’s not a “good” mobile suit, nor a “bad” one, but a somewhat neutral one that is essentially “Gundam Unicorn Lite”.

Weapons and Stuff

Let’s start with the standard weapons. Since the Varguil was a prototype for the Sazabi, it (and the Moon Gundam by extension) has a few weapons that are basically prototypes of the Sazabi’s gear.

This includes its Beam Rifle, which is a smaller version of the Sazabi’s Beam Shotgun, as well as its melee weapon, which is basically the same as the Sazabi’s Beam Tomahawk.

Also, while it was still the Varguil, it had prototype versions of Sazabi’s funnels, but they get destroyed in battle, which is why Moon Gundam doesn’t have them.

But that’s okay, because it more than makes up for that with the Psychoplates. They are a surprisingly versatile set of weapons considering they’re essentially just big hunks of metal. They can be used to do all sorts of things - for example, you can throw them up as a shield:

Or it can mount them on the arms and use them as swords:

And then there is what I consider the most obvious use case - flinging the plates around like the giant metal slabs they are in order to inflict blunt force trauma:

Granted, Jutta doesn’t do this all that much, since he’s really not trying to kill anyone. But he absolutely could if he wanted to - and if you’ve seen a certain episode from GQuuuuuux, you’ll know just how brutal it would look:

The Moon Gundam has one more trick up its sleeve - quite literally in fact. It’s equipped with something called the “Butterfly Edge” in each wrist. They deploy two tiny beam blades, which can be used for a bit of close quarters stabbing. But the Butterfly Edges can also be thrown like a pair of beam boomerangs. It’s a pretty cool idea - in fact, I’m surprised we don’t see more weapons like this.

Appearances in Media

The Moon Gundam reminds me a lot of the Crossbone Gundam. They’re both fairly popular and well known, despite the fact that they were born from manga, and have yet to appear in any mainline, non Build Fighters animated work.

Except that’s not entirely true. The Moon Gundam has actually shown up in some of the animated (and voiced!) story chapters of the mobile game UC Engage. So if you want to see some of the big moments from the Manga in animated form, you should go and try to play the game (or just look up the cutscene on Youtube).

Now whether or not that means we’ll get a full on Moon Gundam OVA, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Almost Done

I’ve got one more post in me, I promise, and then we’ll finally get to the build. Stay tuned!