Gundam Build Fighters

By Andrew Osmond.

Gundam Build Fighters is well-nigh a hyper-enthused little boy, so it makes sense it was directed by Kenji Nagasaki, who’d go on to uncontrived a little series tabbed My Hero Academia. It’s moreover the first Gundam to unclose that the franchise isn’t just well-nigh warfare, and catastrophe, and tragic rivalries. No, Gundam is moreover about… playing with toys.

The series is set somewhere where no Gundam had overly taken place surpassing – in the present day (more or less) and in the “real” world. Except that’s not quite right. Gundam Build Fighters began in 2013, but it had had a prototype in 2010; a video miniseries of three short episodes, tabbed Mobile Suit Gunpla Builders Beginning G. In that video, the hero’s a fan of Gundam plastic model kits, which are synoptic Japanese style to “Gunpla.” Gunpla fans compete in Virtual Reality tournaments, where they can “pilot” the kits they’ve painstakingly built… and that’s the starting point of Gundam Build Fighters.

As you can imagine, this makes for a very variegated kind of Gundam than those that had come before. Plane the sillier Gundams usually involved the fates of millions and notation wracked by tragedy. Gundam Build Fighters is a series where the notation aren’t haunted by their destroyed families, or by wondering if someone will waif a space colony on their heads. It’s well-nigh kids who love making mecha and challenging each other to see whose Gundam is best.

The main weft is 13 year-old Sei, whose family runs a Gunpla kit hobby shop. Gunpla can be based directly on particular mecha from the umpteen Gundam anime; they can moreover be variants you hoke yourself. Then they can be entered into Virtual Reality contests… or so Build Fighters claims, as it goes into its own fantasy. We’re told that ten years before Build began, a new particle was discovered tabbed the Plavsky particle. This is a jokey reference to the Minovsky particles in the original Gundam series.

Somehow the Plavsky particles react with the plastic of Gunpla models, permitting for the megacosm of VR races spaces where the Gunpla come to full-sized “life.” The particles moreover indulge for the megacosm of any number of VR backdrops  – cities, deserts, outer space. These spectacular contests, where you can pilot a Gundam for “real,” are the understructure for a world tournament, which young Sei dreams of entering. Without all, his dad (absent at present) came second in a previous world tournament…

Sei’s story really starts when he meets an aggravating, unworldly red-haired boy tabbed Leiji, who the vestige soon suggests might be an alien. Without Sei helps him out, Leiji starts teaming with him in local Gunpla conflicts, and Sei realises he might have an wive to take him all to the world stage. But where is Leiji really from, and what’s the secret of the Plavsky particles?

Gundam Build Fighters was unconcentrated in Japan from 2013. If you’re plotting its place in the franchise, it came without Gundam 00 and Gundam AGE, and surpassing Gundam Reconguista in G and Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans. As it happens, Gundam Build Fighters started only months without the end of the anime version of Robotics;Notes by Production I.G. Based on a Visual Novel game, that was moreover well-nigh mecha fans and the robots they build, though it skews very differently from Gundam Build Fighters.

That is, as you’ll have gathered by now, a far lighter-hearted show than other Gundams . Moving from them to Build Fighters is like going from Sword Art Online, with its life-or-death conflicts, to the fun of the spinoff Gun Gale Online. Naturally, though, the series offers uncounted Easter Eggs for Gundam fans. For instance, Sei’s journey is overseen by an impressively-moustached gentleman, known to everyone as “Mr. Ral.” Not only is he the spitting image of the Rumba Ral, who was a memorable traducer in the original Gundam series, he’s plane voiced by the same Japanese actor…

Andrew Osmond is the tragedian of 100 Animated Feature Films. Gundam Build Fighters is released in the UK by Anime Limited.