Interest
Official 6-Meter-Tall Gundam Statue to Rise in China
posted on by Egan Loo
Gundam.info, the official Gundam portal site, announced on Thursday that a 20-foot-tall (3-meter-tall) statue of the original RX-78-2 Gundam mobile suit will rise over Shanghai this month. Bandai (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., the Namco Bandai Group's subsidiary for toy design and merchandising in China, is erecting the statue in Shanghai at the 8th China International Animation, Cartoon and Game Fair, which will run from July 12 to July 16.
The statue will feature a unique color scheme designed by the Beijing Yankai Cultural Development Co., Ltd. The same firm is drawing the manhua adaptation of the Mobile Suit Gundam UC story in Tian Man magazine.
Bandai will sell a 1/100-scale Master Grade RX-78-2 Gundam Ver. 2.0 China Special Ver. model kit in the same color scheme as the statue. Starting on July 12, people can buy the model through the online retailer Taobaowan, Bandai's own official shop, and at certain Namco Bandai Group events in China.
The 8th China International Animation, Cartoon and Game Fair happens to host the Chinese qualifying round for Gunpla Builders World Cup 2012, an international model-making competition.
The official Chinese statue is completely separate from the orange lookalike statue that stood at the Floraland (Chengdu Guosetianxiang) park in 2010 — until it was quietly modified and then removed entirely after an international outcry.
The first standing, 1/1-scale Gundam statue rose at Tokyo's Odaiba island in 2009, moved near Bandai's Japanese headquarters in Shizuoka from 2010 to 2011, and then returned to Odaiba (at a new location) this year.
Update: Typo fixed. Thanks, Buster D.
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