FISCHER: The siren’s call of Gunpla

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

I’ve been digging deep into the nostalgia well lately in my continuing quest to distract myself from the ongoing fall of Western civilization and, as a result, have rekindled my interest in the Gundam franchise.

Essentially the Japanese equivalent to Star Wars, the genre-defining giant robot franchise has been massively popular since the 80s, though it only broke ground in the U.S. at the turn of the century.

I was a huge fan of the franchise in high school but admit my interest tapered off over the years. Recently I’ve been catching up again, watching new shows on streaming services, picking up Blu-Rays of older ones, and buying manga collections to see what all the franchise has been up to in the last couple decades.

It’s been nice to have such a deep well of content to dive into.

And, of course, this means the algorithms that decide what advertisements I need to see have started flooding my social media pages with Gundam-related merchandise.

Just like every other successful cartoon property of its time, the Gundam franchise exists to sell toys. Or, more specifically, model kits.

In fact, while the original run of the 1979 show was canceled due to low ratings, the unexpected popularity of the model kits featuring the show’s giant robots gave the franchise a second shot, ultimately allowing it to grow into the multi-billion dollar cultural icon it has become.

The modeling side of Gundam is so embedded into the franchise that it has looped back around to the point where there are shows about building Gundam models. There’s even a dedicated term specifically for Gundam model kits, “Gunpla.” There’s a Wikipedia page for it and everything.

Though I’m primarily a fan of the story-side of the franchise, it’s really hard to be a part of the Gundam fandom without some level of exposure to the wide variety of model kits.

Now, I want to be a good little consumer and celebrate my fandom with sweet merch, but I know all too well what a slippery slope I’d be getting into.

Building model kits is a full blown hobby in and of itself, and not an inexpensive one. And it’s not like you can just pick up a few and stop. I mean, theoretically somebody could, I suppose, but I know I couldn’t.

I mean sure, I’d love to have a 1/100 scale model of the Wing Gundam Proto Zero, and maybe also the Wing Zero Custom with the white angel wings over its vernier thrusters. But I’d also need a model of the Epyon to face off against it. And then there’s the Heavyarms, which looks really cool and would be great to recreate one of the epic battles of the show with the Tallgeese but the master grade model of the Tallgeese is out of stock and you can see how this sort of thing can snowball out of control. …

I’m a busy guy. I’ve got video games to play. I’ve got books to read. I’ve got TV shows to watch. Sometimes I even go out and do my job so I can afford all those things. How am I gonna fit model kit building time in there?

And then what? How much longer until I’m buying new display cabinets with built-in lighting off of Temu, which is also being advertised to me, to show off what are basically a bunch of plastic action figures that I had to assemble myself?

It’s madness.

I’ll probably order one soon.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and actually has an unassembled Gundam model kit he’s been putting off building.