Badass Mecha of the Week # 4: Gelgoog

If you've ever seen the first Mobile Suit Gundam series — the almighty father of all Gundam, the founder of the real robot genre and the starter of various mecha anime cliches like the masked villain, angsty teen pilots, giant space lasers, and Newtypes (modern versions include Innovators, Coordinators, Whispereds, etc.) — you've probably noticed that new cannon fodder in the Battle of A Baoa Qu. That, my friends, is the MS-14 Gelgoog.

It's fat I know. If I were to be asked, the design's simply off my taste. I don't think I'll be picking a model kit of one unless I plan to make an A Baoa Qu diorama. That there at the left is 0083's Gelgoog Marine variant, a remake of the original which is a little worse.

Not to mention a funny name. Gelgoog? Quite goofy to pronounce really. Zaku, Dom and Gouf (no pun intended) are a lot more badass-sounding names than this. Just my opinion though. But really, I like this mobile suit for a few reasons: I have a hunch that it served as Okawara's basis for an old SEED favorite, the GINN. That and it has a badass finned head, quite a redeeming feature indeed.

Buuuuuuut, don't you ever let the looks deceive you! This here is a really agile mobile suit, what with all those thrusters under its skirt, shoulders and legs. Plus, it's the first Zeon mobile suit with a full complement of beam weapons, twin beam swords and a beam rifle. It is said that given a capable pilot, it can outmatch the Federation's White Devil, the RX-78-2 Gundam.

Yep, you bet it sort of did once. Yeah, sort of. Well there was this little skirmish in and outside the abandoned Texas colony during the One Year War. The Principality's ace Char Aznable in a red prototype Gelgoog rushed in the aid of Lady Kycillia's subordinate M'Quve who's piloting a Gyan. He got the Gundam pinned by his melee attacks, until M'Quve ordered his retreat.

That's it. The rest of the Gundam vs. Gelgoog battles can be described as the usual uber-mech vs. cannonfodder scene. Boring. Not if you patch together many of these scenes in a large battle. This owes much to the Gelgoogs piloted by student pilots who haven't even graduated from Zeon boot camps. You may also call them novices, or better yet, noobs. Meh, they can't even stand against the humbler GMs.

Point is, the Gelgoog is one badass mobile suit because it is equal to, if not more powerful than, the legendary Gundam itself, given pilots of equal skill in both mobile suits. The fact that it was deployed too late in the war when Zeon's skilled MS veterans have dwindled in number contributed to the mobile suit's failure. Interestingly, I've browsed it's MAHQ profile and it's said there that had the Gelgoog been deployed two months before A Baoa Qu, it could have significantly influenced the course of the war in favor of the Principality of Zeon. Shame, Gihren.


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