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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Badass Mecha of the Week # 1: Kampfer

I'll be starting this weekly topic from here on to keep my blog updated, apart from the other fact that I simply feel like sharing an interest.

So to start off, let me introduce you to my favorite hit-and-run mobile suit of all time, the Kampfer from Mobile Suit Gundam 0080.

Before I proceed in telling you how badass this mecha is, let me give a brief history of the original Mobile Suit Gundam universe. In the near future, in an era dubbed as the Universal Century (UC), mankind started to colonize space, living in clusters of Island 3 colonies known as Sides (e.g. Side 7, Side 6, etc.). Over time, those who live in space became paranoid of those who live in Earth, a schism giving rise to the labels spacenoid (space colonists) and earthnoid (the regular Terran). Soon in the year UC 0079, colonies in Side 3 known as the Principality of Zeon declared a war of independence from the Earth Federation, the one-world government ruling Earth. This conflict is known as the One Year War.

So late in the War, the Principality developed the MS-18E Kampfer, a mobile suit designed for hit-and-run attacks. This MS sacrifices armor for multiple powerful thrusters all over its body (not excluding the head) which allows great maneuverability and speed. Why take hits when you can dodge 'em eh? The drawback however is that the Kampfer consumes way too much fuel with all those thrusters working in sync, thereby shortening its operational time.

Now its standard weapons loadout includes a couple of giant bazookas on its shoulders, a couple of huge versions of the classic panzerfaust on its waist, two head vulcans you'd usually see in Gundams, a shotgun and a chain of mines it has used once to strip a Gundam itself nude of armor. Yes that's a badass enough combo even if you have no knowledge of how the Kampfer took down an entire Feddie mobile suit garrison in Side 6 single-handedly.

Unfortunately, the Kampfer was developed too late to change the course of the War, a months-long stalemate which has finally gone in favor of the Federation. In Dec. 20, UC 0079, Mikhail Kaminsky, a member of Zeon's elite Cyclops Team, is deployed in the Kampfer in Libot Colony, Side 6 to neutralize the Federation's latest prototype, the RX-78NT-1 "Alex" Gundam. He and the rest of the Team failed, and the only Kampfer known in history is shredded by a three-barrel 90 mm Gatling.


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