From nearly 20 meters above the ground, the Unicorn Gundam looks out over Tokyo.
When Tokyo’s original Gundam statue was dismantled last spring, the bittersweet farewell was made a little sweeter by the knowledge that a new, even bigger statue, this time of the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam, would be taking its place outside the Odaiba neighborhood’s Diver City entertainment complex. Still, the promise that the new 1:1-scale anime mecha would be finished this fall seemed just a little too good to be true.
But it looks like half a year is indeed all the time workers need to remove the old Gundam and build its replacement. Earlier this month, the Unicorn Gundam’s head unit was spotted in Odaiba, along with the robot’s partially completed legs. Now, a new video from Twitter user @ShonanPai shows that the torso is more or less done, and it, along with the head, have been mounted on the mecha’s hips.
The Unicorn Gundam has a gallantly commanding presence, thanks to its 19.7-meter (64.6-foot) height, 170 centimeters more than its predecessor’s. These images also show the head in its standard Unicorn Mode, with a single protrusion rising from the head. The last time we looked at work-in-progress photos of the statue, the head was in Destroy Mode, so it’s now all but confirmed that the head will be able to reconfigure itself, just like in the anime source material.
The RX-0’s legs are also looking much more like their animated counterparts, with far more armor plating and other details than just over a week ago. The Unicorn’s rocket thrusters have also been attached to its backpack.
An official completion date has yet to be announced, and will likely depend on a variety of factors, including the weather, since the statue is being assembled outdoors. Still, it looks like the Unicorn Gundam, is definitely going to be finished before winter sets in.
Source: Jin
Follow Casey on Twitter, where he hopes that someday Odaiba gets its craft beer brewery back too.