RX-78F00/E Gundam strikes a pose ahead of opening of world’s fair.

When doing construction projects in Japan, it’s customary to have a Shinto priest come to the site to purify it, bestow a blessing upon the project, and pray for its safe completion. This practice is observed when building houses, office buildings, and, yes, real-world giant life-size anime robots.

We’re now less than half a year away from the opening of the Expo 2025 Osaka world’s fair, which will be held on Yumeshima Island in Osaka City. Among the presenters at the event will be Bandai Namco, the toymaker behind the vast array of Gundam merch. Rather than just show up with a bunch of scaled-down plastic model kits, though, the organizers of Bandai Namco’s Gundam Next Future Pavilion have built a full-size Gundam statue, dubbed the RX-78F00/E Gundam.

Japan’s eastern Kanto region has had three life-size Gundams to date, two in Tokyo and one in Yokohama, and the southwestern island of Kyushu has one as well. This is the first time for the central Kansai region to be Gundam-graced, however, and rather than wait until Expo 2025 opens to assemble the mecha or keep it under wraps, Bandai Namco has decided to finish its 1:1-scale Gunpla build early, and show off the results in a special preview video and shared photos.

The Shinto purification ceremony was held on Wednesday, prior to the final piece, Gundam’s head, being raised by a crane and placed atop his already completed body. The ceremony followed the same schedule as the ones for the Yokohama and Fukuoka (Kyushu) Gundams, which were also blessed by Shinto priests on the day that their heads were installed to pray that the workers be able to complete their projects without incident or injury.

In its tweet about the ceremony, the official Gundam Next Future Pavilion mentions that the RX-78F00/E Gundam has light blue paneling on its legs and armor skirting “which was not present on the moving Gundam Factory Yokohama Gundam,” and also that at Expo 2025 you’ll be able to get a close view of the Gundam’s feet and back, which “could not be seen closely” [at the Yokohama Gundam facility]. This would seem to imply that the Yokohama Gundam, which was disassembled this past spring, has been shipped to Osaka for the expo and given some new accouterments to repurpose it as the RX-78F00/E Gundam.

The Osaka Gundam having the same internals as the moving Yokohama one also makes sense in light of the RX-78F00/E Gundam’s complicated posing, in which the mecha is reaching out to touch the stars and “carve out a new space age with humanity.” It’s 16.72 meters (54.9 feet) from the ground to the tips of Gundam’s outstretched fingers.

Expo 2025 opens on April 13 and runs until October 13 of next year.

Related: Gundam Next Future Pavilion official website
Source, images: ガンダムチャンネル
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