If your town is getting a new Gunpla factory, it only makes sense that it get a full-size Gundam statue too, right?

On February 17, the Shizuoka City city council gathered for a regular meeting of the assembly. One of the topics discussed, though, was anything but ordinary: it looks like Shizuoka is going to be getting a life-sized Gundam.

The reason for the expected arrival of a great big anime robot is actually because soon there are going to be a whole lot of scaled-down anime robots in Shizuoka. This summer, Japan’s newest Gundam plastic model, or “Gunpla,” factory is set to open in the Naganuma district of the city’s Aoi Ward. With the Gundam franchise’s enormous popularity both in Japan and overseas, the factory will be offering tours to let visitors see how the models are made, but Bandai Spirits, the company that produces Gunpla, wants to leave an even bigger impression on fans who make the trip to Shizuoka. In addition to a Gundam Base specialty store, Bandai Spirits also wants to erect a life-size Gundam Statue in the city.

Japan currently has three life-size Gundam Statues. There’s the 19.7-meter (64,6-foot) RX-0 Unicorn Gundam in Tokyo’s Odaiba neighborhood, the 20.5-meter Nu Gundam in Fukuoka, and the RX-78F00/E Gundam in Osaka, recently relocated from Yokohama. While the Tokyo and Fukuoka Gundams are permanent installations, the RX-78F00/E Gundam is only scheduled to be in Osaka for the duration of the Expo 2025 world’s fair. However, Expo 2025 runs until mid-October of this year, so the RX-78F00/E wouldn’t be able to be in Shizuoka in time for the factory’s opening. That means that either Shizuoka is going to have to wait until several months after the factory opens for its life-size Gundam, or that the city will get a brand-new statue, raising Japan’s number of 1:1-scale mobile suits to four.

Though the plan has yet to be finalized, members of the city council have expressed enthusiasm at the prospect of helping attract visitors to a part of Japan that doesn’t get a lot of tourist travelers. Considering that when Japan’s original life-size Gundam statue was temporarily displayed in Shizuoka City from the summer of 2010 to the spring of 2011 it drew a total of over 1.6 million people, Gundam has a proven record of success as a tourism destination, so odds are the city government and Bandai Spirits will find a way to make the new statue happen.

Source: Shizuoka Shimbun Digital Web via Yahoo! Japan News, Shizuoka Life
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