Located at the Gundam Factory, the robot weighs a massive 55,000 pounds. The construction of the giant robot finally completed earlier last month on July 29, 2020. Notably, Shinto priests also blessed the robot’s head in a traditional construction ceremony known as “Jotoshiki” before it was finally attached to the robot’s body with a building crane. The impersonation of the popular robot figure is built using a mechanical skeleton enabling movement in its limbs. The team had officially tested its first movements including in its arms, legs and torso earlier on July 5. Following the testing, the real life Gundam made the headlines for “moving his arms like a boss.” Its earlier video when engineers took the robot for a walk was also a delight for many fans of robotic videos.
What is Gundam Robot?
For the uninitiated, Gundam Robot (or the Gandamu Shirizu) is part of an iconic Japanese anime series. If you are visiting Japan, you got to know about it even if you aren’t an ardent anime fan. The popular metaseries of animated adult cartoons (anime) featuring the giant robots has been created by the Sunrise studios. The giant robots in the series are often called the “Mobile Suits” and these Mobile Suits on the protagonist side are called the Gundam. The Gundam series dates back to 1979 when it first began its journey as TV show, “Mobile Suit Gundam”. It eventually went on to become a franchise with notable works across media forms including novels, video games, movies, TV series, etc. with several prequels, sequels and tonnes of side stories. Notably, there are a total of seven different Gundam Timelines that are now a part of the official franchise.
What Type of Robot Is The Giant Gundam?
The giant Gundam humanoid robot inspired by the Japanese sci-fi franchise is a RX-78-2 robot. It replicates the original RX-78-2 Gundam, the Mobile Suit introduced in the original 1979 series. Notably, the giant Gundam robot in the Yokohama factory isn’t the country’s first skyscraper robot inspired from the series. It is the second full-scale RX-78 robot of Japan. Its predecessor had also glorified the Tokyo’s Odaiba district once before it was replaced by the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam. The sight was earlier scheduled to open up in Summer but owing to the COVID-19 virus outbreak across the world, the event stand postponed for October 2020.
