HGUniversal Century

MS-06S Zaku II Lions Ver.

A ballpark giveaway wearing the same bones as the Zaku kit that taught a generation of builders to love this suit.

MechaGrade Score

2.9/5

Zaku II · 1/144 · 2019

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2019

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This one is a novelty first and a model kit second, and I think that is the honest way to score it.

It takes the old HGUC MS-06S Char's Zaku II tooling from 2002, strips the red off, molds it in white, and hands it a sheet of Saitama Seibu Lions decals to mark Gundam's 40th anniversary tie-in with Japanese pro baseball. If you love the classic Zaku silhouette and want a genuinely odd shelf piece, it delivers. If you want a modern build experience, the underlying kit shows its age at every joint.

Best for: Zaku completionists and baseball crossover collectors who already know and accept the old HGUC tooling's limits

The full review

What it is

What you actually get here is the venerable 2002 HGUC Char's Zaku II, one of the kits that cemented the Zaku II as Gunpla's most beloved grunt suit, reissued in stark white plastic and dressed up with Lions team decals instead of Char's signature red. It was distributed as an event exclusive tied to the ballclub's 2019 Gundam 40th anniversary promotion, so you are not buying it off a shelf so much as finding one that already made its way out of that giveaway. The core suit still has real charm. The proportions are correct old-school Zaku, the mono-eye rotates, and the accessory set (machine gun, bazooka, heat hawk, and both left and right weapon-gripping hands) is generous for a kit this old.

The catch

The tooling is over two decades old and it shows. The torso does not rotate independently from the waist, so you lose the twisting poses modern HG kits take for granted, and the rear skirt armor does not move either, which caps how far the legs can kick back. Ball joints and polycaps on original-run copies have a known history of loosening or snapping at the hip over time. There is essentially no panel line detail molded in, true to the suit's deliberately plain 1970s design, so the finished kit reads flat and toylike straight off the runners unless you add your own panel lining. And because this is a promotional item rather than a retail release, actually finding one outside secondary markets is its own separate problem.

Who it's for

Buy this if you are a dedicated Zaku collector who wants the oddity of a white, baseball-branded Char's custom next to your red one, or if the novelty of a sports collaboration Gunpla genuinely appeals to you. Skip it if you want a satisfying modern build or strong articulation for dynamic posing, the 2020 HGUC Revive version or the RG solve nearly every complaint here with independent torso rotation and tighter engineering. This is a display piece and a conversation starter, not a kit you reach for when you want to actually play with a pose.

The build story

What the build is actually like, and the engineering worth knowing about.

This is the same basic assembly as the original 2002 HGUC Char's Zaku II, so expect simple multi-piece limb construction over polycap joints rather than an inner frame. Gate placement is dated by modern standards and cleanup is straightforward, there just isn't much surface detail to clean up in the first place. The white plastic and Lions decal sheet replace the usual red Char's Custom color scheme entirely, so this is a repaint-and-rebrand job on a familiar mold rather than a new engineering pass.

Articulation is the kit's defining limitation: shoulders arc forward on pegs, elbows bend to roughly 90 degrees, and the hip ball joints allow decent leg swing, but the torso-waist connection is fixed and the rear skirt doesn't pivot, so backward and twisting poses are mostly off the table. The saving grace is the accessory set. A machine gun, bazooka, heat hawk, and dual-handed weapon grips is more than plenty of old HG kits bothered to include, and it gives the finished figure some genuine posing variety within its joint limits.

Lore & trivia

01The MS-06S is Char Aznable's personal Zaku II, famously nicknamed the Red Comet and clocked in the original anime as three times faster than a standard Zaku, a line that has followed the suit into decades of Gunpla marketing.
02This kit reuses the original HGUC MS-06S Char's Zaku II mold from 2002, one of the earliest entries in Bandai's High Grade Universal Century line and a kit widely credited with popularizing the Zaku II as a builder favorite in its own right, not just Gundam's rival.
03The white colorway and decal sheet were produced for a 2019 promotion tying Gundam's 40th anniversary to Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball season, in which Bandai partnered with all twelve NPB teams on team-colored Gunpla giveaways, with the Saitama Seibu Lions choosing this Zaku II rather than the RX-78-2 Gundam most other teams used.
04The kit was distributed as an event exclusive bundled with tickets around the Lions' 2019 season rather than sold as a standard retail item, which is why it circulates mostly through secondary and collector markets today.