HGUniversal Century

MS-06S Zaku II Tigers Ver.

A ballpark souvenir wearing a battlefield legend's frame.

MechaGrade Score

3.6/5

Zaku II · 1/144 · 2019

GradeHG

Scale1/144

Released2019

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is the well-loved 2007 Ver.

2.0 Char's Zaku mold dressed in Hanshin Tigers yellow and black instead of the usual pink and tan, and once I got past the novelty of it, the actual build held up fine. It is a good, honest mid-2000s HGUC with real polycap joints and a working monoeye rather than a printed dot. It will never out-articulate a modern Revive kit, but as a piece of crossover history it earned its spot on my shelf.

Best for: Gundam collectors and Hanshin Tigers fans who want a genuine 2019 collab piece, not the best-engineering Zaku on the market

The full review

What it is

Strip away the tiger stripes and this is the same MS-06S Zaku II Ver. 2.0 mold Bandai has been running since 2007, reboxed for the Gundam 40th anniversary tie-in with Japan's Hanshin Tigers baseball team and sold only through the team's Koshien-area shop in May 2019. I went in expecting a gimmick and came out respecting the bones of it. The monoeye still slides and rotates through the head shell on its little dial, the polycap elbows and knees still bend further than kits twice its price from that era, and the shoulder spikes and shield still snap on with the satisfying click I remember from the original Char's Zaku release.

The catch

The color scheme is molded in yellow and black rather than Zaku's usual pink and tan, which means the plastic itself is Tigers merchandise first and a Gundam kit second, and a couple of the finer stripe details still lean on stickers rather than separate parts. This is a pre-Revive HG, so the ankle and hip range trails well behind current-generation HGUC kits, and the wrists are simple swap-in fists and open hands rather than the poseable grip joints Bandai uses now. It was sold exclusively at one physical storefront with a two-per-customer limit, so secondary market prices run well above the original 2,778 yen tag.

Who it's for

If you collect Gundam crossover oddities or you are a Hanshin Tigers fan who also builds gunpla, this is worth chasing down. The mold underneath is genuinely solid, so you are not paying a premium for a bad kit wearing a fun paint job, you are paying a premium for scarcity. If you just want the best-engineered Char's Zaku for your UC lineup, skip this one and grab the standard-issue HGUC or Revive release instead and save the tiger stripes for the people who actually want a dugout mascot on their shelf.

The build story

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

Runner layout follows the familiar Ver. 2.0 script, small gates on the visible armor faces that clean up fast with a knife and a bit of sanding, and the yellow plastic shows sink marks a shade more readily than the original pink so I took extra care around the shoulder armor and skirt.

The monoeye assembly is the standout piece of engineering here, a simple internal dial lets you swing the eye across its slot instead of committing to one angle, and the double-jointed knees and elbows from the 2007 redesign still give this kit a wider pose range than plenty of HGUC kits that came after it. The shield, shoulder spike, and hand-swap accessories round out a loadout that feels complete rather than trimmed down for a novelty release.

Lore & trivia

01This kit reboxes the MS-06S Zaku II Ver. 2.0 mold that Bandai originally released in 2007 for the Char's Counterattack lineup
02It was produced for the Mobile Suit Gundam 40th anniversary collaboration with the Hanshin Tigers professional baseball team
03The kit sold exclusively at the Hanshin Tigers team shop Alps starting May 17, 2019, priced at 2,778 yen with a two-kit-per-customer limit
04The same 2019 Gundam x pro baseball promotion also produced a Hanshin Tigers RX-78-2 Gundam given away with select ticket purchases