MGUniversal Century

MS-06J Zaku II The Gravity Front Image Color Version

The Ver. 2.0 Zaku frame in its earthbound war paint, and it still moves like nothing else in the line.

MechaGrade Score

4.2/5

Zaku II · 1/100 · 2009

GradeMG

Scale1/100

Released2009

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is the MG Zaku II Ver.

2.0 engineering wearing the Gravity Front OVA's mud brown and rust colorway, and that engineering is still some of the best in the whole Zaku family. I built one expecting a simple recolor and came away impressed all over again by how far that double hip joint and the ball jointed skirt armor push a suit this old. The ground type loadout, machine gun, bazooka, heat hawk, missile pods, crackers, gives you more to hand it than most Zaku kits bother with. It is not cheap or easy to find, but the kit underneath the paint job earns its keep.

Best for: Zaku loyalists and UC ground war fans who already know the Ver. 2.0 frame is good and want it in earth-toned colors instead of the usual green

The full review

What it is

Strip away the box art and this is the same MG MS-06 Ver. 2.0 architecture Bandai has been reusing since the early 2000s, just molded in the sandy browns and dull reds the Zaku wore on the ground in MS IGLOO 2. That frame is the whole reason to want this kit. The hip and torso joints let it kneel on one leg the way it does in the OVA, the shoulders rotate through a genuinely wide arc, and the monoeye is geared to track with the head instead of needing a screwdriver poke. Handing it the machine gun, heat hawk, and bazooka from the ground type loadout and running through Gravity Front poses is exactly as satisfying as I hoped.

The catch

This is a Premium Bandai limited color variant of an older kit, not a fresh tool, so you are paying a premium for a paint job on a design that first came out around 2009. Expect it to be harder to find and pricier than the standard green or Char's red releases. Builders of the Ver. 2.0 frame consistently flag nub placement on the arms as annoying, with visible marks if you skip painting, and the finger and hose armor pieces are small and fiddly during assembly. None of that is unique to this colorway, it comes with the base kit, but it is worth knowing before you pay collector prices for it.

Who it's for

Buy this if you already love the MG Zaku II Ver. 2.0 and want the ground war look without painting a green kit yourself, or if the IGLOO OVAs are your corner of the UC timeline and you want the accurate earth type scheme out of the box. Skip it if you just want a good Zaku for a reasonable price, the standard MG Ver. 2.0 releases give you the same excellent frame for a fraction of the hunting and cost. This is a kit for people buying the color story on top of engineering they already trust.

The build story

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

The Ver. 2.0 inner frame builds fast thanks to a snap-fit system that skips glue almost entirely, but the small stuff slows you down, individually articulated fingers and separate armor rings on the neck hoses take patience to seat cleanly. Runner cleanup on the arms is the one spot builders keep coming back to, the nub placement sits somewhere it will show unless you paint over it.

Where this kit earns its reputation is articulation: full shoulder rotation, double jointed elbows, ball jointed skirt armor that swings clear for deep poses, and double jointed knees that let it kneel on one leg exactly like the OVA. Color separation on this Gravity Front colorway is handled in the molded plastic rather than stickers, matching the frame's usual standard, and the ground type weapon set (machine gun, bazooka, heat hawk, twin missile pods, crackers, Sturm Faust options per the source material) gives it more to hold than a lot of same-era MG kits.

Lore & trivia

01MS IGLOO 2: The Gravity Front is a three-episode OVA that retells the One Year War's ground battles on Earth from the Earth Federation's side.
02The J-type Zaku II is the ground combat variant, built to carry heavier optional gear like leg-mounted missile pods and the Magella Top cannon since recoil is less of a problem with gravity underfoot.
03S-Mine grenades were first shown in use by a J-type Zaku II in the Gravity Front OVA.
04This release recolors the existing MG MS-06 Ver. 2.0 tooling in the earth-toned scheme from the show rather than introducing a new mold.