MGUniversal Century

MS-06K Zakucannon

The Zaku II's bigger, angrier cousin, and it moves better than it has any right to.

MechaGrade Score

4.1/5

Zaku II · 1/100 · 2008

GradeMG

Scale1/100

Released2008

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is one of the best-value MG Zeon kits Bandai ever put out.

It takes the excellent MS-06J Zaku II Ver. 2.0 frame, keeps every bit of that hyper-articulation, and stacks a huge shoulder cannon and a pair of waist-mounted 'Big Guns' on top without turning the thing into a brick. I built mine expecting a static gun-platform and ended up with a suit that still crouches, twists, and holds a rifle two-handed.

Best for: MG collectors who already love the Zaku II Ver. 2.0 frame and want a heavier-hitting variant with more guns per dollar

The full review

What it is

This is the MG Zaku II Ver. 2.0 chassis wearing artillery. The 180mm shoulder cannon, the twin waist Big Guns, the machine gun, bazooka, heat hawk, and smoke discharger backpack all come in the box, which is a genuinely stacked loadout for one kit. Building it, the parts are molded in the correct colors throughout, snap together cleanly, and the double-jointed elbows and knees carry over straight from the base Zaku II frame. I went in thinking the extra hardware would fight the articulation and instead found a kit that still gets down into a real crouch and swings the cannon around without everything colliding.

The catch

The waist only rotates about 45 degrees, noticeably less than a standard MG Zaku, because the movable Big Guns eat up the space the swivel mechanism needs. The skirt armor pieces have to be lifted manually out of the way before deep leg poses, which is an extra step you will be doing constantly if you pose the kit often. It is also a busier kit to build than a plain Zaku II thanks to the added backpack cannon assembly and the twin hip guns, so budget more bench time than a base MG.

Who it's for

If you already like the MG Zaku II Ver. 2.0 line and want a support-type variant with real firepower on the shelf, this is close to an easy buy, it is essentially that kit plus a cannon and two extra guns for not much more money. Newer builders coming straight from HG will find the part count and the skirt-lifting fiddliness a step up in complexity, though nothing that a first MG can't handle. Skip it if you specifically want maximum waist rotation and Zaku-style toreador poses, the standard MG Zaku II gives you that without the compromise.

The build story

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

The build itself feels like an expanded Zaku II Ver. 2.0 session. Gates are placed reasonably, the plastic is molded in the right colors so cleanup is mostly cosmetic, and the shoulder cannon and hip gun subassemblies are the only real detour from a standard Zaku build. Nothing here is a nightmare, it just takes longer because there is more kit to put together.

The standout is that the articulation survives the extra weapons at all. Double-jointed elbows and knees, a mono-eye that shifts when the head turns, hands with proper multi-joint fingers, and shoulder armor that swings clear of the arms all carry over intact. The tradeoff is the waist, capped near 45 degrees so the Big Guns have somewhere to live, and the requirement to lift the skirt armor by hand for anything close to a full leg swing.

Lore & trivia

01The Zaku Cannon grew out of Zeon's MS-06J-12 project, originally meant as an anti-aircraft mobile suit before being reworked into a mid-range fire support unit to answer the Federation's RX-77-2 Guncannon.
02It is built on the MS-06J Zaku II Ground Type chassis, not the standard MS-06S, which is why it shares its frame and articulation with the ground-type Zaku line.
03Designer Kimitoshi Yamane redesigned the Zaku Cannon for Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, giving the anime version eight smoke dischargers on the right shoulder instead of the original configuration.
04This MG kit reuses the hyper-articulated frame introduced in the MG MS-06J Zaku II Ver. 2.0, released the same generation of kits.