MGUniversal Century

MS-06S Zaku II (Char Aznable Custom) Ver.2.0

The Red Comet's ride gets a proper inner frame and it earns every bit of the upgrade.

MechaGrade Score

4.1/5

Zaku II · 1/100 · 2007

GradeMG

Scale1/100

Released2007

Runnersn/a

Check price on Amazon

Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

The verdict

This is the Zaku that finally moves like Char flies it.

The Ver.2.0 inner frame gives you double-jointed elbows and knees, a swinging shoulder mount, and a mono-eye that actually tracks when you turn the head, so the dramatic forward-leaning charge poses from the show are finally on the table. It is not perfect, the waist barely rotates and the shoulder spikes fight your range of motion, but as a piece of engineering from 2007 it still holds up next to kits released decades later.

Best for: Universal Century fans who want the definitive posable Char's Zaku without stepping up to PG money

The full review

What it is

This is Bandai's second crack at the MG Char's Zaku, and you can feel the decade of accumulated know-how in the frame. Thirteen runners and roughly 374 parts get you a full inner skeleton under the red and white shell, and the assembly has that satisfying rhythm where the frame goes together first and the armor snaps over it in big confident clicks. Building it, I kept stopping to swing the arms through their range just to feel the peg-and-socket shoulder do its thing, it is a genuinely different feeling from the older one-piece Zaku shoulders. The head's mono-eye visibly shifts when you rotate it side to side, which is a small touch that sells the whole model every time you pose it.

The catch

The neck ribs and rubber cabling on this kit are a real test of patience. Builders consistently flag the movement pipes as the worst part of the build, they are tight rubber tubing that does not want to thread cleanly onto the connecting pegs, and the better technique is clipping the parts apart and pushing the tubing on rather than fighting it through the runner. The waist only rotates about 45 degrees because the piping eats the clearance, so torso twist poses are limited. The oversized Zaku hands also struggle to grip the bazooka and machine gun as firmly as you would like, expect some fussing to get weapons to sit right without looking loose.

Who it's for

If you already love Universal Century Gundam and want the iconic red Zaku posed the way Char actually flew it, forward-leaning and aggressive, this kit delivers that in a way the HG and the original MG never could. It is a mid-complexity build, not a weekend snap-together, so I would not hand it to someone building their first kit, an HG Zaku or an EG is the better on-ramp. But if you have a few MGs under your belt and you are ready for rubber piping and a frame-first assembly, this is one of the more rewarding classic-suit builds in the line and it still displays beautifully next to modern releases.

The build story

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

The build starts frame-first, and the inner skeleton assembles cleanly with good part fit throughout. The armor shell then clips over the frame in confident, positive snaps rather than a loose friction fit. Gate placement is reasonable and cleanup is standard MG-level work, nothing brutal, but set aside real time for the rubber tubing sections around the neck and limb joints, that part of the build slows everyone down and benefits from clipping pieces apart rather than forcing them through the runner whole.

The engineering payoff is in the articulation. Peg-and-socket shoulders let the arms raise well past horizontal, the upper arms rotate independently, and both elbows and knees are double-jointed for deep bends. Fingers get 3+1+1 articulation for actual weapon grip attempts. Armor panels on the skirt lift out of the way to clear leg movement, which is the kind of detail that separates this from the older single-jointed Zaku kits. Loadout covers the heat hawk, Zaku bazooka, and machine gun, plus a small display base accessory in some releases, solid value for a kit that has been reissued steadily since 2007.

Lore & trivia

01Char Aznable had the output limiters stripped from his MS-06S, and Federation pilots who faced it in battle reported it as roughly three times faster than a standard Zaku II, a claim that outstripped the suit's actual spec sheet and became part of the Red Comet legend.
02At the Battle of Loum, Char used this Zaku to single-handedly destroy multiple Federation battleships, cementing both his reputation and the red Zaku's status as the most iconic mobile suit paint job in the franchise.
03This Ver.2.0 kit originally released in May 2007 as part of Bandai's push to rebuild the classic One Year War MG lineup with modern inner-frame engineering, and it has been reissued multiple times since with only minor marking updates.