PGUniversal Century

MS-06F Zaku II

The grunt suit that started the Perfect Grade line and still earns the shelf space.

MechaGrade Score

4.2/5

Zaku II · 1/60 · 1999

GradePG

Scale1/60

Released1999

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 kit that proved a mass production grunt could carry a flagship grade, and building it in 2026 still holds up.

It is not the cleanest engineering you will find in the modern PG catalog, but the sheer density of what Bandai packed into a 1999 release, hatches, hydraulics, a wired LED monoeye, is still genuinely impressive to open up and pose. I came away respecting it more as a piece of mechanical design than as a display statue, and that is exactly what a Zaku should be.

Best for: Builders who want the inner-frame PG experience on the affordable, iconic grunt suit rather than the Gundam itself

The full review

What it is

The PG MS-06F is Bandai's 1/60 take on Zeon's mainstay mobile suit, and it was one of the earliest kits to prove the Perfect Grade concept could work on a suit that is not the hero. Popping the armor open reveals a real skeleton underneath, pistons in the shoulders and hips, molded exhaust piping down the back, and two dozen or so moving hydraulic dampers that actually compress when you pose the limbs. Roughly twenty hatches across the body open to show internal detail, which is more theater than most kits attempt at any grade. Building it feels like assembling a real piece of hardware rather than a toy, and that is the whole appeal of the line.

The catch

The monoeye is wired with an LED and runs on two CR1220 batteries, and getting that wiring routed cleanly through the head and neck is the one genuinely fiddly stretch of the build, budget extra patience for it. This is a 1999-era kit, so the engineering predates the tighter, more forgiving joint tolerances Bandai uses on newer PG releases, and some builders report the hip and knee joints loosening with repeated posing over the years. Parts count runs into the mid 500s across more than twenty runners, plus over forty screws, so this is a multi-session build, not a weekend project, and the price sits well above HG or MG entries for the same mobile suit.

Who it's for

Buy this if you want the Perfect Grade inner-frame experience without committing to an RX-78-2 or another hero unit, or if the Zaku II specifically is the suit you care about. It rewards patience during the wiring stage and pays that back with a display piece that still looks mechanically honest under the armor decades after release. Skip it if you want a fast build or worry about long-term joint tension, in which case the MG Zaku II Ver 2.0 gives you most of the engineering wins at a fraction of the parts and price. For a first PG, this is a friendlier on-ramp than the Gundam kits in the same line.

The build story

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

Outside of the monoeye wiring, the assembly itself is refreshingly linear for a kit this size. Gates are placed reasonably for a late-90s mold, cleanup is manageable, and the frame goes together in logical stages, legs, torso, arms, before the armor panels snap over top. The moving hydraulic pistons need a light touch during assembly since they are meant to compress under posing stress later, not during construction.

The standout engineering is how much of the suit stays functional after the armor goes on. Roughly twenty hatches around the body swing open to expose the frame underneath, fingers articulate individually, and the shoulder and hip actuators move in sync with the limbs rather than sitting there as decoration. The gun and heat hawk are sculpted with more surface detail than you get on the same weapons at HG or MG scale, and for a suit that was Zeon's mass-production backbone, that is a lot of part count spent on making the ordinary feel special.

Lore & trivia

01The MS-06F variant was created after the Antarctic Treaty of U.C. 0079 banned nuclear weapons, letting Zeon strip the radiation shielding from the earlier MS-06C and install a more powerful generator, making the F type Zeon's mainstay suit for the rest of the One Year War.
02The Zaku II line spawned numerous specialized variants during the war, including the MS-06J ground type, the MS-06K Zaku Cannon, the MS-06D desert type, and the MS-06M aquatic Zaku Marine type.
03The PG MS-06F released in March 1999, making it one of the earliest entries in the Perfect Grade line and proof that Bandai would give the grunt suits the same flagship treatment as the hero Gundams.
04The monoeye's LED lighting runs on two CR1220 button cell batteries and is paired with a linked movement mechanism so the eye itself can shift within the head.