PGUniversal Century

MS-06S Char's Zaku II

The Zeon side of the PG story, all pistons and hatches and that unmistakable red paint job.

MechaGrade Score

4.1/5

Zaku II · 1/60 · 1999

GradePG

Scale1/60

Released1999

Runnersn/a

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The verdict

This is the kit that proves the PG line was never just about the Gundam.

I came away from this build genuinely surprised by how much personality Bandai packed into a suit most people think of as cannon fodder. The opening access panels and hydraulic dampers do real work here, not just showpiece gimmicks, and the finished 30cm Zaku has a presence on the shelf that a lot of newer kits still don't match. It shows its age in a few places, but the core engineering holds up.

Best for: PG collectors and Zeon loyalists who want the definitive large-scale Char's Zaku, screws and all

The full review

What it is

This is Bandai's 1999 Perfect Grade take on Char Aznable's personal Zaku II, and it is a proper monster of a kit, about 548 snap-fit parts across 23 runners that build up into a 30cm figure with a full internal skeleton. Popping open the roughly 20 hatches across the body and finding pistons, hydraulics and a sensor array underneath never got old for me. The mono-eye actually swivels on its linkage, and if you drop in a couple of LR43 batteries the camera eye lights up, which sells the menace of the character in a way static kits just can't. Building it felt like assembling a machine, not a toy.

The catch

Being a 1999 release, the plastic is noticeably harder and more brittle than what Bandai runs today, so nub cleanup takes real care and a little more time with a hobby knife than a modern MG would need. The LED wiring for the eye is fiddly and a known point of failure if you're not careful with the contacts, and I'd treat it as a nice extra rather than something to build around. The heat hawk blade comes molded in plain gray and needs paint or panel lining to read correctly, and some of the smaller inner-frame joints benefit from a dab of glue to stop them working loose over time, since this predates PG's later joint-tensioning tricks.

Who it's for

If you already know you want a Char's Zaku on the shelf and you don't mind an older-generation build, this is worth tracking down. It rewards patience and a steady hand, and the payoff, an opened-up mechanical Zaku glowing red-eyed under the shelf lights, is hard to replicate anywhere else in the line. Builders looking for their very first PG might find the plastic and LED wiring more frustrating than fun, and I'd point total beginners toward a more modern PG instead. But if you've built an MG or two and you're ready to go bigger, this kit still earns its price tag.

The build story

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

The build itself runs long, this is not a weekend project, and the plastic being on the harder side means gate marks take a bit more sanding attention than you'd expect from a modern kit. Runner layout groups the inner frame separately from the armor shells, so you effectively build a small robot skeleton first and then armor it up piece by piece, which keeps the process from ever feeling repetitive even at nearly 550 parts.

The engineering is where this kit earns its reputation. Hip, knee and shoulder joints are built around the exposed piston system so the articulation and the aesthetic are the same mechanism, not separate layers bolted together. Hands are individually articulated finger by finger, and the weapon loadout (machine gun with a mountable back holster, heat hawk, shield) gives you a real range of poses without needing anything extra. For a kit over two decades old, the part-count-to-detail ratio still stacks up well against far newer releases.

Lore & trivia

01Char Aznable's personal Zaku II is painted in his signature red, sourced from tuning the suit's Zeonic engine for higher output, and it fed the in-universe rumor that his mobile suit moved three times faster than a standard-issue Zaku.
02Char became known as the Red Comet of Zeon after single-handedly destroying multiple Federation ships during the Battle of Loum while piloting this Zaku, a moment that cemented the character's legend at the start of the One Year War.
03This 1999 release was one of the earliest Perfect Grade kits, and it applied the same fully exposed inner-frame treatment Bandai had just introduced on the PG RX-78-2 Gundam to a rival-faction suit, which was a notable move for the line at the time.