The RX-78 Gundam is the iconic Gundam mecha design, introduced in 1979 in Yoshiyuki Tomino’s and Sunrise’s anime series Mobile Suit Gundam. In Mobile Suit Gundam, it is a testbed weapon for the Earth Federation, when it falls into the hands of Amuro Ray, the son of a weapons designer, who goes on to pilot it in the Earth Federation’s war against the Principality of Zeon. Now you can see it live, Japanese made a real size Gundam RX78 statute, it’s very cool. This Gundam RX78 is 18 metres tall and it has movable head and shoots smoke from some parts. Maybe it is even cooler that this Bumblebee Trasnformer statue.

The RX-78′s initial concept was that of a powered armor, the primary design for Yoshiyuki Tomino’s proposed series Freedom Fighter Gunboy. The series later changed its name to Mobile Suit Gundam and Kunio Okawara was given Tomino’s concept to shape into a finalized design for the anime. Okawara did various designs, including the original design on the right, before settling on the current, more samurai-styled design. One of the common questions asked is why did the enemies in the series keep referring to the RX-78-2 as White while it is a mix of blue, red, and white. Tomino’s response in the novel version of Gundam is that the original design was to be a grayscale machine, made up of mostly white and light gray coloring.

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