Caption / GUNDAM BUILD REAL
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In order to sell more GUNPLA, Bandai also fought...
After the appearance of unicorn Gundam and Ancestor Gundam RX-78-2 in 2018 Pacific Rim 2 and Ready Player One, the discussion about when Mobile Suit Gundam will be able to launch an official live-action version has not stopped. In July 2018, the IP publicly announced that it was about to be filmed live-action in Hollywood and co-produced by Sunrise and Legendary Pictures, but to this day only one trailer poster can be seen, and the release of the main film is still far away.
The live-action version of the invisible message is not necessarily a bad thing, after all, Bandai once turned over the live-action movie "Gundam G Savior" released in 2000, becoming the absolute "black history" of the entire IP in the development process. However, in the current multi-field development of IP, the real-life transformation of classic IP such as "Mobile Suit Gundam" seems to be a matter of certainty, and it is impossible to avoid it.
Gundam BUILD REAL, which has recently caused a topic among many Gundam fans, is one of the works born under this wave of live-action.
As the latest live-action series in the Gundam Creator Series, GUNDAM BUILD REAL began airing online on March 29, 2021. The biggest highlight of the show is that on the basis of live-action interpretation, a large number of real-size mobile suit battle scenes depicted by CG animation are added.
Strictly speaking, the "Gundam Creator Series", including animations such as Gundam Creator, Gundam Creator Try, gundam Creator, and Gundam Creator, as well as gundam BUILD REAL live-action dramas, should be called "Gunpla works" (gunpla, that is, the body models that appear in the Gundam series), rather than pure "Gundam works". This is because the core of the series is the "naked Gundam model advertising", hoping to increase the sales of related model products through the story between teenagers and Gundam models, somewhat similar to "Four Wheel Drive Kid" and "Four Wheel Drive Brothers" launched in the 1990s.
Therefore, at the level of story setting and content creation, the "Gundam Creator Series" can often achieve "self-release".
Take GUNDAM BUILD REAL, for example. The background of the story of the live-action drama is placed in the reality of the prevalence of e-sports, and people can achieve "steel pula battle" through the latest science and technology - as long as the teenagers put their assembled steel pula on a dedicated machine for quantum scanning, they can project the model data into a real-size mobile suitor through the "Gangpraski particles", and fight through VR, somatosensory, mobile phone and other control methods.
Of course, since the pilots of these mobile warriors are ordinary humans and are not NEW TYPES (new humans) at all, there must be all kinds of strange operations in the combat session.
For example, as soon as he came on the field, the RX-78-2 piloted by the protagonist was not stable, and he lost his hand and threw the beam sword at the other party like a brick...
For example, when the protagonist attacks the other party with a super bazooka, he is completely inaccurate...
What's more, when the protagonist and the opponent piloted the unicorn Gundam in close combat, the super bazooka can actually be used as a one-handed hammer, which is called "Gaoda Martial Arts" and "the correct use of the happy barrel" by many Gundam fans.
Unfortunately, gundam BUILD REAL is not able to satisfy many "Gundam fans" in addition to real-size mobile suit combat, and many of them have given the evaluation that "Hirohito is hotter than it". This may be due to the low age targeting of the audience itself and the fact that the story currently told has not yet fully unfolded.
Perhaps as the story continues to advance, there will be a new turnaround in the audience evaluation of the show.
It is worth mentioning that if we expand our vision to the entire "Mobile Suit Gundam" series of IP, it is not difficult to find that no matter where the audience reputation of "GUNDAM BUILD REAL" will go, the biggest existence of the work may lie in its "live-action drama" attribute.
Since its official broadcast in 1979, Mobile Suit Gundam, which has a history of more than 40 years, has long become one of the most famous, largest and most profitable IPs in the Japanese ACG circle. Among them, Bandai's rich development resources in derivative toy products have also become an important pillar for the sustainable and stable development of its IP.
In other words, the development premise of almost all mobile suit gundam works is closely related to the Bandai model product business line.
In fact, the original positioning of the 1979 "Mobile Suit Gundam 0079" animation was still mainly for children and teenagers - which is why the body setting color of the original Gundam RX-78-2 will be a combination of red, blue, yellow and three primary colors + white that is particularly common in children's toy products. However, with the "Mobile Suit Gundam" series of works, after accidentally opening up the juvenile and adult markets with profound story content, the more complex model of gameplay has naturally become the most important derivative product form of the series OF IP. This is why Bandai will continue to deepen the steel-pula product line, and successively launch products with different proportions and details such as MG, HG, PG, and RG.
The RX-78-2 and Unicorn Gundam models used by the protagonist and his opponents in battle against GUNDAM BUILD REAL are the RG model series that came out in 2010.
Of course, the rich derivative toy product line needs enough content to support.
Since the early 1990s Gundam UC series works (the so-called "Masashi Gundam") have come to an end, Bandai has successively launched a series of works such as "Mobile Suit Gundam G Gundam", "New Mobile Suit Gundam W", "Mobile New Century Gundam X", "∀ Gundam", "Mobile Suit Gundam SEED", "SD GundamForce", "Mobile Suit Gundam 00", "Mobile Suit Gundam AGE" and a series of works, as well as the aforementioned "Gundam Creator Series", all of which have their own independent worldviews, characters, stories, etc. The body setting and audience positioning are obviously Bandai's hope to build a huge IP content ecosystem through diversified content development.
It is in this mode of content creation that for works such as "GUNDAM BUILD REAL" broadcast through the network, the innovative exploration of the significance of the content form, especially in the question of "how to realize the live-action of the "Mobile Suit Gundam" series" may be much higher than the content quality of the work itself - even if the work ends in the unfortunate end, it is basically difficult to shake the IP's huge basic disk, and it can even be considered a good attempt.
Therefore, for the majority of Gundam fans, when watching the work of "GUNDAM BUILD REAL", it is better to focus on the question of "what will happen next", which may be easier to get incomparable joy. After all, only the first episode of RX-78-2 has used the super bazooka as a melee weapon, so there will be more strange fighting methods waiting for us to unlock.