Gundam is a very diverse franchise with series like Gundam Build Fighters which fit the Saturday afternoon kiddie cartoon to a T, but in the main, it is a conglomeration of anime time lines that fall within the “space opera” genre. Quality varies, but the best Gundam series have some of the most poignant writing in any medium about war and peace, personal choices between aligning with larger powers or the possible futility of charting one’s one path, of friendship, death, competing loyalties, statecraft and the meaning of nearly everything. There’s food for thought aplenty; though one could simply enjoy the action and buy the figurines, and not forgetting the watches!

April 12 Release: SLA029J1 based on the MS-06 “Zaku”

If the chunky, bulbous Soviet Army T-72 morphed into a mecha, it would become the Zaku, deployed by the Principality of Zeon in its war against the Earth Federation Force. And there’s no better model in Seiko’s catalog than the Tuna to make that Zaku connection, with massive build that is rated for depths up to 1,000 meters!

April 12 Release: SLA031J1 based on Char’s Zaku MS-06S

Char Aznable is such an intriguing character, we forgive him for riding into war in a pink Zaku… actually a great way for enemy pilots to stay alive by avoiding the pinkie in a melee sea of olive drab. Utterly ruthless and charming, yet it’s difficult to classify Char as evil because there’s nothing moral/immoral there — he is as perfectly amoral as believably possible, an empty channel of political will.

August 9 Release: SBDB 033 based on the RX-78-2 Gundam

Distinct from the Zaku which is shaped like a tank, the RX-78 is altogether more refined (aesthetically), the high tech fighter jet to the Zaku’s portly T-72. Quite fitting that this should model should have the Spring Drive with its quartz-level precision of +/-15 seconds a month and the most hypnotic, smooth sweep of the seconds in the industry. It can’t go as deep as the Zaku-inspired Tunas, but it’s the most technologically evolved of the lot, in the same way that the RX-78 is more technologically advanced than the Zaku.