MSIA Zudah Unit 1 Part 1

The tragic ace MS
The next series of review will be on one of the bargain purchases from August last year: Mobile Suit in Action!! Zudah.






EMS-10 Zudah, much like YMT-05 Hildolfr, is an instant love for me after watching "MS IgLoo" a few years back. I built and reviewed the HGUC plamo kit version back in July 2007.

Zudah in my opinion is a very unconventional Zeon design. With a large shield mounted directed onto the MS, there seems to be a relationship to Zaku II, but the shield is mounted on the left shoulder instead; Being an unit built even earlier than Zaku II's predecessor, Zaku I, it's unusually slim, especially the legs. This is a design feature totally unseen on other Zeon units. Zaku I, Zaku II, Dom, Z'Gok, Gelgoog all seem bulky - be it a good thing or bad. Gyan would probably be the only exception. ^^

The mono-eye camera and the round helmet do firmly place Zudah among his Zeon MS family though. ^^ Its weapons are the standard types used by Zaku II as well, which to some extend, is the only connection I can make between it and Zaku II that appears in the OVA series when it was first being introduced.

Like all the test units in "MS IgLoo", Zudah is one MS with a very tragic story. The original unit, EMS-04 was designed with superior thrust capability, supposedly much better than that on Zaku, but with a fatal flaw - unstable engine that will cause the unit to disintegrate when overloaded. This problem was inherited onto the resurrected EMS-10, which was made a political propaganda against the Earth Federation, when the latter successfully developed and produced GM. When Zudah's weakness was discovered and exposed by the Earth Federation, it became a bitter laughing-stock, which pretty much sums up Zeon's misery at the end of a losing war.

The last few remaining units of Zudah were placed on the test ship Jotunheim for defense till the end of One Year War. After that, it just got lost over time I believe, and that's quite a sad ending for a tragic unit.

Still, the unit's fate didn't stop it from blowing up a few Shark Mouth Ball and GMs in its designated episode though. As a Zeon fan, that's very exciting to watch for me. ^^


Video clip is from Youtube. Follow this link to the website if you can't see anything.
Onto this MSIA figure itself, I think the greatest feature is the camouflage paint scheme applied. Not only is it color accurate, the shoulder armors and shield come with very crisp prints of the Zeon crest and squadron markings as well. I couldn't do the painting part on my HGUC Zudah, so I really appreciate the paint scheme on this MSIA figure.

And believe it or not, 3 versions of MSIA Zudah were released: commander unit, unit 2 and the backup unit. Each of them has different paint scheme. ^^


Commander unit


Unit 2 and the backup unit.
Images are from Hobby Search: commander unit, unit 2 and the backup unit.
I think I mentioned that the MSIA is a Gundam toy series designed with safety for kids in one of my reviews on MSIA Gundam Exia. That seems fair when we get to the weapons of this figure, but in terms of details, the folks at Tamashii Nation weren't taking it lightly when this figure was planned. ^^

As you can tell from the blade antenna on the helmet in the images shown at the beginning, this one I got is the commander type.

Apart from the blade antenna, that white spot on the shield seems to be unique to the commander unit as well.



Box art


Opening the box from the top.





Content


Red backdrop with an information card and a survey form (?) attached to the back.



The information card. I suppose one is included for each MSIA release and you can collect the cards inside a file.
More images featuring the weapons in the next posting. ^^