Gundammit!

'Tis the season not for goodwill, but for competition, particularly if you like assembling model kits. In the recent (Nov. 6-8) Bandai Action Kits Universal Cup  regional finals for the Philippines, skills were on the line in a healthy contest to see who could come up with the better finished kit.

A scale model…of what?

The history of science fiction model kit has been one steeped in some controversy. How could one have an accurate scaled-down representation of something that doesn't exist? This wasn't too much of a bother for Western science fiction: Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars and Star Trek all had amazing model kits, and in some cases full-size replicas of weapons and armor (what's up, 501st!). But when you're talking about an 18-meter tall robot, people had a hard time imagining a scale model kit of that. Still, as time went on, science fiction and science fiction anime gained acceptance, and Gundam scale model kits did so, too.

Philippine ingenuity

Being a ground official at the said event, I had the pleasure of seeing many amazing finished builds. After all, one long-standing tradition with Gundam kits was that you could modify them. It's a sort of reversal on the usual model kit idea of being a perfect smaller duplicate of a real machine. In this case, since there is no real machine, one could use artistic license to modify Gundams to how you saw them in your mind. Not surprisingly, this has lead to crazy concepts, like Super Robots and medieval knights.

Visual feast

For Ban Kee Trading, all this is good news. As the Philippine distributor for Bandai products, they are proud that the local winners have gotten the attention of the whole global region in the Grand Finals. As long as children - and those who are children-at-heart - keep on building the kits, it's a sure thing that the BAKUC will always be there.

Visit Mechapinoy's revamped website for more information on BAKUC winners. And if you sign up in their forums, you'll be able to see how some people assembled and painted their entries for the contest.

The BAKUC isn’t the only model kit competition happening at this time. By the time this article goes up, the IPMS-Philippines' 7th National Scale Model Competition should be running in SM Megamall, with a week-long display scale model kits (and a Science Fiction category), ending with the announcement of winners. The 501st will be there, too, so watch out for them!

There's also a BAKUC Online site, for a truly international sampling of Gundam goodness.

A very special thanks to Doc Len of Mechapinoy for his wonderful photographs.

Trivia:

If you're wondering why Gundams seem to have lightsabers, it's because Star Wars was one of the major influences. Lightsabers, Stormtroopers, Darth Vader's helmet (though this is debatable), even the Force itself have analogues within the series.

As for Star Trek fans, if you look at some of the older ship designs in the series, you'll notice that some ships are based on the Enterprise - if it were upside down.