As the world’s most prominent mecha franchise, Mobile Suit Gundam has brought many a mecha design to prominence over the last 40 years. In fact, there have been so many Gundam designs, it’s hard to decide which to celebrate. Which means Bandai is taking the opportunity to let its fans decide who gets pride of place for its next animation project. Through the newly relaunched Gundam.info portal site, Bandai is running a survey. The poll challenges the fans to rack their brains and search their feelings to decide which of the many, many mobile suits will be featured in the next Gundam Battlogue episode.
The Gundam Battlogue project began as a spin-off of 2014’s Gundam Build Fighters series. Gundam Build Fighters was a Gundam TV series that, unlike most of the others, did not pretend the mobile suits and mecha were actually real. Instead, kids built Gundam plastic models to use in Gunpla Battle, a virtual “toys-to-life” style battle game. The Gundam Battlogue episodes were broadcast online, as 10-minute shorts set in the Gundam Build Fighters universe, meant to showcase flashy battles between new mecha designs.
Though the Gundam Battlogue episodes eventually went offline, Bandai is planning new ones, this time set in same universe as Gundam Build Divers. For its part, Build Divers takes the basic premise of Build Fighters and translates it to an online VR game. Gundam Build Divers: Re:Rise, the second series in this universe, has just begun airing its second season, and can be viewed on Youtube.
The poll runs until May 18, 2020. The winning designs will be announced in Summer 2020, though the broadcast schedule for the Gundam Battlelogue episode itself is as yet unconfirmed.
