By Loran
While the Schuzrum Dias may have been a bit of a pointless variation to begin with, Double Zeta Gundam thankfully has a few more interesting ones. I believe I covered a kitbash of the ReGelg, a Gelgoog variant, some time ago, which is one of my personal favorites. However, there was one story arc in the series that had some variants that just stroke my fancy: yeah, I’m talking about the Africa Arc. Ignoring that one strangely-colored Gelgoog (what was a Gelgoog in Char’s colors doing in Africa??), we got some really cool Desert Zakus out of it, along with one of my favorite “ace units:” The Blue Team.
The EWAC Zack (also known as the “Eye-Zack”) is one of the new suits that were introduced during this arc. In a sense, it’s the Hizack’s answer to the Zaku Recon or the Zaku Flipper, though where those two were designed for taking photographs; this was more made for jamming and listening. It’s the type of suit you don’t see too often in Gundam, or mecha in general. They’re quite common in Macross, but the closest thing I can think to one of these only showed up in mangas. There’s also Dragonar-3 from Metal Armor Dragonar, but that’s Gundam in pretty much everything but its title…
First things first: this kit is VERY blue. I get the feeling Bandai never really wanted to make an EWAC Zack kit, but they pulled this kit out two years ago because they had to fill a slot. As a result, parts that should be gray are blue because they wanted symmetrical upper arms or something. It’s silly, but nothing that a little paint won’t solve.
Unlike the Schuzrum Dias, this kit actually has some new engineering. The whole construction of the head is brilliant. Not only does it have the modern monoeye construction, parts of the head are indented to keep it stable and on a “track.” Also, the EWAC dish can spin!
Aside from the head, the other new parts are the backpack, the crotch, and the shoulders. The shoulders both conform to the polycap joints already in place. This bothered me at first because I wanted to give the spare spiked shoulder armor to a Hizack and make a custom unit, but upon actually building it, I realized there’s actually an entire Hizack kit in here, so if you’re into customization, I recommend getting one of these and using it for its parts. Or you could just make an entire blue Hizack, but I don’t know why you’d want to…
The weapons are the same as the ones in the Hizack kits. I guess Bandai didn’t feel like adding in any of the Hizack’s other weapons like the beam rifle or heat hawk. That’s what weapon sets are for, I guess. Also, the gun is not completely blue, all for the sake of giving the kit symmetrical arms…
While the Schuzrum Dias may only appeal to the hardcore collectors, I can see some interest in this suit. It wasn’t featured any more than the former was, sure, but it fills a role that few (if any) other suits do. Not only that, it’s also adorable. Come to FPNYC for yours today!
