The Conspiracy of the PG Strike

Poke around the PG Strike here and there and you find a lot of suspicious things. Shall we have some fun and lay them all out?

1. The Suspicious Runners

First, the runners. Look closely and you spot system injection blocks that serve no purpose here. Specifically, the red F runner.
Going by precedent, when a single-color runner has system injection dividing blocks for no apparent reason, it almost always means a variation is being planned. The obvious variation for the Strike is of course the Strike Rouge, and it has already been made into a variation for both the SEED HG and the MG. With the PG Strike, the groundwork for that Rouge version is laid out about as openly as it gets.

PG Strike Gundam - The spots marked in black are where the system injection dividing blocks sit. In other words, the mold can

The spots marked in black are where the system injection dividing blocks sit.
In other words, the mold can be split along those lines.

In the photo above, part of the shield and part of the head are set up so they can be split off in the mold later, which is exactly what you would need for the Rouge. Because of how the Rouge is colored, the red parts on the Strike feet and waist need to be magenta, while the head parts have to stay red and the shield parts have to be black.

PG Strike Gundam - A photo of the MG. As you can see, on the plain Strike the feet and shield are the same red, but on the St

A photo of the MG. As you can see, on the plain Strike the feet and shield are the same red,
but on the Strike Rouge the feet are magenta and the shield is black. At PG scale, splitting the molded colors would obviously be a must.

The black shield is big enough that it could just be split off onto its own runner, but what about those two red head parts? Even that has an answer.

PG Strike Gundam - This is the A runner. Notice how the top-right corner looks oddly empty. Normally you do not leave an area

This is the A runner. Notice how the top-right corner looks oddly empty.
Normally you do not leave an area open like that for no reason, so what is it for?

PG Strike Gundam - Take the red parts cut from the F runner and hold them up to it and they fit perfectly. My guess is that f

Take the red parts cut from the F runner and hold them up to it and they fit perfectly.
My guess is that for the Rouge version they shift the mold to that position and shoot those parts in red,
then shoot the remaining F runner parts in magenta.

Anyone can see that a PG Strike Rouge is very likely to happen. The question is what form it takes. Bandai could pull the same trick as the Mk-II and just swap the colors a year later to fill that year PG slot, but that would draw plenty of complaints from people hoping for something new. Failing that, a spot production as an event exclusive at the Hobby Show or similar is not unlikely either. Personally though, I think a proper lineup release as a PG is the more likely outcome. OTL

2. The Suspicious Manual

Flip through the instruction manual and some suspicious illustrations jump out at you.

Namely, that the Buster Gundam, the Duel Gundam and the Strike Gundam share the same frame. Look closely and only some of the outer armor differs while the basic build is identical. That matches the original setting, and the kits do share most of their frame parts. So why put this in the manual all of a sudden?? Which brings up one more thing worth noticing.

The areas shown in white in the photo above are the outer armor parts that differ between each machine. Look carefully.. Really carefully..
You will notice that of the PG Strike runners split between gray and pure white, it is mainly the pure white parts that get swapped out for the outer armor. Does that not feel meaningful? Was splitting the outer armor into two colors on the PG Strike, seemingly for no reason, a bit of foreshadowing? And then putting it in the manual on top of that..

Of course, the PG world only lets in major machines, and really only the lead machine of a series, but if a new machine can be tooled up without much trouble, there is no reason it could not happen. In the end it comes down to Bandai read on sales. Suspicious on a lot of levels.

And here is the clincher.

Out of nowhere, the manual includes an illustration showing that the frame is shared with the Astray as well. The Astray is a kit that drew enormous popularity in the SEED plastic model line, on a level the Duel or Buster cannot touch. So from Bandai point of view, could they not judge that a PG release would sell?

That said, part of why the Astray was popular was its styling, but it is also true that it stood out for having unusually good kit quality on its own. On that front I am a bit unsure. The PG Strike itself is such a high-quality kit that a PG Astray would not stand apart the same way. So if a PG Astray does come out, it will have to win on styling. Or the sheer presence of the Gerbera Straight could be the selling point. Then again, making a PG out of a minor kit like the Duel or Buster, which do not even appear in the anime, feels like a stretch too. Either way, it is an interesting illustration. Why on earth put that in the manual all of a sudden? Suspicious, Bandai!

3. The Suspicious Chest

There is an odd clear part in the chest.

It ends up sitting in the middle of the chest duct, but once you have built the kit you can barely see it at all. So why go to the trouble of putting a clear part there?

The leading theory is that an LED lighting setup was planned at some point. Much like the PG Mk-II or the HY2M kits, the idea was probably to light up the cockpit and the chest duct together. And then, somewhere in the middle of happily designing it, the engineers seem to have had a thought.

“Hold on, we can stick the LED anywhere, but where does the button cell go?;;;”
“Hang on.. now that I think about it, the Strike does not even have backpack space -_-;;”

With all the elaborate articulation and frame packed inside the PG Strike, there was nowhere to fit a button cell. No matter how they looked at it there was no room, so the chest LED feature got dropped at the last minute.

Not my problem either way, but that is the smell I get. Sniff sniff.

4. The Suspicious Back

The Aile pack and Sky Grasper were already announced before the PG Strike came out, so naturally there is a mount on the back for the Aile pack. Right here.

It stays closed normally but opens up, with a polycap hole ready for something to plug into.

The Aile pack, and the Sword and Launcher packs too if they get released, could all plug their own backpacks in here. But then what is this supposed to be?

Why does that open too?

The whole back swings wide open, and it looks completely unrelated to mounting a weapon pack. Some say the back opens when the Aile docks in the anime, but looking at the actual illustrations, the setting books and the kits released so far, the connection seems weak. There are several theories about this. (Why though??)

- Purely for the drama of a hatch opening
- A lid for the button cell compartment, if an LED had been used in the chest
- Preparation for another weapon pack. Surely they are not planning to attach something like the Dagger Gunbarrel? Or the Sky Grasper? ;;

Well, whether it is just a hatch opening or a leftover from the chest LED storage plan, I do not know, but either way it is a slightly odd part of the kit. Sniff sniff..

5. The Suspicious Butt

Now, this one has a fairly clear purpose. The butt.

Surely it is not an actual poop hole;;

Out of nowhere there is a polycap hole under the rear. A polycap hole that is absolutely, completely useless for the PG Strike itself. Yes, yes, exactly. This is obviously a hole meant for a stand.

So where is that stand? Looking at the PG Strike on its own you do not really need a stand, but with a big piece of gear like the Aile pack on its back, a stand would come in handy just like it does for the MG.

So it is most likely bundled with the already-announced PG Aile pack + Sky Grasper. Either the Aile Sky Grasper own stand gets used with the PG Strike, or a separate second one is included, or it might even come as a huge launch pad like the MG one. Either way, they would not have made it for no reason, right?

There is one more quiet possibility. That the PG Strike basic frame itself could be used for a PG Freedom Gundam. The theory goes that if the Freedom, a machine for which a stand is essentially mandatory, gets a PG, you would need a hole like this ready in advance.

Another suspicious point along these lines is how the body and leg frames connect. The body frame is not one piece; the central cockpit block and the joints on either side attach separately, and the legs likewise have an extra frame piece for the calf muscle added onto the leg skeleton. This kind of multi-stage frame assembly is the method used for the MG NT-1 variations, and it is one way to share a skeleton between machines with different outer frames.

On top of that, with both of Gundam SEED lead machines, the Strike and the Freedom, already made into MGs, there is no rule saying both cannot become PGs. Sure, if you argue that the Strike was developed by Orb on Earth and the Freedom by ZAFT, so how could they share a frame, I do not have much of a comeback.. ; But settings are what they are.

Either way, the Freedom is a popular machine too, so there seem to be plenty of justifications.
(At least it would be better than the pitiful Impulse Gundam.)

How it all shakes out we will only know later, but roughly speaking, here is the conclusion.

- A PG Strike Rouge is extremely likely in some form or another.
- A PG Duel or Buster is possible, but whether they get released is unclear and depends on the market.
- Going by market popularity, a PG Astray variation might actually be the more likely bet.
- Some way of mounting to a stand looks like it will happen eventually.
- Depending on how the Aile pack, announced alongside the release, sells, other weapon packs and even more unusual ones could follow.

Believe it or not.
Even with all this evidence of variations being prepped, whether they actually get released comes down to market conditions, so all of it is just possibility. This is nothing more than a bit of speculation thrown out for a light read, heh heh..

Back to the finished-photo review

PG Strike Gundam | 2004.11 | ¥14,000

AIThis page was translated by Claude Sonnet.