The RX-78 Gundam is a fictional manned robot, introduced in 1979 in Yoshiyuki Tomino’s and Sunrise’s anime series Mobile Suit Gundam. In the series, it is a testbed weapon for the Earth Federation when it falls into the hands of Amuro Ray, the son of a weapons designer, who goes on to pilot it in the Earth Federation’s war against the Principality of Zeon [Source: Wikipedia].
As part of the 30th Anniversary of the Gundam series, the company officially announced a project on March 11, 2009 called Real-G, planning to build a 1/1 real size scale Gundam in Japan. The 18-meter (59-ft) full scale model was completed on June 9, 2009. The statue first appeared in Diver City Toyko, Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan. Until the exhibition’s closing on August 31, 2009, the statue had been visited 4.15 million times [Source: Fotopedia].
The Gundam statue was later reconstructed in Shizuoka Prefecture where it stayed from July 2010 to March 2011. It again reopened in Tokyo on April 19, 2012 [Source: Fotopedia].
Despite being released in 1979, the original Gundam series is still remembered and recognized within the anime fan community. The series revolutionized mecha anime, introducing the new Real Robot genre, and over the years became synonymous with the entire genre for many. The RX-78 Gundam was recognized as a culturally significant subject by the nation of Japan on October 23, 2000, with the inclusion of the suit and the main pilot on two stamps in the 20th Century Stamp Series [Source: Fotopedia].
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