Gundam teams up with 300-year-old daruma maker for wood-carved anime mecha figures[Photos]

It’s a Gun-daruma!

Being a mecha anime, Gundam is very focused on the future. As a matter of fact, it’s so focused on the future that the franchise has made up multiple “Century” and “Era” names for its timelines, freeing it from the need to align its narratives with real-world history as its characters head out into space.

That doesn’t mean that the anime’s mobile suits can’t combine beautifully with traditional earthbound aesthetics, though, and as proof Gundam is partnering with a Fukushima craftworks company that’s roughly 300 years old.

Fukushima Prefecture’s Shirakawa Daruma Sohonpo is one of those companies that’s been around for so long it can’t seem to pin down the exact year in which it was founded, but we know it was about three centuries ago. Now under the guidance of its 14th owner, Shirakawa Daruma Sohonpo’s artisans continue to carve and paint each and every one of their daruma dolls by hand, including their new ones based on Mobile Suit Gundam Seed’s ZGMF-X10A Freedom Gundam…

…and the ZGMF-X10A Freedom Gundam.

Daruma are made in many places in Japan, but the ones from the town of Shirakawa, where Shirakawa Daruma Sohonpo’s workshop is located, are especially prized. Because Fukushima has heavy snow in the winter, farmers had long periods when they couldn’t work their fields and had to stay indoors. With all that time on their hands, many families spent it honing their artistic skills, with some becoming such proficient craftsmen that they raised the bar for daruma quality in the community to a point where now the whole country recognizes them as among the very best.

Daruma dolls are considered auspicious signs of impending success, and ordinarily you’re supposed to paint in the pupil of one eye when you purchase or receive the doll, make a wish, and then paint in the other pupil when it comes true (or state your goal and paint in the other pupil when you achieve it, if you’re more existentially minded). Since Gundams don’t have pupils to begin with, that’s technically something you can do with these too, though that’d probably end up making them look a little closer to the super-deformed SD Gundam spinoffs than the original ZGMF-X10A and ZGMF-X10A.

The Gundam daruma come in two sizes, 15 and 8.5 centimeters (5.9 and 3.3 inches), with the larger ones priced at 4,950 yen (US$32) and the smaller ones at 3,300 yen. They’re also available in a set that gets you both mobile suit daruma (9,900 yen for the big ones and 6,600 yen for the smaller versions) plus a snazzy wooden box.

The Gundam daruma officially go on sale until August 1. Preorders are open now though through the Premium Bandai website here, giving us a way to secure a Gundam of our own to help cope with the anxiety about Tokyo being about to lose its life-sized Gundam statue.

Source: PR Times, Fukushima Travel
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Premium Bandai
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