The 12th "Gunpla Builders World Cup 12th Tournament" world championships finals of the "Gunpla Builders World Cup (GBWC, Gunpla World Cup)," a contest to decide the world's best Gunpla (plastic model) builder from the anime "Gundam" series, were held on February 22nd at the Shinjuku Sumitomo Building Triangle Plaza (Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo), and "UNDER CONTROL" (Wu Jingmin), representing mainland China, was chosen as the world's best in the OVER-21 course for those aged 21 and over. Let's look back on the fierce battles of the 12th tournament.
◇Make it look spacious!
This work is based on the Ex-s Gundam from the "MG" series, which was born from the "Gundam" series project "Gundam Sentinel," and the sub-flight system and Nero were hand-made. At the bottom there is a large hand with "Mk-V" written on it. "Mk-V" refers to Gundam Mk-V, a worthy rival that fought a one-on-one battle with the Ex-S Gundam. The Ex-s Gundam and others appear to be floating in the air, and the judges praised the "spatial appearance."
Second place in the OVER-21 course went to "Loading..." (Ryan Lau) from Canada, and third place went to "Regeneration" (FA Green) from Japan. Both were impressive works, and it was impressive to hear the judges say, "The judging was difficult. It was hard to choose between the works. It was a close call."
◇Japan national team puts up a good fight
GBWC is an international competition that began in 2011, where participants compete in Gunpla construction, painting skills, and ideas. There are three courses: U-14 for those aged 6 and over and under 14, U-20 for those aged 15 and over and under 20, and OVER-21 for those aged 21 and over. It has been held in 16 countries and regions, including Japan, Australia, Canada, Europe and the Middle East, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Indonesia, mainland China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the UK, the US, and Vietnam, and representatives have been selected from each of these countries and regions.
In the U-20 course, "God of Kungfu" (Chou Junhui) from inland China was selected as the world's best, followed in second place by "Beyond The AXIZ" (Hiko Natsu) from Japan, and in third place by "Armoured Devil, Engage!" (Vulcan Gunpla) from Malaysia.
In the U-14 course, "Camouflage" (Dikdikzai) from Hong Kong was selected as the world's best. Second place went to "Dear Nicol..." (Yuwassy) from Japan, and third place went to "Happy farm" (Gundam3795) from Thailand.
All of the Japanese representatives placed in the top three and fought well, but missed out on the championship. The Japanese representative has not been the world champion since the 2018 open course "Gundam Exia Repair II -Taiko-" (Utsugi-san). The 13th World Championship was announced at the World Championship Finals, so we look forward to seeing the performance of the Japanese representative next time.
