Plamo-kyo Shiro

Format: Comic series

This curious cultural artifact, a spinoff of the mid-'80s Gundam plastic model craze, has in turn exerted its own influence on the ever-evolving Gundam ethos. Starting in the February 1982 issue of Comic BomBom, this popular comic series by Team Craft and Koichi Yamato spawned years of sequels and dozens of weird mobile suit variants, some of which were subsequently adopted into one branch or another of the mainstream Gundam franchise.

In the world of Plamo-kyo ("Plastic Model-Mad") Shiro, schoolkids make their model robots duel inside a virtual-reality simulation, vying to defeat each other with wacky customized models. In the process they create such oddball variants as the samurai-style Musha ("Warrior") Gundam and the heavily-armored Perfect Gundam series. The original Perfect Gundam was later refashioned as the Gundam Full Armor Type for Bandai's MSV series, while the Musha Gundam inspired a whole samurai-themed universe as part of the SD Gundam line.