Alright, time for another Earth-centric Feddie mobile suit:
The EZ-8 is another stone cold classic design, and since we already know that this model shares most of its parts with the Master Grade Ground Type, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to be a great build.
About the Mobile Suit
At some point in 08th MS Team, Commander Shiro’s Ground Type suffers catastrophic damage. With spare parts being increasingly hard to source, the mechanics of the Kojima Battalion couldn’t restore it back to its original state.
What’s more, they didn’t necessarily want to, as the Battalion’s combat experience revealed that some of the specialized features of the Ground Type were less effective in practice than they were in theory. As a result, the EZ-8 is both an emergency field repair and something of an upgrade.
(Check out the flavor text if you want to learn more)
Appearance in Media
The EZ-8 shows up fairly late into the story, so we don’t get to see a ton of it. But it makes up for the lack of screen time by making the most of what it.
Specifically, the EZ-8’s battle with the Gouf Custom is considered by many fans to be one of the best, if not the best mobile suit battle ever put to animation.
Alas, for better or worse it also turned the EZ-8 into meme fodder thanks to some of the more … ridiculous things it does during the fight:
About the Model Kit
Interestingly enough, we never see the EZ-8 use the iconic 180mm cannon at any point in the 08th MS Team OVA, so Bandai didn’t include it in this kit. However, they still wanted it to have an equal number of accessories as the Master Grade Ground Type, so replaced the cannon with this bazooka (specifically the one in the foreground):
And then they made thing collapsible so that it can fit into the weapons backpack (which we also don’t see it use in the OVA, but whatever)
Other than that, the rest of the weapons are the same (though the shield is a tiny bit different. Speaking of which …)
About Color Accuracy
Please allow to be pedantic and annoying for just one moment.
In its first deployment, the EZ-8 uses a beam rifle and shield that are in the same colors as the Gundam Ground Type:
In-universe, this implies that it just reused its old gear, and they didn’t repaint it because there was no need. It’s a cool little detail that feels realistic.
But then there’s a battle, and the shield goes kaplooey:
The next time we see it, it’s been rebuilt. And it looks slightly different, because now it has an extra armor plate in the front. This is what I’ll call the “EZ-8” version of the shield, and it’s the version that all of its model kits come with.
Now maybe this is just me, but I doubt that that extra armor was the same color as the rest of the shield, meaning they probably had to repaint it.
So … why then did they _re_paint it in the Ground Type colors, instead of painting it to match the EZ-8?
Maybe it was intentional to do it a second, or maybe this was an animation mistake. Either way I think it’s weird. More importantly, it’s a pain if you’re a stickler for color accuracy, because none of the EZ-8 models mold the shield in Ground Type colors (from a cost perspective it would be silly of them to do so)
Thankfully I wasn’t planning on being a stickler about it. I think it looks better in tan, and that’s how I was always going to have it. But, I will say that it appears that maybe someone at Sunrise came to see things my way. on that.
Battle in Three Dimensions is a short film from 2013 that depicts a previously unseen engagement between the 08th Team and a Zeon encampment. Aside from the fact that it’s great to see this setting and these characters again in modern animation, it’s also notable for how it depicts the EZ-8.
In the short, the shield is now colored to match the mobile suit:
We also finally get to see it use the weapons pack, and the 180mm cannon:
If we go with the idea that all Gundam animation is cannon, then it’s canonical that at least one point the EZ-8’s shield was color matched, so anyone who wants to keep it that way is now vindicated =)
About the Visual Design
The EZ-8 is a bit deceptive. At first glance it might look quite a bit different than the Ground Type, but truth is that they have more in common than not.
It replaces/changes the most obvious and visible bits of armor (as well as its head), but the bulk of its body remains unchanged. The feet (minus the ankle guards), the legs (minus the front knee plate), the skirt armor (minus the crotch V), the arms, and the backpack are all the same as on the Ground Type.
These of course are the “boring” parts of the body, which is probably why your eye ignores them in favor of the shiny new stuff. But if you try to take it in as a whole, it’s clearly the same basic design.
So it’s different, but also not, and I think that creates a sort of visual tension that makes the EZ-8 so appealing. It looks at once like a new mobile suit as well as a field repair of an existing one.
Also, its head design and color scheme make it look like a skeleton. That’s probably the main reason why people think it’s cool.
Other Thoughts
When Bandai put out the High Grade EZ-8, rather than giving it the weapons pack, it instead gave it a parachute pack:
Which technically we do see it briefly use in the OVA:
