I’m feeling kinda of lazy, so I’m going to cover these two as a package deal.
About the Mobile Suits
In Gundam Wing, Altron Gundam is the midseason upgrade of Shenlong.
It is, quite arguably, the biggest glowup among all the show’s midseason upgrades. It gets a visual update, a new color scheme, upgrades to its existing weapons, at least one new weapon, and a new backpack that significantly modifies its silhouette to make it look far more menacing. The show’s other four main Gundams each get some of these things in their upgrades, but not all of them.
Why Altron of all of them got this extra level of attention is beyond me, but there’s no denying that it was a necessary corrective. Shenlong was (in my opinion) the worst of the bunch, but as Altron I think it’s one of the best. With it’s new wings it feels far more mobile than before, and with its tail-mounted beam cannons it finally has a longer-range attack option. It’s probably the most versatile of the five.
Visually, I think you can make an argument both for and against it. It’s new color scheme finally makes it look unique among the five Gundams, but in turn it also makes it look that much more like Dragon Gundam, its obvious inspiration.
One more thing - this is another one of those kits that was originally a P-Bandai exclusive that was later made into a regular retail release.
Now for Jiyan Altron.
In Gundam Build Divers, Jiyan Altron is the custom Gunpla of martial arts master and top tier GBN player Tiger Wolf.
The best way to describe Jiyan is that it takes OG Altron - which we already established was heavily inspired by Dragon Gundam from G Gundam - and makes it even more G Gundam-y. It’s got an even more ornate look, and it includes a pair of themed tiger and wolf gauntlets that mount to its fists ala Maxter’s boxing gloves.
It’s a simple but effective idea for custom build, leaning into the vibe that’s already present.
A Few More Remarks
In Gundam Wing, Altron doesn’t just get the biggest glowup. It also becomes much more prominent in the story. It’s the one that gets to square off against Treize and the Tallgeese II during the final battle.
And in Endless Waltz it gets to go toe to toe with Heero and the Wing Zero Custom:
To be clear, I understand why these things happened. Wufei had beef with Treize earlier on in the show, so it made sense for them to face off later. And in Endless Waltz, Altron was probably the only one of the other Gundams that could stand toe to toe with Wing Zero, due to its significant upgrades.
But it’s still kind of weird that this means Wufei, by far the least popular of the Gundam boys, gets so much more screen time because of this.
As for Jiyan Altron, I was genuinely shocked to see that the writers chose not to bury it. There’s a fighting tournament late in the show, in which Tiger Wolf competes in the finals against show protagonist Riku, who up until that point was depicted as the Gary Stu-iest of Gary Stus, who pretty much Ass Pulled his way through the story.
And yet somehow they let Tiger Wolf win:
It’s probably the one time in the story where a Riku win would have made perfect sense, in a “student surpasses the master” moment. But they went in the other direction, and I wasn’t expecting it.
Differences
Since there was no existing High Grade Altron at the time Build Divers came out (and because they wouldn’t/couldn’t reuse parts from the old No-Grade kits from the 90’s), Jiyan Altron instead reuses some inner frame parts from the High Grade Wing Gundam. But everything else about it is brand new, original parts.
And interestingly, when they finally got around to making a High Grade for the original Altron, they didn’t reuse anything from Jiyan Altron. As it turns out, Jiyan Altron is extremely customized, to the point where the two models contain few if any identical parts. You’ll see what I mean when I get to the build(s).
This in turn explains why there was such a large time gap between the two releases. Bandai had to make OG Altron from scratch, and I guess they had to figure out when they were ready and willing to do that.
In Parallel
We’re going to look at the two builds in parallel, so we can compare every bit of them to see how they compare and contrast. After that, I’ll do separate photoshoots.