These Viral Videos Bring ‘Gundam’ To Life ‘Toy Story’ Style

Toy Story is a classic, but that doesn’t mean you cannot improve upon it. If Disney Pixar needs a way to amp up the franchise, all it needs is a bit of anime. After all, one fan has proved Gundam and Toy Story mesh, and their stop-motion success is all the evidence fans need.

Over on Youtube, an animator named Rihito Ue is showing fans how Gundam can be brought to life. The fans has taken his stop-motion skills and done up several shorts which all feature Gundam suits.

Using various Gunpla kits, Ue uses scenes from Sunrise’s iconic anime and recreates them with actual figures. The mecha suits move thanks to the magic of stop-motion animation, and Ue frames his shorts with some impressive continuous shots.

So, as you can see above, the viral videos really make it feel like Toy Story has gone full anime. After all, what else is supposed to happen when you pit Gundam’s famous suits against each other in your bedroom?

As of right now, Ue has only created three spot-motion shorts for Gundam, but they are starting to attract buzz from fans. As Kotaku reports, the animator’s work with the Gunpla models dates back to 2015, and Ue filmed an in-depth video showing how he makes the impressive shorts. Currently, the animator is working on a stop-motion Gamera series that focuses on the famous Japanese kaiju.

If these Gundam shorts have got you wanting more mecha, then you should know Sunrise is working on something right now. The studio is slated to debut a new Gundam anime this November known as Mobile Suit Gundam NT. You can check out its synopsis below:

“U.C. 0097. The year the Laplace’s Box was opened. Despite the revelation of the original charter for the Universal Century, which acknowledges the existence of Newtypes and their rights, the world remains largely unchanged.

After the destruction of the Neo Zeon remnant force known as the Sleeves, the event that has come to be known as the “Laplace Incident” seems to have drawn to a close. In the final battle, two Full Psycho Frame mobile suits displayed power beyond human imagination. The menace of the White Unicorn and the Black Lion were sealed away from public consciousness, and were consigned to be forgotten by history.

But now sightings of the RX-0 Unicorn 03, long thought lost two years ago, are being reported. Its name is Phenex, an immortal golden bird.”

What do you think of these stunning stop-motion shorts? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!