Watch ‘Gundam’ Come To Life In This Special ‘Ready Player One’ Clip

Ready Player One has more easter eggs than you can shake a controller at, but the gaming film has a few that simply stand out. The feature’s inclusion of the Iron Giant is a hard point to miss, and it was not the only robot to get highlighted.

No, Mobile Suit Gundam made one star-studded appearance in the movie, and you can relive that sequence again thanks to a special clip from Japan.

In a couple days, Ready Player One will make its debut in Japan, and Gundam is a major selling point for the film there. The movie pays homage to plenty of anime titles aside from the famed mecha series, but Mobile Suit Gundam is a particularly big one to note. The inclusion of the original anime’s famous suit marks the first time RX-78-2 has been brought into live-action. And, as you can see above, the suit’s debut was pretty lit.

If you have not seen the film for yourself, you will surely need some context to set up this mobile suit’s reveal. The anime comes into play when one of the film’s leads finds themselves facing off against Mechagodzilla. The massive kaiju must be taken down in order for the Oasis to be saved, so Daito decides it is time to go Gundam.

The character is seen housed in the Serenity, a ship from the sci-fi classic Firefly, and he takes a leap of faith outside the aircraft after a moment of reflection. To himself, fans can hear Daito speak in Japanese as he says he chooses to fight with Gundam, and his avatar goes through a transformation that turns him into the RX-78-2 suit from Mobile Suit Gundam. Daito is able to fight on equal footing with Mechagodzilla thanks to his tech upgrade, and the live-action venture even sees the boy pull our the mecha’s Beam Saber for the heck of it.

This mecha nod is a sweet one to witness, but it isn’t the first time a Mobile Suit has appeared in a Hollywood blockbuster. Recently, Pacific Rim Uprising featured the Gundam Unicorn, but the suit was not used in actual combat. Ready Player One is the first outing for a fully functional Mobile Suit, and RX-78-2 proves how intense a live-action Mobile Suit Gundam adaptation would be if Hollywood could get its hands on a filming license.

What did you think of the film’s Gundam inclusion? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics, k-pop, and anime!