The good news: China's knockoff life-sized Gundam statue no longer looks like a Gundam. The bad news: Now it just looks ugly.

A recap: First, an amusement part in China's Sichuan province built an ugly orange replica of Japan's awesome life-sized Gundam statue. Then, when the amusement park was called out on it, it took the statue down and pretended the statue had never existed.

Well, now it's back, and it has been extensively remodeled so that it no longer looks like a Gundam. Spikes and tubes have been added all over the place, the joints are different, and it's now apparently running on nuclear power. Wait a minute: Shoulder spikes and a weird extended nose with head tubing? It might not be a Gundam anymore, but now it bears more than a few similarities to the MS-07B Gouf.

Of course, superficial similarities aside, it doesn't really look that much like the Gouf anymore. In fact, it doesn't really look like that much of anything.

It's just hideous. If this is China's idea of what awesome fighting robots should look like, I don't think we have any reason to fear an invasion of stylish yet cheaply-mass-produced Chinese mecha anytime soon.

(Livedoor.jp via Kotaku)