After a pretty turbulent few years in Japan. With some of the biggest typhoons ever recorded hitting last year, flooding major city centers, large earthquakes shaking Osaka and Hokkaido, the economy taking a dip due to the typhoons and tax hikes, and the new coronavirus crisis taking hold, the Japanese people are looking for something to protect them in their time of need.

Twitter user @xavita is looking at a Gundam for salvation and help, more specifically, the White Mobile Suit that is being erected at Yamashita Wharf in Yokohama, set to be opened on October 1.

The above tweet reads:

“In the past, it is said that when the Great Buddha was built it calmed down when plagues that had spread in Japan for a long time. I like the theory that the coronavirus will subside once the Gundam under construction at Yamashita Wharf is completed.”

A nice sentiment, nice enough that over 45,000 people agree with it, and it’s not entirely without merit. According to the 1998 book ‘Re-Visioning "Kamakura" Buddhism’, the Great Buddha of Kamakura – which was featured in Dr. STONE surviving the apocalypse – was built in the Kamakura period of Japanese history, when there was an “extraordinary high incidence of plagues, typhoons, and other disasters" in Japan, which was said to end after the fall of the shogunate.

While the book says the claim is “unproven,” it’s a fact that the statue, which dates back to 1252, has itself survived many disasters. Including numerous storms, the 1498 Meio Nankaido earthquake that destroyed its enclosure – it wasn’t always open-air! – in a tsunami, and the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake. It’s no wonder the Japanese people see the statue as a symbol of survival and are looking for another symbol to carry Japan through the next millennia.

Keen-eyed Twitter user @223kai2500 responded to the Tweet, not only agreeing with the sentiment but noticing in the promotional material, the hairstyles of the people in focus dating back to the Nara period.

Though some people have issues with this, like Twitter user @ensankai, who doesn’t want to wait for another half a year for the coronavirus crisis to go away.

It might be difficult for a 25-ton moving statue of one of anime’s greatest icons to defeat something so small as a virus, it would be nice to have a date where we know we can relax and not have to worry about going out and getting sick.

The White Mobile Suit Gundam is scheduled to be opened on Yamashita Wharf in Yokohama on October 1 and will be on display until October 3, 2021. A presentation for the media without the Gundam statue's actual operation is scheduled to be held in July and August this year.

Sources: Twitter (1, 2, 3) via Hachima Kikou, Re-Visioning "Kamakura" Buddhism on Google Books

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Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs the YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.