MSN-00100 Hyaku Shiki

The MSN-00100 (MSN-100, MSN-001) Hyaku Shiki is a Mobile Suit from the Universal Century timeline.

Real Life Background Info
The Hyaku Shiki was one of mechanical designer Mamoru Nagano's Mobile Suit designs for Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. Illustrated during the planning phase of the series, the Hyaku Shiki was imagined as a design for the titular Gundam-type suit, one of several designs created by the large design team in charge of the series. Director Yoshiyuki Tomino rejected the Nagano design, citing that it wasn't streamlined for transforming, instead settling on the preliminary design by Kazumi Fujita. Tomino did, however, like the design, and it made its way into the series with some slight cleaning up. The in-series explanation for the Hyaku-Shiki is also true to life, down to the name of its designer - an Anaheim employee named Mamoru Nagano.

The Hyaku Shiki's design has similar design lines to other Nagano mechanical designs, such the tubing from the back of its thighs to its calves and the small wing binders on the back, similar to mechanical designs from Heavy Metal L-Gaim. Its gold color scheme is very similar, and may be an homage, to Poseidal's Original Auge from L-Gaim.

Role in Plot
The Hyaku Shiki (codename: "δ Gundam" (Delta Gundam)) is a mobile suit built by Anaheim Electronics as part of the "Project Z". Originally designed as the MSN-001 Delta Gundam, the unit was intended to be a test unit for the transforming MSZ-006 Z Gundam by incorporating the "movable frame" technology found in the RX-178 Gundam Mk-II and back-pack wing binders for additional mobility, though defects in the frame design rendered it incapable of transforming to mobile armor mode. The Delta Gundam's transformation capabilities would be used in the production of the MSN-001A1 Delta Plus while the gold armor was used to create the Hyaku Shiki. The Hyaku Shiki sported a gold-colored frame - probably as a gesture of insult that such a mobile suit can be developed in secret despite the Titans, being also a customer of Anaheim, closely monitoring them.

This mobile suit was initially assigned to Quattro Bajeena of the AEUG and remained in service until its abandonment during the end of the Gryps War, following a confrontation between Quattro Bajeena and Haman Karn of the Axis camp. The AEUG space warship Argama later recovered the abandoned mobile suit. It was never assigned to a permanent pilot, though Beecha Oleg would serve as this suit's recurring pilot.

Trivia

 * The 'N' in the Hyaku Shiki's production number stands not for Newtype but for Nagano, the surname of its real life and in-series designer.
 * Hyaku Shiki stands for 'Type 100' in Japanese (Japanese Kanji character "百式"); this is explained in-series as the designer hoping to create a mobile suit design that would endure for a hundred years.
 * In the 2004-2005 Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny series, a suit belonging to the Orb Union, the Akatsuki, bears a striking resemblance to the Hyaku Shiki. This is probably a homage to the original Hyaku Shiki from Zeta Gundam.

Variants

 * MSN-001 Delta Gundam
 * FA-00100S Full Armor Hyaku Shiki Kai
 * MSK-00100S Land Combat Hyaku Shiki Kai
 * MSR-00100 Hyaku Shiki Kai
 * MSR-00100S Hyaku Shiki Kai Mass Production Type