The Bonkurasu Brigade

More gunpla related news; an MSV (Mobile Suit Variation) of Gundam 00 has been released. Apparently, they give the 00, 7 swords again.

One mounted on the GN drive, 2 mounted on the legs, 2 on the hips, 2 Beam Sabers at the rear skirt armor.

The ‘blades’ on the legs doesn’t seem to be attachments from the shield region, nor from the O-Raiser.
The ‘ GN Buster Sword II ‘ mounted directly on the GN-Drive (or Solar Furnace), looks like a Warship-class blade for a Mobile Suit to wield. My hypothesis on the function of it is to pierce GN-enabled armor and fields with ease, after being charged by one of the GN-Drives (probably the charge is squared, since the dual drives might focus their charge directly onto the blade itself). The rest of the blades look like a Barbarian’s, thick and hefty.

The GN Blades mounted on the calf area are known as GN Katars (kudos to iron2000 again), and it appears to be fist-mounted blades, exactly like how you would wield a Katar. (A Katar is a type of short punching sword originated from India and its region.) This complements the Warship-Class Blade on its shoulder, since both are meant to punch through thick armor with relative ease; one with it’s size and heft, the other with its use and function.

With Gundam 00 being focused on ultra mobility thanks to the dual Solar Furnaces, and the potential damage that the Blades are able to deal, it’s almost an optimum blend of form and function. Why ‘almost’? Read on.

More information taken from SRWhotnews:

I guess the second handle is for the shield mode.

A rough translation on the bit on the GN Buster Sword II:

GN Buster Sword II:
‘Attached to the Solar Furnace on the left shoulder; it assumes as a GN Shield mode in its ‘kept’ state. Also has the ability to switch to GN Sword mode. In its Shield Mode, a large multi-directional GN Field could be generated, from the front it to be capable of protecting nearby allies. For the GN Sword mode, Ian analyzed the GN Buster Sword of GN-XII from a insider, and with modifications and certain improvements, it became a melee weapon with top class destructive power.’

From this piece of information, we can assume that in its GN-Shield mode, it increases the dual Solar Furnace protective capabilities to form a stronger and larger GN-Field capable of protecting several Mobile Suits.

With the bulk of the GN Buster Sword II, the mobility of Gundam 00 in that mode would be decreased, as compared to its normal load out. But this will only happen if the ‘Seven Swords’ equipment were to be used on Earth battles, as space battles don’t have weight and therefore nullify the weight issues.

-edit-

More updates on translations, done by iron2000, edited by me.

Technical Notes:
‘Before the Twin Drives were fully functional, this is the close range use equipment for 00 Gundam designed specially for its meister Setsuna F Seiei. An evolution of the “Seven Swords” battle concept used by Exia, likewise it consists of 7 swords. But each sword had underwent drastic changes, and it had changed to a weapon of different dimension from Exia’s “Seven Swords”.

This set of equipment was designed by the revived Celestial Being before they meet up with Setsuna. It was developed in the factory at Lagrange 3; despite the weapon’s ongoing development, priority goes to ensuring the Dual Drives operate at optimum performance. As a result, the development of the support machine ‘O-Raiser’ becomes a higher priority, as both equipment cannot be used at the same time the actual adoption for it in real combat is put off. As 00 is still being improved on, there is still the possibility of it being used in battle in missions that require the capabilities of a high damage close-combat Mobile Suit.’

This option probably was to intensify the damage it can deal with based on using GN-field nullifying particles, while the O-Raiser increases the beam output of the GN-Blades that 00 equips on default roll-out. Since nullifying a GN-Field by using another GN-based weapon has been tried-and-tested formula to prevent enemies from using the same tactics, due to the previous war 4 years ago with that MA/MS hybrid. Exia probably wouldn’t have had such a tough time with it if it had a sword with the capabilities of GN Buster Sword II.

In this sense, O-Raiser was probably used as an add-on to increase general capabilities such as mobility and damage to 00, but decrease/maintain its level of defense.