Zeta Gundam’s Golden Icon, Reborn as an SD Magazine Card in 1990

Hyaku Shiki Kai SD Gundam Playing Card, Comic BomBom February 1990

A Supplement Card from the Height of the SD Gundam Boom

This item is a single playing card — the 9 of Clubs — included as a bonus supplement, or furoku, with the February 1990 issue of Comic BomBom, the monthly Kodansha manga magazine that was closely intertwined with the SD Gundam phenomenon throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. The card depicts Hyaku Shiki Kai rendered in the SD Gundam style, with the character’s name written in both kanji and hiragana in the lower left corner.

As a furoku item, it was never sold separately. Distribution was limited to readers who purchased that specific issue of the magazine. Furoku pieces — loose supplement items often separated from the parent magazine and subject to ordinary wear — tend to have lower survival rates than standalone retail goods, which means examples that have remained intact are naturally uncommon.

Hyaku Shiki Kai: From Zeta Gundam to the SD Universe

The character on this card originates in the Gundam franchise’s Universal Century continuity. The Hyaku Shiki is a mobile suit from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, the animated series broadcast from 1985 to 1986, notable for its distinctive all-gold exterior and its association with Quattro Bajeena — the alias used by the recurring Gundam figure Char Aznable in that series. The Kai suffix designates a revised or enhanced variant of that design.

Where the SD Gundam version of Hyaku Shiki Kai draws its specific design cues is not definitively established. Variants of the unit appear in supplementary materials including Z-MSV, a design-variation publication tied to Zeta Gundam, and in Gundam Sentinel, a photo-novel series serialized in Model Graphix magazine between 1987 and 1989. Whether the SD depiction references one of these directly, or represents its own interpretation within the SD Gundam format, is uncertain.

SD Gundam itself was a franchise spin-off built on reimagining the Gundam universe’s mobile suits as small, round-headed, low-proportioned characters. Originating with designs by Koji Yokoi, the format expanded rapidly into plastic model kits — Bandai’s BB Senshi line, launched in 1988 — as well as manga, animation, and a broad range of merchandise. By early 1990, the boom was at its commercial and cultural peak.

Comic BomBom, Furoku Culture, and the Card Format

Comic BomBom was the primary publication home for SD Gundam manga and functioned as an important promotional vehicle for Bandai’s BB Senshi kits. Its monthly furoku were frequently a significant draw in themselves — readers sometimes chose a given issue specifically for what was bundled with it. Playing card sets appeared among the supplement formats the magazine used, making this card part of a recognized but relatively uncommon item category compared with the dominant BB Senshi kits and gashapon figures of the same era.

The February 1990 issue places this card squarely at the height of the SD Gundam period, when fans who had followed Zeta Gundam’s original broadcast run and younger readers who had discovered mobile suits entirely through SD were both engaged with the franchise simultaneously. For Zeta Gundam enthusiasts, Hyaku Shiki’s gold design carries strong character associations. For SD Gundam collectors, the playing card format represents a distinct and less frequently encountered corner of the franchise’s merchandise history. Comic BomBom itself ceased publication in 2007, which lends an archival dimension to supplements from its most active years.