MBF-P02 Gundam Astray Red Frame

MBF-P02 Gundam Astray Red Frame is one of five prototype Astray mobile suits built by Orb's Morgenröte works at Heliopolis, and it is the machine at the centre of the manga Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray (serialised 2002–2003, C.E. 71). It is flown by Lowe Guele, a technician and pilot of the civilian Junk Guild who pulls it out of the wreckage after ZAFT's attack on the colony.

What it does in the story

The Red Frame is salvaged rather than issued. Lowe finds it in the ruined Astray lab and starts using it as a working machine, then fights with it — first against Gai Murakumo's Blue Frame, later against Rondo Ghina Sahaku's Gold Frame Amatsu — repairing it with whatever comes to hand, including a discarded Gold Frame arm. Its most-cited feat comes later, when Lowe takes the suit out with the Power Loader and a 150-metre 'Gerbera Straight' and cuts apart fragments of Junius Seven before they reach other PLANTs.

What makes it different

• It trades Phase Shift armour for foaming metal. Orb copied most of the Earth Alliance's G Project technology but not Phase Shift armour, so the Astrays were given lightweight foaming-metal armour and made lighter and more agile than the Alliance Gundams to make up for the weaker protection. The same trade — mobility instead of armour — carried into Orb's later mass-production suits.
• Its signature weapon is a physical katana. The 'Gerbera Straight' was a damaged sword Lowe repaired for the swordsman Un'no, who then gave it to him. Unlike the blades carried by ZAFT suits, it is sharp enough to cut without depending on the momentum of a fast swing, and Lowe had the Red Frame's operating system modified so the suit could wield it properly.
• The backpack drops onto the skirt armour. Lowering the backpack exposes an external connector on the suit's back, a hardpoint in the same spirit as the Strike Gundam's. That is how the Flight Unit — an M1 Astray unit Lowe rebuilt — and the underwater Salvage Unit are attached.
• The hand plugs can be turned into a weapon. The Red Frame's hands are built to pass energy to the weapons it holds. Lowe and Orb test pilot Juri Wu Nien found by accident that the same link can be discharged as a ball of energy, and he has used that misuse of the system to blind or damage opponents when he had nothing else left.

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Frequently asked questions

Background sources: MBF-P02 Gundam Astray Red Frame — Gundam Wiki · ガンダムシリーズの登場機動兵器一覧（機動戦士ガンダムSEED ASTRAY）（日本語版 Wikipedia）