Aswan

Though its technically not a Mobile Suit, its important enough to the series that we research this beautiful cruiser!

Recently, with the discovery of the AoZ Official Artbook, we've come up with some nice lineart detailing the Aswan as well as its Alexandria cousin. There are key differences and some abilities I wasn't familiar with and I'm sure most of you weren't either.



http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/Bazookafied/Aswan.jpg
This lineart shows us ALOT about the Aswan's capabilities. It appears to have a docking craft at the top of the bridge. Its tail can act as a boom to connect with large MS like the Bigwig that is shown and probably the other large TTT units like the Keehar, Dandelion, and Fiver. Because of its position on the bridge, the Aswan's cannons on the top have been moved forward. There are a few other structural differences we can see between the Alexandoria and the Aswan.

The Boom that connects the front of the bridge to the MS Hangar is slightly different. The Aswan's appears to have "wings", possibly just reenforcement, along the sides while the Alexandria's lacks these.

The rear of the Bridge on the Aswan is modified for MS docking as well as the docking craft that makes up the top portion of the bridge. The Alexandria simply has two smaller booms and no docking craft.

The Aswan's boosters on either side of the ship have additional turrets on the top. The Alexandria appears to only have one on the top of each one and one on each side.

The most notable is the MS Hangar at the front. The Alexandoria seems to have one big door for the hangar. However, the Aswan seems to have a less streamlined double door design. This may be just the different mechanical designer's style, but almost all of the proportions on the Aswan seem wider than the Alexandoria. The Bridge, the side thrusters, especially the MS launch and loading deck. Still, the launch deck of the Aswan is still heavily modifed from its Alexandoria Cousin.

The original that we gathered this data from can be found here.

I don't have any of my reference material handy at the moment, but the hangar structure of the Aswan seems almost identical to that glimpsed on the Al Giza at the end of 0083. At the very least, they've both got the double doors as opposed to the Alexandria's single. Looking at the profile shot you can see where the hangar has been extended beyond the Alex's.

I know the Alex did have a small-craft bay that's not visible in this particular shot of it; the Newtype 100% Zeta Mechanics 1 book identifies it as a space launch deck. It's certainly no where near as large as the one that the Aswan has been fitted with, though.

This furthers a nagging thought I've had for a while that no two Alexandria-class ships are built exactly alike. These modifications to the design strike me as being down the same line as the additional "sail" built onto the top of the Hario. Very interesting.

waha! just noticed something new...

if you look closely at side view in the top left corner of the detail pics, it shows arrows coming off the top and bottom hangar area. Looking at the large view and comparing it with the standard Alexandria, that front hangar is a bolt-on extra bit, same with the structural strut under the bridge!

Following the same cues on the side view, I think the pink parts in the back are other bolted on additions.

EDIT: for some reason I can't scroll all the way to the right on this page and missed your comment trio on the hangar extension. Great first post btw and welcome to the forum!

Are there any pics out there of the other Alexandria class ships you mentioned?

In Ecole du Ciel # 7 & 8, there is another Alexandria class ship that carries around certain of the cast members who ended up with the Titans. I will have to ask Dominion-san for the name, since I cannot remember it right now. We'll see if it matches the title ship of the class, or has its own features. Actually, it is not unusual for different ships of the same class to have different appearances due to mission requirements or the addition of desired modifications while that ship was having maintenance performed between cruises. So the dvarying small details between members of this class would be expected. (Useful too, if you happen to be a veteran sailor. it's nice to know which ship ou are about to fight, or not fight, as the case might be.)

I'll have to go with the Aswan's double doors for the MS Hangar. That's a lot more reassuring that there's less chance of stray shots or debris flying into the hangar during combat. That also means that if one of the catapaults is busted on the ship, the doors can cover that section, so as to block any entry to the hangar (the regular Alexandria, thus, has a LOT to worry about when opening up it's decks for launch).

One other note: the large pods/dimples on the forward front sides of the Alexandria-class ship deck--on the Aswan, they seem to have openings. Torpedo/missile tubes, perhaps?

And I apologize to Zionista: I used to have Navy ROTC training back in College--almost all of the Seamanship in me has been forgotten now. Sorry. ;;;

This post has been edited by wavehawk on Jun 3 2006, 07:02 AM

ninjascience,

Here is the Al Giza as she appears at the end of 0083. The more I compare the two, the more design features I'm finding in common with the Aswan. Turret placement seems identical as does the boom between the hangar block and the bridge section.

Zionista,

As far as I can tell, the ship that shows up in Ecole is pretty much identical to the Alexandria herself. Unfortunately, all I've seen of it (the kana of it's name is "a-ru-ka-su-ru," and I can't figure out what that romanizes as) are ventral shots so if Mikimoto and his assistants did anything different with the dorsal side of the ship, I haven't seen it. *shrug*

You're absolutely right. In addition to the hangar doors, the extra gun turrets, and the "shelves" on the boom connecting the hangar to the bridge, both ships appear to have identical bridges, right down to the sideways-pointing antennas on top. (I think the antennas and the crane on the back are permanently attached rather than forming some kind of detachable crane-and-antenna vehicle - that one line art image where we see them detached is probably just so we can see the detailing underneath.)

Other than its general resemblance to the Al Giza, the Aswan's main distinctive features are the crane and expanded hangar installed on the rear of the bridge section. These are meant for use with test units like the TR-2 Bigwig.

The Alexandria-class ship in Ecole du Ciel, meanwhile, is named Al Qasr. (Or at least that's the real-world place name which matches those kana.)

-- Mark

now that I look at the front view of the Aswan, I agree, the 'craft' on top doesn't look very detachable. Too bad, Bazookafied and I were really excited about that.

No big deal, it was a lessong hammered home to me in a phase where I was reading up on WW I & II naval operations. Discerning the ID of given ships could mean the difference between victory and defeat, and I have no reason to believe that the UC would be any different in that aspect.

Trioknight; It does seem at this time that Al-Qasr does not have many distinguishing characteristics. Perhaps we will see it acquire some in the future.

I wonder if as the series goes... we see so many of the mobile suits constantly changing, adding forms, adding parts, new craft like the Hrududu and now this Primrose coming into view... do you think that the internals or even some externals of the Aswan have changed?

I haven't heard anything in the story thus far about it, but at this point, there are alot of variations and mobile suits... the Fiver is already a big hunk of space, the Hazels, their option parts... do they just not keep everything on the Aswan or at this point in the series are they operating from a certain base or something of that sort?

I found something AGAIN! GOSH theres so much to AoZ!

I've been looking for a colored version of the Aswan for some time now and I've yet to find it until I realized its right under our noses!


This is taken from the episode where the Hazel gets all beat up by Stutzer wires and the Hazel II is deployed. In the background of the picture you can clearly see an Alexandria-class ship painted in what seems to be the TTT Pinstripe paintjob. However, I can't make out enough of the Aswan's distinct features to see if its actually the Aswan or if its just a TTT painted Alexandria class ship.

What do you guys think?

I remember seeing another colour Aswan somewhere else other than in this picture. I can't seem to recall where that was from, though because i could distinctively recognise its colour scheme in this picture so clearly i knew beforehand how it looked like....

I just gotta think where...

I am pretty sure DHM have painted up a Aswan or two. Problem is where did they post them. Usually they would post their newly constructed models on the pages after the story. For those who like to keep DHMs, please check for us?

As for me? No, I started buying my own DHM during the debut of Fiver, so no luck.

I think I've seen just about every page there is of AoZ and I can safely say that I've never seen a picture of a painted ship. They only show the mobile suits. We would've seen a battleship or craft by now. They just haven't shown them.

Plus... IS there a kit of the Alexandria? I don't think theres one of it out, so either that Aswan in the back is simply a painting or a mock-up model kit, we haven't seen it.

Sooner or later, there might be a EX model of a Alexandria class...
Besides, the links are broken, man.

This post has been edited by codename:V on Feb 22 2007, 05:30 PM