The first time I saw a Gundam was in 1995, in a display case at Chameleon Comics in Forrest Hills, Queens. I started begging my mom to get the model kits and I would build them in my room for hours, even before I saw the cartoons.
From 1996-2003, I watched Toonami on Cartoon Network every day after school. It was my introduction to different kinds of anime. Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing were my Star Wars/Lord of the Rings.
I’ve recently been reinvesting in my anime obsession, after years of its absence in my life. Gundam has been the most interesting revisit as an adult.
Dragonball Z is a sprawling fantastical dreamscape that’s steeped in heavy lore, but it’s also very simple when you break it down to this; Goku is a good guy and everyone he fights is the bad guy. Pretty simple.
Gundam cartoons are not that simplistic. They are stories about the traumas of war, packaged in a cartoon about giant humanoid robots fighting in space. Imagine if Band of Brothers was animated like GI Joe. Imagine waking up on saturday morning, eating cereal in your pj’s, and watching a show about people dealing with the loss of loved ones due to the horrors of war. Characters you are introduced to and grow to love are killed in terrorist attacks. 15 year old war orphans kill diplomats at their daughters birthday parties. Extremists fly spaceships into space stations, killing thousands of people.
I totally get why other kids were not into it as much as I was at the time. I’m even a little weirded out I liked it as much as I did when I was 10. It’s all so heavy.
I think most adults should give the Gundam shows a chance, even if they don’t like anime, or even if they don’t like cartoons. If they like shows like Game of Thrones, Rings of Power, Westworld, or any other streaming drama they could find right now, you’d at least be intrigued by what the old Gundam shows do, because they did it before all of those shows, and it’s a cartoon.
I also think most Gundam shows are 100 times better than any of those previous shows I just mentioned, but that’s just me.
Gundam is one of those shows where you go “wait, how many episodes are there? Where do I start and what’s good?” Great questions!
Gundam is kind of in the vein of the Stargate or Highlander tv series, or any of the Star Wars series on Disney Plus. There are many different Gundam series. Some of them take place in completely different timelines.
The term “Gundam” refers to giant robots which are tools of war called “mobile suits”, the most powerful being the Gundam which is programmed with AI to learn from previous attacks.
So let’s break it down from the beginning with the first series.
MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM (1979 - 1980)
Mobile Suit Gundam was the first Gundam animated series. It was directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, and ran in Japan from April 7th, 1979 until January 26th, 1980 for a total of 43 episodes. Initially it was a flop, and was cancelled due to poor ratings, but it was quickly syndicated due to a very vocal fanbase.
The series ran in the U.S. on July 23rd, 2001 with an English language dub for the first time. That ran on Mondays on Toonami until September 10th, 2001 when it was pulled in the middle of it’s run due to the World Trade Center Attack on September 11th. It was years before it came back to American TV.
The show takes place in an alternate future where our calendar has shifted to the “Universal Century” year 0079. This is known as the “Universal Century Timeline.” Due to Earth being polluted and overpopulated, those who could afford it have moved to space colonies. The colonies are separated into different sectors surrounding Earth’s atmosphere, and are referred to as “sides.”
Side 3 declares independence from the other space colonies and establishes itself as The Principality of Zeon. Zeon is run by a corrupt family run government. They serve as the main antagonists for this series. Zeon attacks space colony Side 7, causing it to crash into a major city on Earth, killing hundreds of thousands of people. This leads to what is called “The One Year War.”
Yeah absolutely bad timing for the American run on Toonami.
Tomino said his initial inspiration for the mobile suit design was from Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel Starship Troopers.
Side note; Starship Troopers was also the inspiration for the Iron Man suit.
The protagonists of Mobile Suit Gundam are the crew of the space station known as White Base. Most of them aren’t military at all, but actually civilians displaced by the war, and forced to take control of white base after it’s crew of pilots and engineers are killed in a Zeon led terrorist attack on an Earth Federation weapons testing base. The only surviving military official is 19 year old Bright Noa, who’s been made the defacto commander of white base after his superiors all died in the base attack.
So the White Base crew is pretty much all made up of civilians who have to learn how to be soldiers as they go.
People living on Earth are called “Earthnoids” and people who live on the colonies are called “Spacenoids.” My favorite bit of sci fi language.
One of these civilians living on base, Amuro Ray, a 14 year old computer wiz and son of Earth Federation scientist Tem Ray, steals his father’s latest prototype war toy, the Gundam RX-78-2 from the base after watching his friends killed in front of him.
It turns out he’s a natural at piloting this giant robot, and the military wants to use him to help get the White Base to a colony on the moon where survivors are being treated.
Throughout the series it’s revealed that Amuro’s natural skills as Gundam pilot is because he is a “newtype”, which means he can telepathically communicate with machines, a genetic mutation from being born in space on the colonies.
The series has a few threads going, the main one being Amuro and his journey from an ordinary boy to being labeled a war hero, and his struggles with all the baggage that brings.
It’s also got the best dressed/worst named antagonist in the game, Char Aznable.
Char is a representative of Zeon and the initial antagonist of the series. He takes a cool turn mid series but I won’t spoil it, if you want to watch. Let’s just say he gets his own movie.
I love this series because for me, it’s like an archeological dig. I’m watching a Saturday morning cartoon from the same year that Alien, my favorite sci fi film came out in theaters. Just one year before Empire Strikes Back.
This show is known as the precursor for what anime would be going forward. It all starts with Mobile Suit Gundam.
Giant Robot shows existed before Mobile Suit Gundam, but they were all pretty much “Giant Robot is good and fights bad monsters.” This was the first giant robot cartoon that delved into the psychology of the person in the cockpit.
Also, in case it’s not clear from all these stills, the animation is awesome and we should always celebrate fully hand drawn animation!