Mobile Suit Gundam
Mobile Suit Gundam is a Japanese anime television series produced by Nippon Sunrise. Created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, it premiered in Japan on Nagoya Broadcasting Network and its affiliated ANN stations on April 7, 1979, airing 43 episodes until its cancellation on January 26, 1980. It was the first Gundam series, which has subsequently been adapted into numerous sequels and spin-offs. Set in the futuristic calendar year "Universal Century" 0079, the plot focuses on the war between the Principality of Zeon and the Earth Federation, with the latter unveiling a new giant robot known as the RX-78-2 Gundam, piloted by the 15 year old civilian Amuro Ray.
The character designs were done by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, and Kunio Okawara was responsible for the robot designs, including the eponymous RX-78-2 Gundam. The first film was released on February 22, 1981. Tomino himself also wrote a trilogy of novels that retell the events of the series. Three manga adaptations of the series have also been produced.
Despite initial low ratings that caused the series' cancellation, the popularity of Gundam saw a boost from the introduction of Bandai's Gunpla models in 1980 from reruns and the release of a trilogy of compilation films. The series is considered notable for pioneering a depiction of mechs as mass-produced weapons of war.
Plot
In the year Universal Century 0079, a cluster of Space Colonies calling itself the Principality of Zeon declares independence from the Earth Federation, and subsequently launched a war of independence known as the One Year War. Zeon, though smaller, has the tactical upper hand through their use of a new type of humanoid weapons called Mobile Suits. Half of all humanity perishes within the first week of the conflict, the war settled into a bitter eight month stalemate.The series begins with a newly deployed Federation warship, the White Base, arriving at the colony Side 7 to pick up a Federation protoype Mobile Suit. Unbeknownst to the Federation, a Zeon reconnaissance team was sent to gather information on this prototype. Disobeying orders, a Zeon soldier attacks the colony, killing most of the Federation crew and civilians in the process. Teenaged Amuro Ray discovers the Federation's prototype—the RX-78 Gundam. Despite his lack of experience, he's able to destroy the attacking Zaku II Mobile suits, but not without further damaging the colony. With their home colony damaged, the survivors have little choice but to join up with the White Base.
On their journey, the White Base members often encounter the Zeon Lieutenant Commander Char Aznable. Although not shy to fight the Federation, Char has a personal grudge towards Zeon's ruling Zabi family, and he takes advantage of his position to seek revenge. In one such case, he feeds Garma Zabi false information that gets him killed. Throughout the series, Char Aznable's backstory is slowly revealed. The name Char Aznable is merely an alias, his father was Zeon Zum Deikun, one of the original leaders of Zeon before the Zabi dynasty took over.
Char Aznable eventually meets up with a psychic named Lalah Sune. A love triangle between her, Char, and Amuro eventually forms. In a battle between Amuro and Char, Lalah is caught in Amuro's crossfire. When the Federation Forces invade the Fortress of A Baoa Qu to decisively defeat Zeon, Amuro engages on a final one-on-one duel against Char, with both blaming the other for Lalah's death. Having realized he forgot his true enemy, Char stops fighting to kill the last surviving Zabi member, Kycilia Zabi. Amuro then reunites with his comrades as the war reaches its end, leaving behind the Gundam as it was rendered inoperable after his battle.
Release
Broadcast
In February 1980, Mobile Suit Gundam was aired in Italy, the first country to broadcast the show outside Japan. Mobile Suit Gundam was also later aired by the anime satellite television network, Animax, across Japan, with the series continuing to be aired on the network currently, and later its respective networks worldwide, including Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and other regions.Hoping to capitalize on the success of Gundam Wing from the previous year, Bandai Entertainment released a heavily edited and English-dubbed version of Mobile Suit Gundam, premiering on Cartoon Network's Toonami weekday afternoon after-school action programming block across the United States on Monday, July 23, 2001. The series did not do as well as Wing but the ratings were high enough for the whole series to be aired and to spawn an enormous toy line. Due to 9/11, many American TV stations began pulling and editing war-themed content and violent programming, resulting in the early cancelation of the series. However, the series finale was shown as part of Toonami's "New Year's Eve-il" special on December 31, 2001. On Saturday, June 8, 2002, the series would later air on their late-night Adult Swim block, starting over from the first episode, but it was again pulled before completing its run due to low ratings.
Home Media
On May 30, 2006, Bandai Entertainment re-released the English dub of the TV series in a 10 volume DVD set. There was no Japanese audio track included, apparently because Yoshiyuki Tomino felt that the original mono mix was in too poor of a condition to use. However, in 2007 the original series was released on DVD in Japan, which sold over 100,000 copies within a month's time from December 21, 2007, to January 21, 2008.At the 2010 New York Comic Con/New York Anime Festival, Bandai Entertainment announced that they would re-release Mobile Suit Gundam with both the original Japanese audio and the English dub. Bandai released it in two sets in the summer of 2011. The first set was released on September 13, 2011.
Following the closure in 2012 of Bandai Entertainment, the series went out of print. At their New York Comic Con 2014 panel, Sunrise announced their plans to re-release all of the Gundam series on home video in North America, starting with the original series. They would be distributed via Right Stuf Inc. They released the series on Blu-ray and DVD in October 2015.
On July 25, 2015, British anime distributor Anime Limited announced they would release Mobile Suit Gundam in cooperation with Sunrise for the first time in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray.
Production
The "Mobile Suits" of the show were inspired by the powered armor from the novel Starship Troopers from 1959. Mobile suits were conceptualized as human-like robots which would not only appeal to children.In previous series Tomino worked in, villains were alien agents. Mobile Suit Gundam was the first of his work which featured humans as antagonists. The director commented he wanted to tell a story about war. He aimed to expose through art the horrors of the Japanese wartime aggression in Manchuria in 1939. Tomino wanted to avoid historical revisionism and instead use the story to force viewers to confront the tragic realities of war. The director was originally unwilling to discuss the message of his work, expecting the viewers to reach their own conclusion. Additionally, he commented he "packed his frustrations" when making Gundam.
Tomino met mechanical designer Kunio Okawara when working on two television series from Sunrise. Tomino liked Okawara's work and asked him to collaborate with him in his upcoming project. Originally, the anime would be called "Gunboy" but it was renamed to Mobile Suit Gundam. The White Base, the mothership of the protagonist crew members, was designed with a three plane view method by Kunio Okawara, however, it was not specially designed for Gundam. It was actually a salvaged design from the anime Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3. The idea of having a space carrier was partly inspired by the earlier science fiction anime Space Battleship Yamato, which Tomino claimed to be a fan of. It was intended to be in a more realistic black color, but was changed to white by the order of Sunrise, who similarly ordered the titular Gundam be changed from a grayish white to white, red, blue and yellow. Director Tomino showed great disgust in the color change, also noticing the unrealistic non-aerodynamic design of it after the show had aired, said in an interview that such design would never appear in the real world, since it would be a sitting duck from fighter aircraft. Tomino later stated in an interview in an April 1989 Newtype issue that the imaginary enemies of Gundam are Sunrise, sponsors and television stations.
Tomino has compared Mobile Suits with religious history in Japan, most notably the worship of Buddha statues located in temples. The relationship between the pilot and the mobile suit has also been compared with the way Formula One drivers use their machines. In order to give the Mobile Suits fast movements, most of the fights were situated in space where there was low gravity. This led to the creation of space colonies as a common setting. In order to explain how a person as young as Amuro could pilot the Gundam, the team came up with the idea of Newtypes.
Media
Anime
Cucuruz Doan's Island
Within the 43 episodes of the original run, the episode "Cucuruz Doan's Island" stands out. Due to the director's request, the episode was never officially released in an English context. This episode was not used in the compilation films. On June 3, 2022 Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan's Island released as an adaptation of this episode.Novels
In 1979, while the anime was airing, Yoshiyuki Tomino wrote the first novelizations of the original Gundam anime series. The novels, published as a trilogy, allowed him to depict his story in a more sophisticated, adult, and detailed fashion. This adaptation included several major changes to the story. For example, Amuro is already a member of the Federation military at the time of the initial Zeon attack on Side 7, and the main characters in the Federation serve on the White Base-class ships Pegasus and Pegasus II rather than the Pegasus-class White Base. The One Year War continues well into the year UC 0080 in the novels, whereas it concludes at the beginning of that year in the anime series. In the novel Amuro Ray is killed in the final attack against the Zeon stronghold of A Baoa Qu when his RX-78-3 is pierced through the torso by a Rick Dom's beam bazooka. This occurs as Char's unit attempts to warn him about Gihren's intention to destroy the fortress and take the Federation's offensive fleet along with it. Char and the crew of Pegasus II, along with handpicked men under Kycilia Zabi's command, make a deep penetrating attack against the Side 3 and together kill Gihren Zabi, after which Kycilia is killed by Char. Tomino later lamented that had he known that the anime's ending would be different and that another series would be made, he would not have killed off Amuro in the novels.The three novels were translated into English by Frederik Schodt and published by Del Rey Books in September 1990. At the time, there were no officially recognized romanized names for certain words in the franchise. The original Japanese for many proper nouns were written in katakana, which gives a lot of leeway for localizing renditions. Many years later, when the Gundam series was finally licensed in North America, the rights holders came up with a unified list of "official spellings" for English-language material.
In 2004, Frederik Schodt revised his original translation of the books, which had been out of print for nearly a decade. What had been a three volume set in the 1990 Del Rey edition was re-released by Stone Bridge Press as one single volume of 476 pages with new cover art, titled Mobile Suit Gundam: Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation. Since the rights holders in Japan by this time had settled on official translated names, Schodt was able to update the translation to reflect the official terminology.
These novels influenced the 2025 Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX series, co-writer Yoji Enokido and director Kazuya Tsurumaki stating that they made it feel natural to turn character Challia Bull into part of the main cast.
On August 9, 1997, Tomino released Secret Rendezvous, a novel duology centered around characters Amuro and Lalah.
A direct novelization by Masaaki Nakane was also released by Asahi Sonorama; it has almost the same plot as the TV series.
For its 15th anniversary, the Newtype magazine serialised For the Barrel, an adaptation of the series by Gichi Ohtsuka based on Tomino's novel trilogy.