Gundam is AWesome

I’ve been watching the 1979 anime “Mobile Suit Gundam” for a while now, and it’s starting to get very fun.

In year 0079 of the universal century… humanity, which has spread across the solar system, is at war. The colonies of Side 3, furthest from the earth, proclaimed themselves the Principality of Zeon, and began a war of independence from the Earth Federation. The Zeon military employed a type of mobile suit called the Zaku to basically obliterate Earth Federation forces. That is, until the development of the Mobile Suit, Gundam…

…which is piloted by a 15yo child soldier!

The show follows the pilot, Amuro Ray, protecting the Earth Federation’s battleship, White Base (which is also piloted by a bunch of random civilians and carrying refugees), as they make their way to safety. Amuro goes from an innocent and kind of apathetic teenager to someone who always has his finger on the trigger (literally). It’s not great for him! Say what you will about Shinji Ikari, at least he was fighting colossal space creatures. Amuro has killed countless humans. It’s quite strange, because even the Zeon forces, part of a fascist military dictatorship, are often depicted as more “humane” than the Earth Federation forces. I haven’t yet come across a single Zeon child soldier, and it’s clearly something that’s taboo to them, while those with the Earth Federation accept it as a fact of life. The Federation is also shown to often abandon its soldiers, and they use the White Base crew as guinea pigs.

My opinion on this may change. I’m only on episode ~20. While I am opposed to the idea of a military dictatorship, I must say that the show has done very little outside that to portray Zeon as worse than the Earth Federation in any capacity. Also Zeon has Char.

Anyways, that brings me to the main point of this article: I’ve been watching SO MUCH Gundam

There are around 19(?) Gundam TV series, and I have been watching multiple of them in parallel.

Gundam GQuuuuuuX

This is the only Gundam show I’ve actually finished, mainly because it’s just 12 episodes. In all fairness, I definitely should’ve watched all of 1979 Gundam before this, but the show was so fun that I didn’t really care.

It takes place in an alternate timeline of the original show, where Char (of Zeon) got the Gundam instead of Amuro, leading to a total victory for the Zeon forces. The main story revolves around a technology introduced later in the 1979 show, Psycommu, which allows Newtypes (humans evolved for spacefaring, also revealed in the show) to interface with their Gundams through thought.

The main character, Machu, a newtype living in the sovereign Side 6, pilots a psycommu-capable Gundam suit to fight in “Clan Battles”, illegal mobile suit fights, for money. She and Nyaan, a refugee, get embroiled in a political quarrel among Zeon leaders, and the Earth Federation. They also meet a hot and sexy boy who pilots the original Gundam, once belonging to Char.

Theres also some multiverse shit because it’s the 2020s. The animation is excellent (apparently Sunrise collaborated with Studio Khara for this show) and the music is good, I like the opening song (Plazma by Kenshi Yonezu).

Of course, there are a lot of spoilers for the original show. I don’t mind too much, but I do kind of regret watching it so soon.

Gundam: Witch From Mercury

This is the other one I’m watching a lot of. iirc, this is the second-newest Gundam series, prior to GQuuuX.

ITS SO GAY

If you’ve watched Utena, I can basically summarize this show by calling it space utena. It’s space utena. The show references Utena all the time.

There’s a pretty normal prologue episode that establishes the setting and the main characters background. Instead of warring nations, this series takes place in a world of the warring….. military industrial complex. Lots of big weapons manufacturers fighting each other. The main character, Suletta Mercury, attends a space academy where a lot of rich kids (often heirs to companies in the Benerit group) learn to pilot mobile suits. School-sanctioned duels frequently take place between students, where they typically flaunt mobile suits belonging to whatever companies they’re affiliated with.

Gundams are a forbidden type of mobile suit that sort of connects to the pilot’s brain. Handled incorrectly, this causes a “data overload” which can kill the pilot. Suletta has a mobile suit that, while expressing the capabilities of a Gundam, doesn’t do any sort of damage to the pilot. She’s deemed a “witch” because of this.

Themes and such…

The deuteragonist of the show, Miorine Rembran, is the daughter of the leader of the Benerit group. She plays a sort of vague “Anthy” role in the show, labelled as a “bride” who will marry the “Holder” (the current duel champion) after coming of age. Because this show is gay and awesome, the Holder in question for most of the show is none other than Suletta.

I haven’t gotten terribly far in the show, but the animation is excellent and the music is also excellent. I highly recommend watching it!

Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

I watched like, one episode of this. I may watch more in the future, but I didn’t really care for the art style. In this Gundam, the main characters are on Mars (which I think is a mining colony or something?) and treated awfully. There’s a princess from Earth, I think, who wants to fight for their independence. There are also two orphans who are iron-blooded.

I’ll probably update this when I watch more of the show.

Gundam: Wing

This show has a cool art style, I’ll say that. It seems to be about a world similar to 1979 Gundam, and the mobile suits have wings now. There are numerous main characters in this show, apparently.

Here are some other Gundam shows I want to watch:

• Turn A Gundam
• Gundam Unicorn
• Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
• Gundam Build Fighters
• Gundam SEED

I’ll update this in the future!