WEAll That Gundam – and a lot more besides

Why Gundam? A lot of anime fans dismiss Gundam easily – I’ve heard plenty of people say it’s ‘boring’ or that ‘it’s all the same’ or, as an actual legitimate excuse, that it’s very confusing and they don’t know where to start. With 20+ years of series, manga and video games, and much longer of established continuity, it’s a pretty fair argument to say it’s confusing.

But there’s one hell of a rich and varied wealth of series to be exploited and enjoyed in the multitude of Gundam productions, and it’s certainly something that shouldn’t be ignored. So, in order to ease your confusion, and pay tribute to an Anime phenomenon, allow me to take you on a tour of the anime franchise that’s been termed the ‘Japanese Star Trek’, and give you a bit of an education about the first family of Giant Robot anime.

The Origins of Gundam – Super Robots and Real Robots

Figure 1: Of course it wasn’t all as cool as this

In the 1970’s, anime featuring giant robots was far from unknown. Many shows had been produced, but they had all followed a template – a protagonist, usually a young boy or teenager, receives a giant robot from an older patron or relative, and then uses it to fight the monster of the week – the stereotypical, run of the mill, predictable and samey ‘Super Robot’ show.

Such copy-pasted, cloned series rarely featured any meaningful character development, or any real continuity between episodes. They rarely showed any consequences of the fighting, mass destruction, and property damage they caused in their battles on a weekly basis, (let alone the bills to the construction companies) and the working gubbins of the heroes or villains robots featured were not mentioned or thought about.

Their weapons as well as the robots themselves were fanciful, flashy, and virtually magical in nature (sometimes out-rightly so), rather than being realistic machines, and often the names of their attacks or weapons were called out prior to use – all familiar and common elements of the Super Robot genre. And it didn’t hurt that all of this of course made it all much, much easier to sell lots of shiny toys.

The original Gundam TV series took a bold and different direction in order to stand out from the crowd of its predecessors and do something completely different to the legion of carbon-copies before it.

The creator of Mobile Suit Gundam, took a leaf out of Starship Troopers’ playbook (the novel, as the shitty movie hadn’t even been made at this time), and a look at real life, and considered a revolutionary idea – what if the giant robots featured were weapons like any other?

Mass produced and part of the military, like any other, rather than flashy superhero–like devices.

And, what if they were in the hands of real pilots, rather than kids? (Had I been there, I would have applauded). And, what if the war was humans, against humans, for political reasons, rather than monsters of the week? (again, applause).

Yoshiyuki Tomino’s ideas were pretty far out there at the time, to his colleagues at Sunrise animation studios, not to mention their financial backers.

To you and I, it probably sounds pretty straightforward, but with the revolutionary ideas, they were worried that it wouldn’t take off, that it wouldn’t sell and would be too ‘different’ from what had come before.

Oh, and the one or two of you out there who think it’s boring? Get your coats.

I’ll wait.

Gone? Good.

Anyway, such a revolutionary idea wasn’t allowed to sail through unchecked. Some changes had to be made to let the show go into production. At the demands of the toymakers, the titular robot, the ‘Gundam’ was changed to utilitarian and practical grey in colour to brightly coloured and eye-catching (and very toy like…) white, red and blue, and numerous additional ‘support vehicles’ were added, to make more toys available and draw in younger viewers. Extra weapons were also added for the same reason – and to draw in existing super-robot viewers. With that, the show went into production.

Themes and Concepts – War is Hell

The Gundam robot – or mobile suit – in the show was very different to its heroic predecessors. While it was very powerful and effective, it was not infallible, and was frequently damaged, or broke down, or suffered other mechanical problems – like a real machine would. And it required a lot of skill and practice to operate effectively, unlike just dropping into the cockpit and off you go. In fact, in the first instance, Amuro Ray, the hero of the show, piloted the Gundam with the manual open on his lap. And he almost lost too – very unlike a Super Robot show.

He also didn’t call out the names of every attack – instead, he piloted like a fighter pilot, or other military vehicle. Very unlike its predecessors to say the least…

The enemy robots were also just as different – mass produced, and mostly effective machines (with one or two strays into very odd machines, which once again showed the influence of the interfering toymakers and studio bigwigs), they were not giant robot-beasts, and were instead troops-of-the-line for the most part.

The cast of the show were also another diversion from the norm. While they were teenagers, they showed human sides and failings, and acted like teenagers would.

They lost their tempers, were moody and unlovable sometimes, were spiteful, argumentative, didn’t get along, and often, through the terrors and horrors of way they faced, suffered psychological and emotional shocks. A bit more in-depth than your average robot show, to say the least.

One of the most shocking developments, and one which Tomino would later become famous for (leading to his cheery nickname of ‘Kill ‘em all Tomino’), was the death of main characters throughout the course of the show – driving home the fact that yes, this was a WAR, and not everyone survives a war. And wars are horrible, taxing, and deadly, and not clean and sanitised events.

The multitude of sequel series to Gundam followed the same template for the most part anyway – There were never any aliens, or monsters – at least, not bug eyed, non-human ones, humans always fought humans on or around the Earth, usually over possession and desire for the right to live on the Earth or to become separatist nations in orbiting habitats called space colonies. These political and philosophical ideas form the background for the various series’ wars and conflicts, and are often the driving forces for the individual characters too, or leading to a rivalry between the lead character and an enemy ace, and showing their parallel or wildly divergent points of view.

One recurring aspect of these enemy aces is that they often wear a mask, hiding their identity both from their allies, as well as their enemies, in a complex plot to gain revenge or regain their original standing, or for other personal reasons.

Char, the original template for these characters, was actually better liked than his counterpart by fans. However, this wasn’t surprising, since Amuro Ray was kind of a dick in the first Gundam show – but his changing personality and nature are something that are shown in great detail through the multitudes of Gundam sequels and productions. Likewise to Char’s equally changing personality, due to his holding onto his ideas.

But following in Char’s footsteps, the Enemy Ace is a noble and likable character, often coming to the heroes’ aid, and respecting more than hating them, and proving a face to the enemies’ ideals and goals.

There was also some, at least vague, basis in real science and concepts for the Gundam series as well. Things like Space Colonies were based on real ideas and concepts, rather than ‘just because’ and there was no ‘warp drive’ to power the space-craft. Only a few fictional ‘sci-fi’ elements were introduced to make things work, and even then, they were religiously stuck to in order to maintain some level of reality within the show – at least within the original timeline of the ‘Universal Century’, which was the ‘home’ universe of the Gundam shows.

Gundam also explored, in most of its incarnations, the powerful theme that one cannot live through a war, much less fight in it, without coming out a changed person on the other side. Almost every character experiences loss and death, either first hand or through a close friend or relative, or their own relatives end up changed. Even the most optimistic of series or characters are often dealt a huge blow for the worse, and not left unaffected (aside from in Gundam Wing, anyway).

Making a Name

So Gundam had become a breakthrough for the genre, a template for the Real Robots that followed it, and a trend-setter. But it wasn’t always the genre-master, trend-setting original it’s become now.

It flopped on its first showing.

Of course – so did the original Star Trek TV series, but look how that’s done. And it eventually became popular in the same way – through re-runs, where it drew a huge audience. This underground popularity soon exploded into the mainstream, and Gundam became a household name, as well as establishing what has become known as the ‘Real Robot’ genre, and spawned a legacy of imitators.

The popularity of the re-runs lead to Sunrise commissioning three movies to be made by re-cutting the original Gundam series. Much of the toy-inspired sillier content was removed, and instead new animated sequences were added, also clearing up some of the worse-animated sections. The movies were a run away success, and from then on Gundam was king of the robot genre.

With its name established, sequels were only a matter of time in coming, and there was no lack of them, to say the least. The original conflict of 0079, the ‘one year war’ where the original show took place, was revisited from many angles in later years by spin-off and sequel OAV series, even as late as 2009 with the CGI series ‘MS IGLOO’ (No, I have no idea why it’s called that).

The developing plotline of the Universal Century eventually spanned into hundreds of years of conflicts, all following on from events and precedents set down in previous series as it follows a developing society through the years.

The plethora original TV series are followed by movies, OAV series, manga, and more, all of which serve to expand and embellish and develop the fictional world – realising it as fully as an non-animated series has ever done – again, something that has never really been replicated or followed by any other anime franchise since in such detail, and again, very much comparable to Star Trek, with it’s different cast from series to series, and different mobile suits every time as well. And without all the bumpy-headed aliens, but unfortunately with just as many embarrassing fans.

Of course, there’s not just the Universal Century – as the time rolled on, new ideas were wanted and floated, and new directors came and went – with the desire to do new things. And one timeline wasn’t enough to contain all of them, so new and different things had to happen
New ideas were needed and wanted, and the Universal Century could not contain them all – so join me in part two, where I’ll delve into the myriad of parallel worlds and series, and also look at the other powerhouse of Gundam – merchandising, and especially Modelling!