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Mobile Suit Gundam (Japanese: 機動戦士ガンダム) is a televised anime that was written and directed by Tomino Yoshiyuki and is made up of 43 episodes that were aired in 1979.
The series was later re-edited for theatrical release and split into three movies in 1981. The idea of Mobile Suit came from the powered suit of Starship Troopers, although the story otherwise bears little resemblance to that novel. Yasuhiko Yoshikazu did the character designs and Okawara Kunio was responsible for the mechanical designs, including the titular giant robot, the RX-78-2 Gundam.
Synopsis
The original Mobile Suit Gundam takes place during the One-Year War in the year Universal Century 0079 (U.C. 0079). During this time period humans live in orbiting space colonies called Sides. The ruler of Side 3 declares war against the Earth for the independence of the colonies. In the early days of the war, Earth Federation Force are defeated badly. This was due to the change in strategy necessitated by the Minovsky Particle, which jammed communication and radar devices. The Minovsky Particle changed war from long range engagements to short range combat limited to visual and infrared sensors. While the Minovsky Particle had communication and radar jamming capabilities, it also allowed the creation of a Mobile Suit with high performance.
The story is about a crew of Earth Federation Space Forces on a space ship called White Base that fight against the Principality of Zeon using humanoid weapons called Mobile Suits. Most of crew are young civilians and are eventually drawn into the war. The crew of White Base fight Zeon using an advanced prototype Mobile Suit called Gundam, that is more powerful than any weapon the Zeons have previously produced. The Gundam and the White Base are so important to the Federation that the crew journeys to Jaburo, the Federation's main base located in the Amazon basin. They were to reach Jaburo from a space colony named Side-7 but a Zeon attack forced White Base to change its course to Zeon occupied North America, where direct flight to Jaburo in South America is possible. They fly a roundabout trip over two continents and oceans. In the process, the Gundam's pilot, Amuro Ray, and the other draftees are exposed to the harsh conditions of war, participate in many battles, and experience the tragic trials and consequences of the conflict.
Zeon also has its own internal conflict. The ruling Zabi family is a house in struggle and finally its members slay each other. A star pilot of the Zeon forces, Char Aznable, is a disguise for Casaval Rem Deikun, son of the founder of Zeon, who was usurped and murdered by the Zabi family. He seeks the chance for revenge on the Zabi family and wears a signature mask to hide his identity. His younger sister Arteisia, known as Sayla Mass eventually joins White Base and becomes a pilot. Char tells her to leave the army but she refuses. When they meet in Jaburo, she confronts him and asks him to stop cooperating with Zeon but she fails to persuade her brother.
Amuro and Char accept each other as a rivals. They are involved into a conflict around a Zeon female pilot Lalah Sune near the end of the story. Lalah is Char's lover but feels a sympathy to Amuro. Amuro is attracted to her but kills her in a fight. Amuro was devastated but finally he finds he has friends to always await his return -- the crew of White base.
Comments
Mobile Suit Gundam marked the maturation of the giant robot genre. Prior to Gundam, most giant robot shows were formulaic with archetypal characters. They were often monster of the week shows in which the teen hero would jump into the robot (typically an heirloom from his late scientist father) and defend earth against an evil alien organization who would try all manners of gimmicky methods to take over Earth only to be defeated each time by the giant robot's superweapon. These shows often seemed interchangeable and shared recognizable traits that are now parodied in anime today. Such as the teen hero shouting his robot attacks, weapons materializing out of thin air, and the lengthy robot transformation sequences. Westerners are mostly familiar with these through the Force Five and Voltron series.
Gundam brought a sense of realism and feasibility to the use of giant robots. In that sense, they were futuristic military hardware and not the almost magic superweapon of the "special" teen hero or just as often a Power-Rangers styled superteam. The robots of Gundam had limitations such as running out of power or ammunition. And they were only as good as the pilot in their cockpit.
The Mobile Suit design radically moved away from the popularized 10 story tall robot warrior look and adopted a more utilitarian appearance. And most importantly, the two sides were not depicted as good and evil but as two opposing political organizations. There were likeable and unlikeable characters on both sides. In contrast to the unending incompetence of the villains and their henchmen in the previous giant robot shows, some foes were worthy opponents, even superior. The characters in Gundam sometimes paid a hefty price for winning (which, in this case, more properly means that the characters simply survived the day and not necessarily tactical or military victory) and heroes as well as villains died in battle.
Though it is credited with introducing the "real robot" genre, where the robots were pieces of military hardware, Mobile Suit Gundam still retains parts of its "super robot" heritage, including a nearly indestructible robot created by the hero's scientist father.
Mobile Suit Gundam holds the indignity of being one of two Gundam series which have had their original airing times cancelled due to poor ratings. Perhaps by chance, the cancellation of the series forced many plot changes which had proven to be more effective compared to the original plan, including the tragic death of Lalah by Amuro.
History of the broadcasting
The series did not receive high ratings when it was first aired, and was in fact cancelled before the series was intended to end. The series was originally set to run for 52 episodes and was cut down to 39 due to poor ratings. Luckily, the producers were able to negotiate a one month extension to end the series with 43 episodes. Audiences were expecting another giant robot show, and instead found MS Gundam, the first work of anime in an entirely new genre, the mecha drama or the 'real robot' genre as opposed to the 'super robot' genre. The models from the show sold very well, however, and the show did very well in reruns and in its theatrical compliation. Much like the original Star Trek, the original Gundam was not appreciated by its initial audience, and also like Star Trek, proceeded to spawn a massive sci-fi franchise, spawning numerous sequels, model kits, and videogames up to the present day.
Mobile Suit Gundam was released in the U.S. (dub only) in July 2001 on Cartoon Network but, following the pattern of its initial airing in Japan, it was later cancelled before the entire series was shown. When the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred, the series was almost over. Immediately following the attacks Cartoon Network, and many other stations, began pulling war-themed and violent programming. Although Cowboy Bebop came back before too long, Mobile Suit Gundam did not. Perhaps it had not been earning high enough ratings to justify returning the series for so few remaining episodes. It is sometimes stated that MSG was cancelled "because" of September 11. While this is likely why it was taken off initially, it is not sufficient to explain why the show didn't return. Aside from fan speculation, the source of this meme seems to be an anonymous report which appeared on the fansite gundam.com (http://www.gundam.com) on Sept. 14, purporting to summarize an internal Cartoon Network memo. This
report (http://web.archive.org/web/20010926145336/http%3A//gundam.com/)
can be seen in
The Internet Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org/).
In 2002 the series was given another chance by Cartoon Network in one of their late-night programming blocks, but it was again pulled before completing its run.
Novel
Tomino Yoshiyuki wrote novels of Gundam on his own as an alternative universe of Gundam itself. The biggest difference is that Amuro Rey is killed in the final attack against the Zeonic stronghold by a stray shot of bazooka from a Rick Dom. Char Aznable and the crew of White Base along with handpicked men under Kycilia Zabi's command makes a deep penetrating attack against the Side 3 and kills Gihren Zabi together after which Kycilia is killed by Char. Tomino later lamented that had he known that anime ending would be different and that another series would be made, he would not have killed Amuro. These novels are official, yet are not widely regarded as the official story due to these differences.
The three novels were translated into English by Frederik Schodt and published by Del Rey Books in September, 1990. Mr. Schodt chose to use several non-official romanizations in his translation, for example rendering the name "Char" as "Sha." Zaku was rendered as Zak, reportedly based on a fanon text from Mamoru Nagano (who had a hand in creating mobile suits in Zeta Gundam) stating that this was was an acronym for Zion Air Kommand. This is not supported in any onscreen dialogue. Another change was rendering "Zion" as "Zeon," despite the already widespread fan usage of the alternate "Jion", which preserves the original pronunciation. "Zeon" (which does not), however, was later made the official romanization when Gundam was licensed in North America.
Also, while not exactly a translation, the trademark salute "Sieg Zion" was unnecessarily changed to the generic sounding "Hail Zeon". As a result, an important but subtle historical connotation with the Zeon philosophy is lost on North American Gundam viewers. However, this change may have been in order to hide that connotation due to it airing in the afternoon - the dubbing of 08th MS Team, which was contemporary to the dubbing of the original series, included the "Sieg Zeon" salute. However, the "Hail Zeon" salute only appear in Mobile Suit Gundam and the Char's Counterattack movie, the dubbing of both having been supervised by Tomino himself for reasons only known by him.
Manga
Mobile Suit Gundam manga, namely Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 and Gundam:The Origin are published in English by Viz Communications.
Characters
Earth Federation
Principality of Zeon
Weapons and Support Units
Notice: Spelling of all weapons are not official.
Principality of Zeon
Support Units
Mobile Suit
- MS-05B Zaku I
- MS-06F Zaku II
- MS-06S Zaku II Commander Type
- MS-07B Gouf
- MS-09 Dom
- MS-09R Rick Dom
- MS-14A Gelgoog
- MS-14S Gelgoog Commander Type
- YMS-15 Gyan
- MSM-03 Gogg
- MSM-04 Acquy
- MSM-07 Z'Gok
- MSM-07S Z'Gok Commander Type
- MSM-10 Zock
- MSN-02 Zeong
Mobile Armor
- MA-04X Zakurello
- MA-05 Bigro
- MA-08 Big Zam
- MAM-07 Grabro
- MAN-03 Braw Bro
- MAN-08 Elmeth
- MAX-03 Adzam
Earth Federation
Support Unit
Mobile Suit
- RGM-79 GM
- RX-77-2 Guncannon
- RX-78-2 Gundam
- RX-75-4 Guntank
Mobile Pod
Mobile Armor
- G-Armor
- G-Armor Easy
- G-Bull
- G-Bull Easy
- G-Fighter
- G-Sky
- G-Sky Easy
See also
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Mobile Suit Gundam
Followed By:
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
External Links
http://www.mahq.net
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