Mobile Suit Gundam

 Mobile Suit Gundam (機動戦士ガンダム) is a 43* episode original military space epic by a collection of creatives from Nihon Sunrise.  The primary creative behind the series is Tomino Yoshiyuki.  The series originally aired in the Spring and Fall of 1979.

   *Episode 15, Cucuruz Don's Island was never made available for North America.

     Set in the future of Earth, humanity has been living among the stars long enough to have people born in space in one of the fully operating space stations known as Sides.  By the new Universal Century calendar, in the year 0079 a war of independence breaks out as Side 3 decides to throw of the reigns of Earth and form its own power base known as the Principality of Zeon.  Humanity is collected under the Earth Federation and the conflict between it and Zeon becomes devastating quickly, resulting in half of the human population being wiped out before the end of the war.  A secret new weapon is being developed on the Side 7 colony by the Federation when the team that is tasked with retrieving it is attacked by a Zeon sneak attack.  The attack is devastating, resulting in most of the Federation contingent being lost of killed, leaving a young officer named Bright in charge of the new command ship, the White Base.  In addition to the White Base are three new powerful mobile suits, the Gundam, Guncannon and Guntank.  In the process of evacuating the station the White Base becomes a refugee transport and Bright is forced to enlist civilians into the battle to get back to Earth.

    A teenage boy names Amuro Ray ends up becoming the pilot of the Gundam, forced into the situation by his overwhelming desire to help those around them.  Bright is hesitant to entrust the military's most secret weapon in the hands of an inexperienced civilian boy, but desperation requires necessity.  The White Base heads to Earth, followed doggedly by Zeon forces.  Those forces are being led by charismatic masked officer named Char, who is hell bent on absolute victory.  At every the White Base escapes destruction and Char becomes obsessed with the Gundam and its pilot, seeing it as a challenge to his own brilliance and ability.  When the White Base reaches Earth their problems do not go away, they have to fight their way through Zeon help territory and when they finally arrive in friendly air space they are immediately sent out on vital missions as the Federation pushes to turn the tide in their favor.  Left with little choice, Bright remains in command of the ship and the civilians who have taken on combat roles in their journey are pressed into military service.  Amuro, the Gundam and everyone else who have struggled to survive are now faced with their mortality in what becomes the pivotal battle in the One Year War.

     Gundam is one of the fundamentals of the maturing anime industry.  A collaboration that wanted to push a more realistic hero mech narrative it is considered the beginning of the real mech genre, that moves away from the giant robot super hero aesthetic.  Gundam, while keeping with the template of a hero robot emphasized vulnerability and limitations.  The design of the mechs in the series were inspired by the power suits from the novel Star Ship Troopers with a focus on being more mechanically realistic.  Through sponsor partnerships with the toy company Clover.  The series was aimed as a young audience with an eye on moving related toy's.  Even though it was designed for children around early adolescent age, the series was largely grim and dramatic, with may characters dying on screen.  Due to failing toy sales the show was cut short of its 52 episode run, with it wrapping up in 43 episodes.  The series didn't gain a lot of traction in its original broadcast.  In the early 80's the story was condensed, cleaned up and refocused into a more consumable three movie format.  The movies along with syndication lead to a surge in the shows audience, but with adults and late teenagers, shifting the series to aim for an older audience that was eager for narrative and realism.

    TV animation in the late 70s was obviously very limited mostly due to budget constraints and the artwork for Gundam is lacking in a lot of areas.   While there was a goal to bring a more realistic story there is a lot of hand waving in regards to science and physics.  A lot of the mobile suits movements ignore their metallic mechanical structure.  Instead they move and react like magical humans like they anything found in a super sentai series.  Gundam is very much tied to super sentai but does a lot of work, largely through its story telling, to distance its self from that genre.  The core of Gundam, outside of the war and the mechs, is the concept of the Newtype, a sudden evolutionary change in humans brought on by the move into space.  The naming of the Newtype idea doesn't appear until the last arc of the story where it suddenly becomes the driving force of the conclusion.  Artwork and realism aside, I really disliked the series for the first half.  But as it closed into the final arc the intrigue and machinations became more interesting...it also doesn't hurt that the devastation ramped up.  I struggle to understand how Gundam made such an impact but that's coming from a world where it has always existed, I was born near the end of its original broadcast.  I have lived in a world where real mecha and its influence has already existed.  Its also the problem of having never watched it in all the decades of anime fandom until now and the medium has gone through such drastic changes in that time that the age and awkwardness of the original Gundam is impossible to look past.  While it may be flawed its impact on anime is undeniable and its legacy will be more important than an individual chapter.

The original series is currently available on Crunchyroll, but your better off just watching the three theatrical movie version of the story instead.