Mobile Suit Gundam Review

Sunrise builds this to sell model kits and Tomino uses it to make a war drama, which is why it fails on television in 1979 and then never goes away. The premise is small on purpose. Amuro Ray is a civilian teenager who climbs into the Gundam because nobody else is left, and the series spends forty three episodes on the White Base crew running supply problems, taking losses, and being disliked by their own command.

Soldiers on both sides are given reasons. Char Aznable is the template every masked rival since has copied and almost none have matched, because his grudge is political and personal at once and he is usually right about the Federation. The invention is enormous. The Universal Century hands mecha a rulebook, with mass produced machines, fuel, ammunition counts, and a colony war whose opening atrocity is stated in figures the show never lets you forget.

Everything from Macross to Evangelion is standing on this. The animation is where the age and the budget show. Character art drifts badly, stock footage runs constantly, and whole battles resolve in pans across still cels. The cancellation forces a rushed final stretch as well. The compilation films tidy some of that up, and the original run is still the one to watch to see a genre change shape in real time.