This post, the longest anime post in the history of this site , is media analysis and overview. I've always liked reading about media on rDrama and hopefully I can convince some of you that not all anime is stupid

OVERVIEW

For those who don't know, Gundam is a military science fiction franchise revolving around space wars and giant robots. Arguably the most popular “mecha” franchise ever, Gundam is also considered to have started the “real robot” genre in which the mechs are treated like military vehicles instead of superheroes. Then again there's also a fantasy element to the series in the form of psychic powers and supernatural experiences.

It's also one of most popular and marketable Japanese things ever, of all time. To give you an idea of how much the Nips like Gundam, they went on to build life sized statues of not one,

Not two,

But three Gundam designs. (And that's assuming I didn't forget one)

Interestingly enough a fourth based on the more recent Gundam SEED was built in the Middle Kingdom

An oh, this isn't to say there are only four statues. The OG Gundam has been displayed a few times, with the fully functioning animatronic 1:1 scale model in Yokohama being particularly notable.

I feel like this image says a lot about Japan

Popular as it is now, Gundam had a slow initial launch and took time to build up a following. The original anime failed to attract much of a toy audience and was cancelled without receiving the full 52 episode run, and so believe it or not one of the most popular all time obsessions of mecha fans everywhere was almost smothered in the crib. The model kits that are so well known today didn't come out until 1980, launching only after the rest of the franchise had died.

And how different would the world be if this historic example of autinema (neurodivergent cinema) had never existed?

In this uncharacteristically literate anime themed post, I'll detail the conceptual history of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, how it actually got made, its rocky airing and eventual cancellation, and how the franchise came back from the grave to become one of the most influential in its genre.

CONCEPT

I will maintain that not all anime is r-slurred — only about 99% of it. If you can get past the giant robot fights in its premise, Gundam is a genuinely interesting example of conceptual sci-fi that borrows heavily from actual futurology of the mid 20th century. If nothing else Gundam can hold itself high and say it took from a wide variety of inspirations, as opposed to anime shows that were simply inspired by other anime — never trying to be anything but bog standard examples of their genre.

The Series Creator

Gundam is the brainchild of Yoshiyuki Tomino. It's important to note that Tomino really did envision the series as grounded science fiction first, anything else second. Giant robots weren't even part of his original idea! Rather he simply knew that an anime would need a merchandising hook in order to actually get made and so wrote a setting that would allow the relevant producers to slip one in.

Tomino was born in 1941 and so technically lived through the Second World War Japanese home front. WWII certainly became an inspiration for Gundam's plot and political worldbuilding. His father notably worked at the Odawara Arsenal producing pressure suits for wartime A6M Zero pilots. Tomino was inspired by his father to take an interest in aerospace, and of course he would have been around for the great achievements of the early space race. Ultimately he had to settle for the humanities instead, but luckily this story has a happy ending. He broke through the stereotypes and actually got a job

Tomino worked on 1963's Astro Boy, one of the OG animes and a show that kickstarted the industry, and would go on to be a leading figure for the studio Sunrise — now known as Bandai Namco Filmworks. The Sunrise pencil pushers are notably the ones who fashioned Tomino's ideas into a mecha series. They were known for developing mecha shows and making deals with toy manufacturers since the market for more conventional children's television and toy lines was more heavily saturated. Tomino worked on several series with Brave Raideen being his first mecha show. In 78 he was the creator of Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3 — still a super robot show and not as genre defying as Gundam would be.

The eventual release of Gundam would retroactively divide mecha between the aforementioned Super Robot shows — which had more fantastical settings, and Real Robot shows — which treat the mechs more like conventional if futuristic vehicles. Regarding the two, Tomino had this to say,

The bottom line is, I wanted to have a more realistic robot series - unlike a super robot – where everything is more reality-based, based on a humanoid robot. Right from the beginning, the roots of the mobile suit came from the worker robots that were building the space colonies back then, and they would become more technologically advanced, to the point of becoming a weapon, and that was the whole lineage of the robots I had in mind since the beginning. So the whole idea, my idea, of trying to have a robot series in space without it becoming a stupid story was based on wanting to make a story and surrounding it with reality – more realistic possibilities was the underlying concept.

Before I get into the production of Mobile Suit Gundam, I'll focus on the science fiction that inspired Tomino and the setting. To me this is a large part of what makes Gundam so fascinating and, well, not stupid.

20th Century Futurology: Life in space and overpopulation

The Apollo 11 landing in ‘69 made space based sci-fi even more popular than it already was. People of the time were also more optimistic about space developments than we are now. The Soviets launched the first ever satellite in ‘57 and a little over ten years later there was a man on the moon. People in the 70's didn't seem so unreasonable in wondering if they might someday retire on Mars or in a space station.

In the 1970's there was also some serious investment in the idea of permanent space colonization — which in this context means the construction of theoretical habitats in space itself. The 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K. O'Neill is especially notable as it seems to have inspired one of Gundam's exact plot points; massive space stations intended to serve as permanent homes, positioned at lagrange points in the Earth-Moon system. Looking at the above photos, compare the O'Neill station on the left to the actual Gundam space colony design on the right.

Compared to other major sci-fi settings, Gundam is fairly unique in that space travel never leaves the solar system and in fact takes place almost entirely within Earth's orbit — an area referred to as the Earth Sphere. While Star Wars or Trek or countless other stories will show people living on other planets, the space colonists of Gundam are true “spacenoids” in that they spend their lives entirely within these O'Neill inspired space stations. While most never leave Earth's orbit, they also literally never experience the 1.0G pull of real surface gravity. They are also quite proud of this and will say things like, “[Earthnoid] souls are weighed down by gravity”

The technology of Gundam actually makes it possible to have a human civilization exist entirely in space. Colonies recycle oxygen and water and grow their own food. People get around in trams and electric cars so there's no atmospheric pollution and necessarily dirty manufacturing can simply be done in space or in dedicated industrial colonies. Solar panels provide electrical power. The hydrogen and helium isotopes necessary for nuclear fusion can be sourced from the moon and the atmospheres of outer gas giants. Asteroids can be mined for minerals. The rotation of the cylindrical colonies simulates gravity so spacenoids don't actually have bone issues or any other medical conditions from zero-g.

And much like how vegetarians might argue there is no need to eat meat anymore since modern logistics and agriculture make it possible to live entirely on plant material, some of the more extreme spacenoids argue it isn't necessary or even ethical for humans to live on the Earth anymore. The Earth of the Gundam setting has suffered heavily from overindustrialization and overpopulation, but space has no environment to pollute and will never run out of available, heh, space.

One of the more important characters in the worldbuilding is Zeon Zum Deikun; the father of highly marketable antagonist Char Aznable (more on him later), a solid example of Gundam's weird naming conventions (more on that later), and a political philosopher whose beliefs effectively divide the history of space colonization into a "before" and "after" Zeon. Though the colonies and their settlers were once just that, Zeon argued that space colonization was the future of all humanity and that the colonies, known as "Sides", should be independent from the Earth not just because the earthnoid government did not properly represent them, but because the Sides themselves should eventually grow from colonies into metropoles in their own right. Zeon wanted political independence but also espoused the philisophical notion that life in space would further human evolution and that life on Earth was something humanity needed to outgrow. He further argued that adaptations to space would eventually produce a "new type" of human being.

Though this all sounds very fantastical, Zeon's beliefs may well have been inspired by Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov. The former was an early proponent of space development, so early that he got started working for the Russian Empire Consider the quote,

Man must at all costs overcome the Earth's gravity and have, in reserve, the space at least of the Solar System

Wouldn't be out of place as a Zeon or AEUG statement of intent. Another quote,

The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot eternally live in a cradle

In the '85 sequel Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Zeon's son Char actually paraphrases this. (Based on the dub)

From the dawn of history, mankind has played in this cradle called Earth. But now, humanity must leave the nursery behind. Our infancy has come to its end.

Zeon's ideas around the "Newtype" may come from Fyodorov, who was more or less conceiving transhumanist ideas way back in the 19th century. Fyodorov argued that human evolution could and should be continued through scientific means, potentially up to the borderline supernatural like bringing all the people that had ever died back to life. Tsiolkovsky's later spin was that space development was the key to furthering this and allowing mankind to truly escape his "ecological niche" on Earth's ecosystem and control his own evolution. It's quite possible Tomino was inspired by these ideas, or perhaps he reinvented them. Either way Gundam is interesting in thinking more about life in space than the average space opera, in which case space is simply a way to get from Planet A to B.

Another concept in 20th century futurology was overpopulation. It took from the literal dawn of man to the 19th century for the total human population to reach one billion, but in just over one hundred years that population exploded to six billion. (Believed to be over eight billion as of this 45th anniversary of Gundam) Many academics in the mid 20th century weren't sure if this was ever going to stop. They wondered if the Earth would soon hold ten billion people. Twenty billion. Etc.

The 1968 novel The Population Bomb by Paul Ralph Ehrlich predicted major societal upheavals as a consequence from the runaway baby boom. Gundam seems to borrow from this as these exact problems provide the answer for any s who might wonder why the Earth built the space colonies in the first place. In its backstory the Earth Federation was forced to build into orbit to prevent the complete collapse of the economy and environment. Gundam lore is also interesting in that it was the poor who were sent to live in these new colonies so that the rich and landed could maintain what they had on Earth. The first spacenoids were forced to be that way, hence a permanent inferiority complex that influences the Principality of Zeon even decades later. It also goes to show how central baby boomer overpopulation was as a sci-fi concept.

I'll explain Zeon and the Federation in more detail later. First I'll wrap up the sci-fi regarding the less cerebral influences.

Fictional Influences: The Sci-fi "One Lie" vs. Jedi Knight Superpowers

Gundam's premise also borrows from a lot of fictional media, especially when it came to coming up with stuff that was cool and would sell toys. Remember that even the giant robots of Gundam weren't part of Tomino's earliest ideas. A lot of the merchandisable whatnot was conceived of within a year when Sunrise was working on the anime and Tomino and other creators probably just borrowed from whatever interested them. On that note Gundam writers did try pretty hard to explain some of the softer science regarding things like spaceships and laser blasts.

On the other hand there's fantasy elements in the form of Newtypes. Nothing about this screams "hard sci-fi"

According to TVTropes, which isn't always terrible, sci-fi works have the concept of a One Big Lie. This is when otherwise realistic sci-fi makes up one or two things and then explores these inventions as a concept. Something like Star Wars is too soft for this to apply, since countless made up and unexplained technological principles permeate the setting. An example would be something like Inception where the dream technology is rather fantastical but the setting otherwise attempts to realistically explore the consequences it would have on society.

Sometimes the One Lie makes the setting possible even if the story isn't actually about that technology. Something making FTL travel possible is a common example.

I'll bring up Mass Effect because it's One Lie is similar. In Mass Effect a fictional substance called Eezo makes FTL achievable. The writers also used it to explain many other principles from future firearms to telekinetic powers. They only needed "one lie" to create the rest of the setting. (Not counting suspension of disbelief stuff like alien waifus )

Gundam does this in the form of a very particular kind of nuclear fusion that produces the fictional Minovsky Particle. Nuclear fusion is a very real thing and Gundam's setting is possible because in universe the scientist Trenov Minovsky invented a perfect cold fusion reactor. This is a theoretical fusion reactor that would only be room temperature, allowing it to power vehicles safely.

Gundam nuclear physics produces a fictional elementary particle, the Minovksy Particle. These particles can be contained in a field and emitted to create the laser beams of the setting. Minovsky particles can repel a ship from the ground, allowing the classic sci-fi trope where capital ships can hover in the air. They also serve to jam electromagnetic signals and mask ships from scans. Gundam then is one of the few sci-fi settings to explain why battles in space take place at close range with most shots missing. Long range and automated targeting systems don't work when ships spread Minovsky particles, and they never run out of these since it's all a natural byproduct of their own reactors. Thus the warships are forced to eyeball it WWII style, and the robots are deployed against ships not unlike Pacific War esque dive bombers.

The writers get credit for stretching one fictional concept into all this. It's also neat that the worldbuilding ties into the Second World War influence on all the combat. Gundam strived to be as grounded as possible even with all these standard sci-fi tropes, but then again...

Though true blooded weebs may refuse to admit it I think it's safe to say Star Wars was an influence on the craziest part of Gundam; The X-Men Jedi Newtypes. Star Wars was fairly popular in Japan and Tomino is on record saying he liked it. If he hadn't seen the movie when making Gundam in '79, other people at Sunrise definitely had.

Remembering that only 1977's Star Wars existed back then, consider how the Force works in that movie. It seems to be mostly psychic in nature. Vader's choke is the only scene where the Force does anything physical, and in the context of just that movie it could be argued Vader was making the guy forget how to breathe or choke himself or something. Every other use of the Force is for telepathy, inner peace and control, or something psychic in nature. Physical abilities don't really show up until Empire Strikes Back.

In Gundam, Newtypes are people with supernatural, inexplicable abilities that are generally psychic in nature. They're named after Zeon's in universe concept. Major characters like Char and protagonist Amuro Ray usually end up being them.

Newtypes are sorta explained away through that earlier idea of space furthering human evolution. In particular their telepathic ability to sense each other and share thoughts would keep humans connected in the vastness of space, and their reactions and precognition would make it easier to navigate in a three-dimensional environment.

They also gave Gundam the excuse to be a trippy mech show twenty years before Evangelion.

I've heard that Newtypes were added because the producers felt there should be a reason someone as young as Amuro was such a skilled pilot. This makes sense to me since in the original anime Newtypes aren't mentioned at all until the second half of the show.

But whether Newtypes owe more to Star Wars or Russian transhumanism or whatever else, Tomino must have really liked them since the concept becomes more prominent in later Gundam shows. Newtypes become symbolic of the very idea that life in space represents humanity's future, or at least a potential for the world as we know it to change.

Regarding other influences, Tomino brings up a few more in this interview.

Q: What influenced your creation of the Gundam concept?

Tomino: I don't think there are any animated works that have had a specific influence on the creation of the Gundam world. In regard to live-action, there have been quite a few that I have not only liked but been influenced by. I very much like Akira Kurosawa's films, especially the action films. I like the very quiet films of Yasujiro Ozu. And I particularly like the U.S. film Destination Moon. Its depiction of space did influence me, it's where I got my feeling for space conditions from. It's very outdated now, but it was revolutionary at the time.

Q: How did the space colony concept and the Star Wars movie influence Gundam?

Tomino: The space colony concept and Star Wars were very much an influence on me; in fact, you could say they're the basis for the whole Gundam drama. I already had the story outline done when the movie was released and, frankly, I felt extremely frustrated and bitter. In the United States a film like Star Wars could be made in live-action, whereas in Japan we were in a position--or I was in a position--where I had to make my story in robot animation...and I don't particularly like robot animation.

Didn't even like anime I suppose you have to dislike a genre to want to force change

The Jules Verne novel Two Years' Vacation was supposedly used to reference how many of the main characters would be very young despite struggling with very serious situations. Apparently Gundam was pitched this way not unlike how Star Trek was pitched as Wagon Train but in space.

Space Battleship Yamato may have also influenced the themes of Gundam. It too went down as one of the defining animes of the 70's, also unusual at the time for being written like military fiction.

Starship Troopers was almost a major influence on Gundam and would have changed it considerably. When developing the series with Sunrise, it was originally suggested that the robots would instead be powered exoskeletons like in the novel. This certainly explains why the mechs are referred to as "mobile suits" in the story as well as why space suits are called "normal suits". It's not as though you'd need to differentiate an astronaut suit from a building sized vehicle, but the term normal suit was carried into the final product.

Battlestar Galactica may be the reason why the Zeon mechs have a mono eye just like the antagonistic Cylons. They even swing it from side to side in some scenes just like the Cylons do.

Political Worldbuilding: End of Herstory Vs. Coping Kraut Cosmic Colonists

Gundam '79's plot follows the One Year War, a WWII inspired conflict between Earth and Zeon (A country name in this context) The worldbuilding here is pretty good imo. There are a number of parallels to real history along with a considerably greater amount of effort than your average anime receives.

The Earth Federation

The protagonist faction of Gundam, the Federation controls the Earth Sphere but is less than representative of the spacenoids and their interests. It's notably portrayed as a "gray" faction with short-sighted and corrupt leadership, another stark difference between Gundam and its more optimistic super robot predecessors.

Militarily they're based on the Allied powers. Initially they're caught off guard by the Zeon blitzkrieg and lose a lot of ground, but eventually superior resources and industry allow them to counterattack and steamroll. The turning point of the ground war is fought in Russia like Stalingrad with the vehicle action of El Alamein. The final phase of the conflict plays out like the Pacific War with the Feds adopting an island hopping strategy against Zeon's asteroid bases, even referred to as "islands" in the story. Like Japan, Zeon surrenders before an actual invasion is necessary.

Politically the Federation is the very definition of the neoliberal "end of history". The Federation elite is a globohomo morass and there are no differences between the former nations and cultures of Earth anymore. The Federation isn't said to not be a democracy but leadership policy never really changes. The government is inflexible to change. The economy is dependent on overseas (or rather orbital) investments who do the actual production while the wealthy of Earth are consumers of last resort, never producing but only buying. Nothing is to be changed or upended or adapted, only made more efficient. The only acceptable changes are those that bolster the preservation of the current order.

When the Zeon say "their souls are held down by gravity", they mean that the Federation is violently opposed to the idea that space colonization may genuinely change human history beyond mere economic profit. That their only goal is to preserve the illusion their current state of affairs will exist perpetually, even as it rots away as generation after generation of increasingly incompetent nepoticians rule with no goals or ideas beyond simply trying to steer the course.

This writing is interesting to me because first of all we can see more than a few allusions to the real world here It's also ahead of its time since the modern end of history idea is really a product of the 90's. Before then many political analysists thought the Cold War was the end of history and that the USSR would always be around. Sunrise was far sighted to portray a true globohomo back in '79.

On that note the Federation may take inspiration from the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party. Though Japan is also not not a democracy, in practice the LDP has held power since the 50's as a uniparty -- a reality known as the 1955 System. Many Japanese have seen it as a stagnant, unchanging government that doesn't represent them well or respond effectively to change. And these complaints were flying back in 1979, let alone forty five years later.

The Federation is generally portrayed more heroically than Zeon, but only in the sense of clearing a very low bar. Many characters both good and bad criticize how they are and wish for change. A general sense of societal malaise is a recurring theme of Gundam's setting and, well, Japan itself is no stranger to that.

Amuro Ray

I won't mention every character but I may as well bring up the protagonist. Early on it was decided Gundam would feature a core of teenage characters forced to deal with a Two Years' Vacation inspired story of difficult challenges. It was common for anime heroes to be teenagers with super robot mecha being no exception, but since Gundam would be "realistic" Amuro too would be a darker take on a teenager in an action series. Like Shinji twenty years later, the "point" of Amuro's character is to show that being a mech pilot would suck.

Amuro is the son of Gundam lead engineer Tem Ray, himself a student of Dr. Minovsky. Otherwise he wasn't initially special in any way and is meant to show how war conscripts random people and forcefully changes their lives. In the second half of the show he is revealed as a Newtype and becomes one of most prominent examples. Apparently the producers felt this was necessary to explain his piloting talent, since making him a more "realistic" depiction of a child soldier also makes one wonder why the military wouldn't eventually replace him with an adult.

The Principality of Zeon

The bad guys of the setting, though many characters acknowledge their initial goals as noble. Based in Side 3, a colony permanently located above the dark side of the moon such that the inhabitants can't even see the Earth, Side 3 was Zeon Zum Deikun's base of support and was named after him when he mysteriously died. Though the setting has kept it ambiguous even to this day, many believed he was murdered by his associate Degwin Zabi. In any case Degwin styled himself the successor to Zeon's cause and placed his children in positions of power. When Zeon declared its violent independence, Degwin made Zeon into a monarchy with himself as sovereign.

Militarily Zeon is the Axis from WWII. They kick off the war and initially seize a lot of territory. They invented the mobile suit and initially enjoyed military dominance until the Federation finally perfected the Gundam. Even after this they keep experimenting with increasingly esoteric military designs to win back momentum. Their situation invokes the "wunderwaffe" of Nazi Germany. In both cases inferior economic and industrial situations left the Germans/Zeon with no conventional way to defeat the Allies/Federation. Hence the hope that a new weapon design would change the strategic situation.

They also bear the lionshare of warcrimes. They kick off the One Year War by attacking any colony that didn't side with them. This kills billions of spacenoids. They also launch Operation British: Intentionally deorbiting a colony so as to simulate an asteroid impact on the Earth. This also kills billions of earthnoids. All in all the entire human population has been slashed in half by the time the anime begins. Funnily enough Supreme Commander Gihren Zabi notes this effectively solves mankind's overpopulation problem.

Zeon is further based on Germany as a whole. Later Gundam writers would give German language words to Zeon designs, but even in the original show their battlecry is SIEG ZEON While they derive their war crimes and sense of spacenoid superiority from the Nazis, they're also a monarchy with a Prussian sense to their architecture and officious uniforms. In an abstract sense Degwin can be considered WWI Germany while his oldest son Gihren is WWII. Degwin started the war and intended to give Zeon a greater share in the post-war balance of power, but it was Gihren who masterminded Operation British and the invasion of Earth along with a larger plan to reduce the population of "undesirables" in favor of spacenoid supremacy. Degwin becomes quietly horrified at the war's escalation and retreats into the shadows as Gihren seizes control of the military Fuhrer style. One of anime's most famous scenes even has Degwin compare his own son to Hitler.

As for why a sci-fi nation has a literal system of nobility, it's my belief this is cope for how the first generation of spacenoids were lowly rentoids evicted from the planet by Feddie landchads Subsequent generations made themselves flashy, classy, and otherwise, heh, "spacenoid-rich" to avoid being seen as Earth's underclass. Spacenoids were also frustrated with democracy since it produced the Federation hegemony and elections were weighted against them anyway. It's worth noting that spacenoid factions from later Tomino works, Cosmo Babylonia and Zanscare, also style themselves as monarchies in rejection of the liberal western values that produced the Federation.

From there Zeon's development somewhat mirrors Germany from the First World War to the Second. We can see Zeon's (the man's) initial movement as philosophical and somewhat collectivist, similar to the Weimar Republic in which left leaning groups were popular along with those who hoped for an idealistic future for a German republic. Zeon wanted to replace the Federation's corruption with a future in which all humanity immigrated to space, thus becoming the same social and economic spacenoid class. The focus was on Newtype theory and collective empathy (through literal psychic powers) as a way of eventually overthrowing the Federation's colonial hierarchy. With Zeon's death the wealthy Zabis seized power and turned the movement into one of nationalism, birthright superiority, and a simple replacement of the old Earth's class structure with a new one based in Side 3. As Hitler purged the Nazi party and made the "socialist" part of their name an artifact, so did the Zabis purge Zeon's closest supporters and use his rhetoric of bringing down the old class structure only when it was convenient.

Okay maybe it sounds like I'm stretching a bit, but I maintain the worldbuilding for Gundam is realistic, almost depressingly so. The Federation feels like so many western governments we have now. Zeon shows how an idealistic revolution can be subverted by extremists who only use the original ideas as propaganda to justify their actions. For that matter Zeon supporters show how people fall for this, always equating the Principality with the ideals of independence and spacenoid culture while ignoring the crimes committed by the Zabis. The Federation is guilty of the setting's inequality but the Zeon have far more blood on their hands. And both sides insist the other's crime is worse while refusing to acknowledge their own.

Gundam sets up a proper us vs. them conflict that isn't just one-dimensional Empire vs. Rebels or some such. You could also call it "conceptual worldbuilding" since the writers imagined the longterm social consequences we might see if the previously mentioned futurology concepts regarding space development actually came to pass.

Char Aznable

Char is a recurring antagonist and arguably the most popular character in the anime. Maybe the whole franchise. He's been called the Japanese Darth Vader in regards to his iconic status and marketing potential.

Char Aznable is a Zeon ace pilot and secretly the exiled son of Zeon Zum Deikun. On some level he loves being a pilot and believes in the Zeon cause, but his real goal initially is to take revenge on the Zabis for his father's death. Later he becomes a Newtype and spends the rest of the franchise trying to bring about the "true" Zeon ideology.

Char was unusual in being a "bad guy officer" with his own agenda. He didn't even have a personal conflict with Amuro for the longest time and could have been the main character in his own right. Tomino himself noted he was hard to write since he was naturally more interesting than Amuro. He was also more likely to be mentioned in fan mail than Amuro or any other character.

PRODUCTION HISTORY

As I mentioned earlier, Gundam wasn't initially planned as a robot show at all! It wasn't really planned as anything before merchandising got involved.

Planning for the series that would become Mobile Suit Gundam began early in 1978. It was conceived from the get-go as a more serious science fiction story on par with Space Battleship Yamato, but everything else up to and including the mobile suits themselves came later. Sunrise worked closely with the toy company Clover when developing the series and it was on their suggestion that it became a mecha anime. Tomino was brought in at this point because of his experience with Voltes V, Zambot 3, and Daitarn 3. Tomino's sci-fi concepts entered the picture and formed the basis of the setting alongside the ideas of other Sunrise staff. Hajime Yatate is a commonly used pseudonym for the contributions of the Sunrise staff as a whole. Work began under the working title Freedom Fighter.

Toys Make The Anime

Clover was the show's sponsor and oversaw many of the creative developments. Aside from asking for robots in the first place, Clover demanded a team of three distinct designs to lead the show and gave guidelines on how the mechs should be. A common criticism of Gundam these days is that the above robot and others don't look like realistic made-by-the-lowest-bidder military vehicles. This is just a consequence of the time since Clover wanted the mechs to be colorful and heroic like classic super robot toys they already knew sold well.

An early quirk was that everything in the series would be freedom themed The mothership FREEDOM FORTRESS became the canonical Federation carrier White Base. The FREEDOM WING and FREEDOM CRUISER I think evolved into things like the Gundam's Core Fighter plane and the G-Armor sled thing or maybe the Gunperry.

Meanwhile Gunboy was another potential name for the main robot, called such because the series would have more down to earth combat revolving around laser guns instead of melee weapons and super punches. Supposedly the term Gundam came from combining “Gunboy” with FREEDOM Dom became Dam because Tomino envisioned the Gundam as an extremely powerful mobile suit in universe, evoking a dam holding back water.

In early September, Tomino completed a project proposal under the working title SPACE COMBAT TEAM GUNBOY. At this time the writers were potentially considering a story about aliens, which makes it interesting that such detailed political worldbuilding only came about later. Even back then most of the character work had already been done and would stay unchanged into the final product.

Freelancer Kunio Okawara was hired to do many of the mechanical designs. One of the other options considered was Studio Nue, later known for Macross. They apparently suggested Starship Troopers as a potential influence for realistic mech designs, but this was shot down by Clover since they wanted GIANT robots for the kiddies.

The writers originally wanted realistic color schemes for the vehicles. White Base would be black for space camouflage and the Gundam was going to be a duller gray all over. Clover demanded the bright colors so the toys would be more appealing to children. The core block system that the Gundam was built around in universe was added so the different toys could swap parts with each other and encourage the kids to collect them all. Though Tomino was fine with the beam rifle and Star Wars esque beam saber, he was frustrated with Clover's demand for additional weapons like the Beam Javelin and Gundam Hammer. Additional fluff concepts like the G-Fighter and G-Bull were all about those sweet sweet toy sales

Also the Gundam was going to have a face until someone worked it down to a mask.

Tomino eventually rejected the alien invasion idea and the story became about a war between humans. ‘Course it's probably not a coincidence many of the Zeon designs could just as easily have come from a cheesier space war anime.

Clover notably didn't originally plan to make any toys of the bad guys, so Okawara was able to design these with relative freedom. He was able to get away with a wide variety of colors including darker and faded colors (toy companies really liked bright colors) as well as fashionable asymmetry (harder to manufacture)

Tomino's one constraint was that the Zeon mobile suits have only one eye, an idea that would become the bad guy trademark for the entire franchise. As I mentioned before, this might very well be because of Battlestar Galactica.

Gundam the Franchise: Eventual Success Gundam the Anime: Dead in the Water

Though Gundam would become one of the biggest Japanese things in all of Nip history, the original anime wasn't actually very popular. It was cancelled before reaching the planned 52 episodes and it took some negotiation with Clover to extend the series just enough for an actual ending.

Mobile Suit Gundam premiered on April 7th, 1979 on the Nagoya Broadcasting Network. Along with directing, Tomino would storyboard about half the total episodes. He also designed more and more of the robots as the series went on since Okwara juggled other jobs. He left much of the screenwriting to others, something he seemed to eventually regret.

While we were producing this block, as I was having the scripts written, I was also drawing storyboards and working on episode direction and animation production. This was a time when we had momentum and couldn't imagine the program being cut short, so I left the writing of scripts to the scriptwriters. Of course we held meetings, but I didn't have any time to write the story.

For that reason, this became a period in which the story had a high degree of independence, where distinctive characters appeared and ridiculous developments took place. I was burdened with the hardship of having to apply my energies to dramatizing this as a single storyline centered on the White Base.

As the broadcast continued, the TV stations began receiving mail from the show's fans. Wataru Sekioka—who represented Nagoya TV as one of GUNDAM's producers—recalls:

What struck me the most was that it was Char, not Amuro, who was popular in this program. Everyone was drawing Char on the postcards they sent us. (laughs) He was supposed to be the bad guy, but he was the one drawing the viewers' attention.

(In that case, were there also requests asking that Char's appearances be increased?)

There certainly were. And then, when I talked to Mr. Tomino, he told me he was getting rid of Char after about ten episodes. (laughs) I don't know whether or not he intended to kill him, but characters often die in that person's works, so Char was probably his number one target. Anyway, I told Mr. Tomino directly that would be a bad idea, and that Char was the one person he couldn't kill.

This was around April or May, but since the animation work was already in progress, he told me that even if Char returned it wouldn't be until around October. I thought that was pretty late, but it would have to do, so I decided I wanted him to come back. That was the entirety of my order. By the time he reappeared, the viewers must have had high expectations for Char's long-awaited return.

Meanwhile Clover wasn't happy with lower than expected toy sales. They eventually demanded changes to the story including yet more upgrades for the Gundam to make toys out of and a wider variety of enemies for the Gundam to heroically defeat Tomino originally had no problem sticking with Zakus , so I guess Gundam fans owe it to Clover that other iconic designs like the Gouf, Dom, and Gelgoog eventually came around.

Then again the show also had weird whatnot like this thing

On that note, Tomino went with weird names for mobile suits and people on purpose. Some of the earlier names have meaning, for example Char Aznable is named after French singer Charles Aznavour and Zaku is a Japanese word meaning grunt or small fry. Later names however don't mean anything. Mech names like Gouf, Z'Gok, and Gelgoog were intentionally weird for Tomino was trying to see if Clover would object to anything. Apparently the Zeon general M'Quve was a turning point because Tomino thought this name was really a stretch. When it wasn't objected to, he finally decided that his sponors never watched the show and only cared about the designs and toy sales.

A true auteur Tomino came to hate having to work with the bean counters. He still held a grudge 10 years after the show aired and stated in an interview in Newtype 1989 April issue that the enemies of Gundam are Sunrise, sponsors and television stations.

Still the toy sales continued to disappoint. Sunrise's Yamaura recalls,

Around August, after about four months on the air, we began getting lots of letters from teenage fans in middle and high school. The majority of the contents were saying that they wanted us to put out plastic models, not toys. But we weren't a manufacturer, so we couldn't just say yes. I tried proposing this idea to Clover, but unfortunately, the conclusion was that as a matter of policy they weren't thinking about anything other than die-cast models.

I'll note again that the now famous Gunpla models kits didn't exist yet. Clover's toys were all standard action figures and playsets made from die-cast metal. This was a continuation of a toy trend that was popular in the 70's going back to 1972's Mazinger Z

Gundam's ratings actually weren't bad in Nagoya, but Tokyo's ratings were very low. Clover was frustrated and it became the accepted view among the production staff that ratings were going to do the show in prematurely.

According to Sekioka, the sponsor's representatives met to determine the show's fate without including anyone from Sunrise.

At a certain point during the broadcast, the sponsor Clover decided to give up because their Gundam toys weren't selling. So Mr. Nagaura from Nagoya TV's Tokyo office called me in to a meeting without Mr. Yamaura, Mr. (Masanori) Ito, or of course Mr. Tomino. I said to Clover that since December to January was their toy-selling season, they should sell their Chogokin toys until then, but New Year gift-giving stops in January so we should end it that month.

The show was to be cancelled after only 39 episodes. Negotiation allowed a one month extension to give the show a real ending, and so the anime at least ends with a final battle and Federation victory in the One Year War.

Interestingly enough, Clover's expensive Gundam DX Combination set would go on to be a surprise hit of the winter season. Following this Clover apparently approached Sunrise with the offer of another small extension. Obviously this didn't happen, and who's to say how it would have changed the anime and franchise.

Almost a Stillbirth -- It was Really More of an 80's Thing

In the immediate aftermath of the anime's cancellation, Tomino got to work on a trilogy of novels that retold the story of Gundam entirely. Apparently he always wanted to be a serious novelist and only worked with cartoons for stable employment. Tomino's novels notably diverge from the show, as an example main character Amuro Ray dies in the novels. Some of these ideas would appear again in later Gundam stories.

Though Gundam failed to attract a toy buying audience, the genre defying military fiction wasn't lost on older viewers. In the end, Gundam was saved by manchildren

The series was rebroadcast starting in February of 1980 and in a March issue of Animage magazine Tomino discussed the possibility of compilation films. This had previously been done with Space Battleship Yamato.

Meanwhile, and this was the big one for neurodivergents everywhere , the toy company Bandai aquired the rights to the merchandise from Clover and began producing plastic model kits from the series. Going into the 80's die-cast metal was more common than plastic in part because of Cold War related petroleum whatnot, so these plastic kits were fairly revolutionary. They were also dedicated model kits, not preassembled toys, that targeted the same neurodivergent buyers of scale model military vehicles. These model kits were huge with the dedicated older fans of Gundam and gave the franchise the necessary economic oomph to come back from death

Honestly the only reason I'll not sperg more about Gunpla is because it really deserves its own longpost. Gunpla at this point is a massive and independent hobby. Gundam media could disappear tomorrow and Gunpla by itself would continue on for fifty years or more.

For now know that Bandai's model kits revived Gundam and made it into the mecha series that surpassed everything that came before or since.

Around the time the Bandai kits were coming out, Sunrise and film company Shochiku agreed to turn Gundam into a theatrical film. Japan has always been more willing to show grown men cartoon movies in theatres so I should clarify these films were released to a wide audience.

The first film was released in March of 1981 and was a great success, even though or maybe because it was mostly just a condensed retelling of the first several episodes. The second movie, Soldiers of Sorrow, released in July and the third movie, Encounters in Space, in March of 1982.

With the movies, Tomino reordered some events and edited out what he didn't like from Clover's demands. The Gundam lost many of its weapons and the more toyetic concepts were omitted or turned into something else, for example the G-Armor combiner replaced by a simpler Core Booster jet. Most of the less iconic Zeon characters and designs were taken out. The movies also mention the Newtype concept far earlier so it's not out of nowhere in the second half.

The third was more ambitious and 70% of the animation was redone. Among many other changes was a new final scene confirming a certain someone's survival and implying the franchise would go on.