Mobile Suit Gundam - A very breif history

Sup,

Space colonies, masked antagonists, evolved humans and giant mechs. This is where it begins. My review of Gundam. Come on, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Back in 2001 I was intorduced to the Gundam universe when New Mobile Report: Gundam Wing was aired on Cartoon Network's Toonami. I watched all 49 episodes with friends and i've been hooked ever since. I went mental for Gundam Wing. I bought model kits, collected trading cards, graphic novels and even wrote my own fanfics... which were shockingly bad. And no, they'll never be read ever again.

Now, eight years and god knows how many viewings later, I think I can safely call myself a verteran Gundam fan. And for the record, G-Wing is one of my least favorite series.

Now with me being a massive Gundam fan, and with the 30th aniversary being this year, i've decided to do a breif recap / review / sumary of some of the Gundam series to date. I might get round to doing them all if I can be bothered, but there are rather alot. I might just do my favorite ones, who knows, depends what I feel like :P This post will just be a brief history and introduction to the series.

There are so many different series in the Gundam universe that they are not all set in the same timeline. The original, and most popular is the Universal Century (UC) timeline. The UC timeline is the home to 14 different series, including the 2009 movie Gundam Unicorn.
The other timelines are:

• Future Century - G Gundam
  
• After War - Gundam X
  
• After Colony - Gundam Wing, Endless Waltz
  
• Cosmic Era - Gundam SeeD, SeeD Destiny, SeeD Stargazer
• Correct Century - Turn A Gundam
• Anno Domini - Gundam 00

Gundam was created way back in 1979 by Yoshiyuki Tomino. Before Gundam he was already well known as a director on numerous other anime's including Astro Boy. Tomino went on to write a further 4 full length Gundam series and 7 movies. A full list of his work can be found here.

Gundam has always been a story centering around politics and the effect that war has on the world. Generally every series involves a group of youths who get drawn into a war against their will, and one character will always ends up being the 'accidental' Gundam pilot. This is known among fans as 'The Gundam cliche'.

The concept of 'the evolution of humanity' or 'humanities next evolutionary steps' is a strong theme that plays out in every every series. Whether they are called Newtypes, Co-ordinators, or Innovators, these 'evolved' humans have abilities beyond those of a regular human. As well as telekenesis, hightened spacial awareness and response times, these abilities work in a similar way to 'the force' is Star Wars.

As well as this, there are always space colonies, a virtually indestructable battleship, a huge space laser, stupidly powerfull mid-season mobile suit upgrades, and a masked villan.

Right, I know thats a pretty breif introduction to Gundam, but in a round about way it's all you really need to know. The first series review i'm going to do will be the original Mobile Suit Gundam: UC 0079. The series that started it all. Should be fun.

See you then, cheers for reading.

BenGP02