Monkey_D_Luffy's Blog

Anime Relations: Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack, Mobile Suit Gundam I, Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow, Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space, Mobile Suit SD Gundam Mk. I, Mobile Suit SD Gundam Mk III, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Lost Episode

Gundam: easily one of the most popular franchises in all of anime. Recently, I decided to travel all the way back to 1979 and watch every Gundam title by air date, starting with Tomino Yoshiyuki's 1979 original Mobile Suit Gundam. I've decided to do it by air date because I feel that that would be the best way to fully experience the growth of Gundam. There's a damn lot of 'em, and I hope to get done in time for the start of Gundam 00 Season 2, but...that's very unlikely xD. Oh well, it's better just to take your time with things, right? But anyway, in addition to watching them all, I'm also going to throw around some thoughts on each in here and construct a review for each, except for the summary movies and TV specials, once I finish them.

Check-in (10/6/08): Well, I have failed miserably at trying to have this done before the start of Gundam 00 Season 2, as predicted. I'm not even half way there, lol. Oh well, I'd prefer to watch a series like Gundam in marathon format anyway, instead of waiting every week for a new episode, so it's all good. Basically that means I still have til the Spring season, so hopefully I'll be caught up by then.

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~List of Gundam Titles By Air Date (Oldest to Newest):
http://myanimelist.net/anime.php?q=gundam&type=0&score=0&status=0&tag=&p=0&r=0&sm=0&sd=0&sy=0&em=0&ed=0&ey=0&c[0]=d&c[1]=e&gx=0&o=5&w=1&o=2&w=2
(^ won't work as a hyperlink because of the closed bracket after the 0 in the url which screws up the BBCoding :P)
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Watching

After watching three lengthy series, it's finally time to relax a little and be able watch a handful of Gundam movies and OVAs =).

Complete

Mobile Suit Gundam
(4/7/1979 - 1/26/1980)
[Review]
9/10 - A revolutionary title, you can see why this instant classic sparked such a successful franchise, that's for sure. So spectacular and so entertaining I watched all 43 episodes in just 3 sittings. This is for sure some of the greatest enjoyment I've ever gotten out of a series, without a doubt. And Char is definitely one of the coolest characters to ever appear in anime. Mad props to Tomino Yoshiyuki, seriously.

Mobile Suit Gundam Movie Trilogy
(3/14/1981) (7/11/1981) (3/13/1982)
7/10 - Of course, re-cap movies cut out scenes from the original series, but they cut out and altered so much stuff that it was just really disappointing for me. Too many awesome parts and aspects of the TV series that I loved were omitted. Sure, there were definite improvements of the TV series in this, but in my opinion, the downgrades beat the upgrades.

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
(3/2/1985 - 2/22/1986)
[Review]
10/10 - This sequel actually surpassed its predecessor. It did so in just about every aspect as well; the characters, the character relations, the action, the story lines, the animation (of course), the sound, the tragedy, the mechas, the excitement, the finale, and the overall epicness. The ending -no spoilers- totally blew my mind. A truly fantastic watch.

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ
(3/8/1986 - 1/31/1987)
[Review]
7/10 - Well, to put things simply, it didn't quite live up to the previous entries in the franchise. However, even though this title gets a lot of bad comments from Gundam fans, I don't really think it was exactly bad. It just didn't meet the standard set by 0079 and Zeta. With that said, it did have its highlights, but at times also fell into a bit of a hard watch. The first half or so was also very lighthearted and more comedy-based, which felt sort of like an experiment to see how it would turn out, and then it transitioned into a more serious tone, where it definitely did improve.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack
(3/12/1988)
[Review]
8/10 - Oh how wonderful it was seeing Amuro and Char go head to head again. But seriously, this movie's space battles were superb, and the animation, being from 1988, is just truly incredible. However, the film still had some heavy flaws. Mostly being the shortage of background story. All of a sudden Char is leading a gigantic army, and Amuro and Bright are fighting together on the same ship again. And there's no explanation as to how these things came to be, so we're left totally wondering what happened in the time between ZZ and this.

Mobile Suit SD Gundam Mk. I
(3/12/1988 - 5/25/1988)
6/10 - Gundam is really the sort of series that is just perfect to use for a parody, so I'm glad these little SD Gundam works were made. There's some pretty funny stuff and all, but it's not really...lmao material, for lack of a better way to explain. I'd say the funniest episode in this was the second one, since it had so many small yet significant references that made it funny; like Chara Soon with her whip and Mathilda's ship exploding after Woody shows up.

Mobile Suit SD Gundam Mk. III
(3/23/1989)
4/10 - First off, I have absolutely no idea why Mk. III would be released before Mk. II. At first I thought it was just an error in MAL's database, but ANN and AniDB both have it listed the same way as well. But anyway, in this parody some of the Gundams were made into samurai and placed into an Edo-like setting. Sounds like an alright idea, but it's not very good at all. It's really quite lame and has much less humor than Mk. I.


I have also completed Mobile Suit Gundam 00 as it aired before deciding to do this and reviewed it, but I plan to rewatch it when the time comes, and possibly edit the review if necessary.