Kidou Senshi Gundam

It is year 0079 of the Universal Century. Mankind has moved to space, living in colony clusters known as "Sides." One of these Sides declares itself the "Principality of Zeon" and declares war on the Earth Federation, the governmental body currently ruling Earth. Using powerful humanoid robots known as "mobile suits," Zeon quickly gains the upper hand.

Nine months into the conflict, the Earth Federation has developed its own powerful mobile suit called the Gundam. When Zeon launches an attack on the colony holding the Gundam, a 15-year-old civilian named Amuro Ray suddenly finds himself thrown into a conflict that will take him all across Earth and space, pitting him against the enemy's ace pilot, Char Aznable.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Aznable, Char Main

Ikeda, Shuuichi Japanese

Ray, Amuro Main

Furuya, Toru Japanese

Noa, Bright Supporting

Suzuoki, Hirotaka Japanese

Haro Supporting

Inoue, You Japanese

Mass, Sayla Supporting

Inoue, You Japanese

Ral, Ramba Supporting

Hirose, Masashi Japanese

Zabi, Mineva Lao Supporting

Zabi, Garma Supporting

Mori, Katsuji Japanese

Shiden, Kai Supporting

Furukawa, Toshio Japanese

Sune, Lalah Supporting

Han, Keiko Japanese

Yatate, Hajime Producer

Tomino, Yoshiyuki Director, Episode Director, Script, Storyboard, Theme Song Lyrics, Key Animation, Original Creator

Matsuura, Noriyoshi Sound Director

Sekita, Osamu Episode Director

Reviews

May 19, 2025

Chrismas95

Recommended

I went into the very first Mobile Suit Gundam with low expectations due to its age. To my pleasant surprise, its animation wasn’t bad and its writing was far from being bare! It’s very much like how I was surprised by how good Evangelion was due to the same biases.
…Maybe I should stop underestimating old anime.

0079 is definitely endearing. Its plot is about a bunch of trainees and civilians involuntarily taking control of the Federation’s best ship and its best mech, trying their hardest to survive onslaught after onslaught of the enemy forces that want that technology. I’m as surprised as anyone that the show ... can make that interesting for 43 episodes, but they did! It’s always fun to see the Gundam be overpowered, but the ship’s crew also pulling through is also always good to see! To be fair, I started to get a little tired of it around the midpoint, but that fatigue didn’t last too long.

Its main strength is definitely its characters. I ended up liking pretty much everyone in this show, both good and bad, both major and minor. And “minor” includes the REALLY minor guys. I also want to emphasize that this statement includes A LOT of characters because the show just has so many. Even a lot of side enemy mech pilots get names and small moments to show their personalities. (The bomb squad keeps showing up in my brain whenever I think about this.) They all have a sort of charisma that makes it hard not to root for them. Even the villains. Sometimes ESPECIALLY the villains.

My main character issue is that Amuro, our 16-year-old main character piloting the Gundam, often gets moody in the first half. That itself isn’t the problem — he’s a child soldier after all, he SHOULD have mental conflicts — but the execution never felt like it was done well. Also, some of the main crew felt underdeveloped even after spending 43 episodes with them (not that I don’t like them, of course). But I think in every other aspect they did such a good job with everyone. (Except M'Quve…he’s really the only one I can think of that never made me interested.)

I will admit, the direction the show takes in the last fourth didn’t feel right. Don’t get me wrong, I still liked it because I just inherently like that kind of thing. But it felt like it went from the plot described above to something completely different — and so suddenly, too. Maybe it’s all foreshadowed in previous episodes in a way that makes a second watch-through even more interesting (or maybe I just didn’t pick up on it at all until it took the stage in episode 34). Still, even if the shift was interesting (and I repeat: definitely not bad), I liked the state of the show that came before it more.

As an aside, the soundtrack is so good. Every song is immediately recognizable to the point where I instantly noticed new songs start existing in later episodes. I don’t know how many songs there actually are, but even if it’s not a lot, they never got old.

I think what makes Gundam 0079 so good to me is that it’s an underdog story through and through. And who doesn’t love some good underdogs? While I still don’t feel the drive to buy a model kit (yet?), I’m very glad to say that Gundam starts very strong!

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Apr 13, 2025

BerryBlitz

Recommended

As someone watching Mobile Suit Gundam decades after its original release, I went into it understanding its legacy—and I have to say, for its time, it holds up impressively in certain areas. The animation and sound design were quite strong considering the era. You can definitely see how it paved the way for future mecha anime and helped shape an entire genre.

That said, it wasn’t always the easiest watch. The pacing dragged in multiple sections, and the show often felt repetitive—especially in the middle arcs. There were stretches where it was genuinely hard to stay engaged. Thankfully, things really picked up in the last quarter ... of the series. The story became much more focused and emotionally impactful, with some great character and plot developments that made the final episodes feel worthwhile.

I did enjoy a lot of the characters overall—Amuro, Char, Bright, and even some of the side characters had compelling moments—but at times their writing and actions were frustrating or just plain baffling. Some interactions felt overdramatic or inconsistent, which pulled me out of the experience. And I’ve gotta be honest: I really couldn't stand the music. While it may have fit the time period, it was grating for me and didn’t help during the slower or more repetitive scenes.

Despite its flaws, Mobile Suit Gundam still deserves credit for what it accomplished. It's clearly foundational, and I can respect it for what it tried to do. While it didn’t fully click with me, the strong final arc and historical significance make it worth a watch for anyone interested in classic anime or mecha history.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 9, 2024

kekekeKaj

Mixed Feelings

For a long time I'd thought the importance of the original Gundam anime Mobile Suit Gundam was mainly due to its founding of the Real Robot genre as well the huge, sprawling Gundam franchise that's still going strong today. Having actually sat down and watched the show though, I realised that I seriously underestimated the influence of this seminal series: not only did it make its mark in anime history, many of its ideas remain relevant to this day.

It always seemed a little strange to me how Gundam series often recycle the same elements over and over. What became obvious once I started Mobile Suit ... Gundam was how these traditions were inherited directly from the original series. Even the opening shot was a spine-tinglingly iconic one, with the sun peeking out behind Earth and the sunlight tracing a circle around the outline of the planet. The backstory exposition immediately introduces a few other familiar elements, including the war between the Earth faction and the space colony faction with a name beginning with Z - in this case Zeon - and their infamous cyclops mech designs, as well as the notorious colony drop event, which I was surprised to see occurred only in the backstory and not the main one.

The original Gundam series begins in the middle of the war, during a lull in the action. It doesn't take long to see this lull broken, as Zeon forces led by Char Aznable, the original blond, masked maverick (whose doppelgangers are a staple of later Gundam series), finds a newly deployed Federation warship White Base picking up a batch of secretly developed weapons from a space colony. One of these weapons happen to be … drum roll please … the mobile suit (aka robot) Gundam. The action ramps up quickly as Zeon attacks the colony, and 15-year old prodigy Amuro Ray gets caught up in the conflict and ends up piloting the Gundam against Zeon forces as White Base tries to escape the colony, salvaging what they could of the newly developed weaponry.

Mobile Suit Gundam impressed me immediately with its watchability. For a show hailing from the 70s, just about the worst you can say about its production values is how amusingly dated its opening theme is. Having struggled through other 70s shows like Space Battleship Yamato, I was relieved to discover this 40+ episode series would not require nearly the amount of effort to sit through.

The early episodes consisted of mostly military tactics/action fare, and showcased some impressive battles despite the clearly limited animation budget. I found myself more engrossed in these primitively animated battles than many modern, better animated action sequences, which made me realise that well thought through tactics and clean choreography often trumps flashy, fast paced animation. One of the things that stands out about the battles is the importance of ammunition and energy: someone is always running out of one or the other, often changing the course of battle. These kind of detail clearly establish Mobile Suit Gundam as a new breed of mecha show - these are not super robots in action with their seemingly infinite supply of Thunderclap Groin Rockets and whatnot.

The highlights of the early battles are the repeated run-ins between Char and Amuro. The clash of styles keeps the contest interesting: one is an experienced, supremely talented mecha pilot; the other is a rookie with deep potential piloting a mecha with vastly superior technology. Another reason why these encounters are so enjoyable is due to Char himself. He instantly comes across as an anti-villain with a fascinating personality and bundles of charisma. What's more, his complex relationship with other Zeon commanders adds a layer of political intrigue to the proceedings. No wonder his is the only name I'd heard of prior to watching this show.

Beyond the tactical elements, the early story plays out as a bunch of rookies getting to grips with a powerful but unfamiliar space ship while engaging in continuous skirmishes with Zeon forces. It reminds me of the early episodes of a certain show called Macross (you may have heard of it) that aired several years later. This shouldn't come as a surprise though, when you learn that several of the creative minds behind Macross graduated from the same Gundam fan club in university.

The second part of Mobile Suit Gundam takes place on Earth. This stretch lasts for a while, and it certainly feels like it too; they exhibit both the strongest and the weakest aspects of the series. On the plus side, there's some impressive character developments, with Kai's growth from a selfish shithead to a sympathetic character elevating him as an unexpected highlight of the series. In addition, there's more meat to the story, which showcases an astonishing number of ideas which would resurface and be further explored in later anime. Certain political and aesthetic elements would return in force in Legend of the Galactic Heroes (you may have heard of this too), and, perhaps more significantly and certainly more obviously, the mini storyline that illustrates the toll war exacts on a child civilian soldier germinated an idea that, well over a decade later, would grow and form the backbone of a little series called Neon Genesis Evangeleon (you probably hear-- nah, this is one series you probably haven't heard of).

To give Mobile Suit Gundam its due, some of its ideas were executed with surprising amount of nuance and emotional weight, making for compelling viewing even today. But as often is the case with early pioneers, at least as many ideas had too many rough edges. What made things worse was that, as much as Mobile Suit Gundam broke away from the super robot genre, it couldn't do so completely. Despite the attempted serialised storytelling, the series rarely thinks about more than two episodes at a time. As a result, romantic subplots would surface then get forgotten; minor characters get introduced and killed off within a couple of episodes like clockwork; side stories and ideas mostly resolves within the same time frame, even the more complex ones desperately in need of fleshing out. On top of this, the format of the episodes are rigid, and after a while the obligatory battle of the week begins to resemble the monster-of-the-week format so omnipresent in the show's super robot predecessors.

Hampered by the short-termism of the writing and the pseudo-episodic format, the series soon began to drag, in spite of the semi-regular short bursts of quality. Even the initially thoughtful military engagements peter out into mostly paint-by-numbers affairs thanks to the sheer number of battles exhausting the limited supply of good ideas. In addition, due to the children's toy tie in (unsuitable though it may be considering the content of the show), the show regularly gets hijacked by toy manufacturers keen to sell merch, so we're inundated with Gundam specs and battle configurations that aren't detailed enough to satisfy those (like me) who enjoy getting into the nitty gritty details of combat, but at the same time more than enough to bore those who don't care about such things.

The show also suffers from other flaws symptomatic of the times. For instance the comic relief kids, looking like they came from an entirely different type of show, whose greatest contributions were that of annoyance - and as a parent of a toddler going through the terrible twos phase at the time of watching I don't say this lightly. Then there's the smattering of casual 70s sexism which jars especially when placed next to the strong roles given to the female characters who aren't just damsels in distress. A few years later, Macross would take the strong women characterisations further, but here we're very much in the early stages of these ideas.

As the Mobile Suit Gundam limps into the final stretch with a return back to space, it gets an injection of renewed energy, and the meandering overarching plot appears to suddenly rediscover a sense of purpose. Unfortunately this is counterbalanced by a palpable shift for the direction of the plot. If it feels like the story's been redone, that's probably because it had: series creator Yoshiki Tomino's original story draft differed dramatically from what eventually got made. In addition, the series got cancelled due to low ratings, and the writers had to tie up the series sooner than planned. This left the show's home straight feeling invigorated but disjointed: ideas and concepts that went unmentioned for the first 30+ episodes are suddenly everywhere and on all the characters' lips ("newtype" anyone?); the new concepts predictably remain underdeveloped; characters forge unconvincingly deep connections practically over night; character motivations went through 180s (sometimes multiple ones). Char's character in particular suffered, and comes across as borderline split personality disorder towards the end. These gripes aside, the last few episodes were sprinkled with some of the most exciting battles and well directed scenes in the series. It really felt like team worked hard to pull out all the stops to end the series on a high. Alas, I found its deus ex style ending a bit of a let down.

So, how does the show hold up today? Probably better than I expected. It's a bit of a mixed bag for sure: it features a serialised story constrained by the episodic narrative mentality; it contains some fascinating characters along with some dubious character development; it exhibited some great military battles early on only to run out of steam under the relentless rigid format. While far from unwatchable, I'm also not convinced Mobile Suit Gundam has enough to keep most modern audiences engaged. There is one group for which this show is an easy sell though - those with an interest in anime history, especially of the mecha genre. It's no exaggeration to say that you can trace visible, direct lines from this show to other giants of the medium that came out years and even decades later. It's one of those shows where I came out feeling like I'd grown as an anime fan just by having experience it first hand.

But for all its obvious influential clout, personally I think Mobile Suit Gundam was eclipsed by another legendary - though perhaps less influential - anime that started airing just half a year later: The Rose of Versailles. The two shows provide a fascinating contrast: while at first impressions the hilariously dated production of The Rose of Versailles aged far more poorly than Mobile Suit Gundam, as The Rose of Versailles goes on the story gained more and more momentum (perhaps due to having the unfair advantage of adapting an existing manga); it took full advantage of the serialised format and spun a superbly engrossing yarn that won me over completely by the end. Now there is a show I'd still recommend to a lot of audiences today. Mobile Suit Gundam? I'm not so sure.

Personal rating: +0.5 (decent)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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