Gundam not part of the Western anime community

Gundam is way too big and lacks accessibility.

Gundam is way too big and lacks accessibility.

Yes, there is not necessarily a lot of overlap between fans of Gundam and fans of other anime.

Yes that is accurate, Gundam isn't very popular outside japan, the only Gundam anime that most people know in the west is Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz.

@Zarutaku Not exactly. AU stuff is made to be accessible to new people, even rehashing old gundam tropes so that people learn about them in their own flavor of Gundam series (Char clones, child pilot, war bad, some kind of uber evolved human subrace, some kind of mono-eyed villain mecha, superweapons/colony drops, etc...)

The only thing that would be somewhat daunting would be the UC timeline, but even then you can easily access it by ether going by media release order, or by timeline chronological order. The OVAs are usually self-contained enough to grasp the general war story.

I didnt even start easy mode, I went in head deep into Build series, which has the most references to past Gundam media through plastic model kit merchandise and I still managed to enjoy it.

Ironically, its Bandai's and Sunrise's fault for not making Gundam even more popular in the west, cause they suck and actively hinder distribution of model kits in other countries, along with just not popularizing on the series that are popular in the west. Its only Seed this, Seed that, cause apparently they think that only Japan likes mecha, as if Pacific Rim, Megas XLR, Symbionic Titan, Bionicle, Exo-Force, or Voltron (or heck if you wanna really go deep down the rabbit hole with Transformers) werent indicators that Western fans like Japanese inspired giant robots.

@Zarutaku It is incredibly easy to get into Gundam, the only thing that ensures it "lacks accessibility" is people assuming it's hard to get into because it's an old big franchise. I guess Sunrise could go out their way to market their AU shows as hey you can watch this without no context but that is about it.


Also yeah to address the OP, I mean sure Gundam is "niche" in the West however, that's because outside a few huge titles, mecha in general is pretty niche. Within the genre, Gundam is probably one of the most mainstream mecha anime, it's just when compared to like EVA, NGE and Code Geass, yeah it's pretty niche (and even then Wing was a hit with the Toonami generation)

All mecha might be considered niche now. But back in the day (the 80s) it was highly popular, at least in the States, There just wasn't much else available at the time, and the production quality was a lot better than most of the other stuff that made it to American shores from Japan. People practically had orgasms over it. It wasn't until the Gundam-verse exploded that you started seeing other series, like Robotech and Macross, start getting distributed here,

Another thing to consider, that I have seen no one mention, is that Transformers took a lot of the steam out of Japanese mecha sails. After that hit, most of the Japanese mecha hitting the US was a lot of overhyped mediocre crap ala Code Geass or Darling in the Franxx. It's like none of the Japanese studios wanted to compete.

It's definitely not as popular as some of the biggest anime but I think it's still pretty popular overall. I'm not sure if this is the best metric for popularity, but on the anime subreddit, iron-blooded orphans and witch from mercury both seemed really popular while they were airing. It also seems like some anime fans just don’t like mecha, which doesn’t help.

The answer here is simple. People just don't understand mecha as a genre. They were astroturfed into liking shows like Eva, Geass and 86 for all the wrong reasons by YouTubers and paid influencer shills... while neither really does anything out of the ordinary for the genre. Yes, even Eva was done before - and it's name is Ideon. Mecha is more like a set dressing, the show just needs to have giant mechanical (but not necessarily mechanical) pilotable (again, not a necessity) power armor/robot for it to classify as a mecha show. It never invalidates the core tenets of storytelling - needing to have a story and characters to follow on their journey is just normal stuff.

I'm weirded out people still fall for the exact same astroturf about mecha. Guys, it's 2024, mecha anime are more available than ever before. Evangelion is not the end-all be-all of serious mecha shows. Code Geass and 86 aren't the end-all be-all of realistic mecha. Gurren Lagann isn't the end-all be-all of super robots.

@TheMechaManiac I'll be honest, I completely forgot Code Geass was a mecha series.

I don't think I've ever watched a video about any mecha but still thought Eva was great. Maybe because I was an edgy teenager. Darling in the FranXX I also thought was interesting, same with Aquarion.

Was that your explanation? The mech exists but it's about the characters? I feel like you could say that about a lot of set-piece genres like Fantasy, Sci-Fi, even things like Love Triangle/Love Polygon etc and those also all come down to storytelling. The thing that sets a series apart is A) how good are the characters/story arc and B) how good/what is the worldbuilding.

Lord of the Rings is a massively popular and critically acclamied story because it follows a central plot through the eyes of in-depth characters in a richly illustrated world steeped in its own history.

The "astroturf" as you put it still just comes down to those two things, doesn't it? People like Eva because of the psych elements and mech battles. People like CG because of the psych elements and superpowers. What is your argument here? What are the "wrong reasons" to like something? More to the point of the topic, what would the "right reasons" be that would cause people to pay more attention to Gundam as a whole?

Good. I like my little Gundam autist circle (although we are by no means "small")

@TheMechaManiac I'll be honest, I completely forgot Code Geass was a mecha series.

I don't think I've ever watched a video about any mecha but still thought Eva was great. Maybe because I was an edgy teenager. Darling in the FranXX I also thought was interesting, same with Aquarion.

Was that your explanation? The mech exists but it's about the characters? I feel like you could say that about a lot of set-piece genres like Fantasy, Sci-Fi, even things like Love Triangle/Love Polygon etc and those also all come down to storytelling. The thing that sets a series apart is A) how good are the characters/story arc and B) how good/what is the worldbuilding.

Lord of the Rings is a massively popular and critically acclamied story because it follows a central plot through the eyes of in-depth characters in a richly illustrated world steeped in its own history.

The "astroturf" as you put it still just comes down to those two things, doesn't it? People like Eva because of the psych elements and mech battles. People like CG because of the psych elements and superpowers. What is your argument here? What are the "wrong reasons" to like something? More to the point of the topic, what would the "right reasons" be that would cause people to pay more attention to Gundam as a whole?

@TheMechaManiac I'll be honest, I completely forgot Code Geass was a mecha series.

I don't think I've ever watched a video about any mecha but still thought Eva was great. Maybe because I was an edgy teenager. Darling in the FranXX I also thought was interesting, same with Aquarion.

Was that your explanation? The mech exists but it's about the characters? I feel like you could say that about a lot of set-piece genres like Fantasy, Sci-Fi, even things like Love Triangle/Love Polygon etc and those also all come down to storytelling. The thing that sets a series apart is A) how good are the characters/story arc and B) how good/what is the worldbuilding.

Lord of the Rings is a massively popular and critically acclamied story because it follows a central plot through the eyes of in-depth characters in a richly illustrated world steeped in its own history.

The "astroturf" as you put it still just comes down to those two things, doesn't it? People like Eva because of the psych elements and mech battles. People like CG because of the psych elements and superpowers. What is your argument here? What are the "wrong reasons" to like something? More to the point of the topic, what would the "right reasons" be that would cause people to pay more attention to Gundam as a whole?

@Lucifrost I mean that logic can apply to starting any new series lol. To me, just go watch the newer ones, and then go from there.

Secondly, if they "despised Gundam", while the series can vary in quality, they largely are going to have similar themes/concepts, unless you are watching G-Gundam. At that point, it's probably not worth getting into the franchise.



His point, is that there is often bad assumption that CG and EVA are defying the norms of the genre, and doing something exceptional, thus if they like EVA or CG they wouldn't like most other mecha, that is the fallacy. Both series, hit on themes, characterization etc that you can find in plenty other mecha anime, and sure we can debate whether they are some of the best entries the genre (EVA sure, CG less so), that said, people should at least give other shows a chance, before they assume these are the only shows they would enjoy.

There's a reason for that, it's hard to get into and not very good. I watched the Hathaway movie last weekend and have now watched every UC entry (except ZZ), and overall it's a very mixed bag, some good entries like Origins, War in the Pocket, Unicorn, but most of them aren't very good with terrible writing, and I mean terrible (ahem Zeta, Char's Counterattack). The mech action is special, I will give it to Gundam that no other franchise does realistic mech action like it, ie Stardust Memories, 8th MS Team and then you have weird music fusion in Thunderbolt, which was cool.

I've seen people write that the characters are good in Gundam, I disagree strongly. Yes there are some decent chars like Ramba Ral and Hamon Crowley, but too many awful character writing, feels like they were written by people who love robots but don't understand people, and I include Char in that category. He became a walking legend rather than a person and just didn't make sense. Too many edgy teenagers who fall in love at the drop of a hat and then jump in the cockpit of a gundam suit (which wasn't being properly guarded, again!) to go and save there crush, only to be disappointed or die. Or washy women who want to be slapped by a man, ahem Mirai, or don't know what they want and so chose some arrogant arsehole, Reccoa Londe. Ughhh.

Personally I enjoyed IBO most and that's because it's not bogged down by all the UC details, which are inconsistent most of the time and hard to follow.

There are lots of other mech out there more readily accessible and worth watching, main one being Macross imho.

SDF MACROSS, - mostly by way of ROBOTECH - was a relative Anime household name within the U.S.
a good decade-odd before many, if not most, even began to get a grasp on what GUNDAM even was.

While it's importance is indeed often Exaggerated, ROBOTECH, - mostly thanks to MACROSS' inclusion within it -
was in fact deeply influential in spreading the Anime Gospel within the Americas back in those Flat-Earth days of the 1980's...

I came here to disagree, but it appears I'm in the minority!

I knew about Gundam way before I had heard of any of the other shows you mentioned. Gundam at least aired on Toonami in the States, meaning it was among the first anime many young people in the West ever watched.

I'm honestly surprised to see how many people in this thread consider Gundam to be niche, but I suppose that the average person here knows far more anime than people outside the site.