The White Base steadily approaches its destination point. What the crew doesn't know, is that there's a trap laid down by the forces of Zeon right around the corner of the mountain. A sudden hit to the starboard puts everyone back on their feet. Bright quickly yells orders as Mirai turns the main ship towards the enemy. Sayla quickly informs Amuro, Kai, and Hayato and asks them to get into their respective machines and launch. As soon as they get out they're barraged by the enemy mobile suits. And so begins another battle, another day on board the White Base, and another episode of a legend, that is Mobile Suit Gundam.
1. Teenage struggles portrayed through war experience
Mobile Suit Gundam is a tale of a bunch of survivors from a space colony that incidentally held a new ship and a new machine that were created by the scientists of the Earth Federation. In the first episode, the colony gets attacked by the forces of the Principality of Zeon. Amuro Ray, one of the main scientists' son, attempts to escape amidst the death and chaos that the Zeon soldiers created using their machines. He finds the very first Federation mobile suit - Gundam - and takes it upon himself to drive away the opposing forces. He's forced to retreat and escape his home alongside a few of his peers and some adults inside the White Base, a new, technologically advanced spaceship, with a plan to find help and safety.
The main theme for more than a half of the show is that those kids aren't real soldiers, they are inexperienced escapees, who have to learn how to properly adapt to their new roles while escaping from danger that follows them wherever they go. A few of them have military training, but most find themselves in a situation they've never been in before. As so, Noa Bright, the most experienced out of all the survivors, takes command of White Base and assigns people to certain roles: Sayla Mass communicates with the crew on the ship through the communication system, Mirai Yashima steers the spaceship, and so on. The most important role ends up being given to Amuro, who will pilot the Gundam, as he is the only one with any resemblance of experience in that regard. On the ship itself, we also find out that the White Base was storing two other mobile suits: The Guntank, which can be piloted by two people at once, and the Guncannon. They end up being piloted by Hayato Kobayashi, Ryu Jose, and Kai Shiden respectively. Out of those four pilots, the only adult one is Ryu, while the others are teenagers that didn't have the chance to overcome their rebellious phases in the peace and comfort of their daily lives, like most of us did.
A sudden and drastic change appears to have sped up the process, as both Kai and Amuro initially act like pompous brats that haven't experienced life before, but they aren't the only ones to act immaturely. Despite their age, most of the people aboard the White Base are pretty bad at what they're doing. I'm not saying that they aren't smart, far from it, but they have troubles utilizing their strengths and most importantly, can't quite overcome the obstacle of sudden adaptation to their new reality.
The further away they get from home, they begin to grow as both individuals and as companions. Despite numerous quarrels and severe casualties, the White Base is able to overcome each trap laid down by the Zeon forces, as well as their own negative mentalities. Bright, who starts off as a loud and thoughtless leader, becomes acquainted with the ways to handle his crew. Kai finds the strive to fight despite always being the most reluctant and skeptic towards the idea. Sayla comes to terms with her past and her future as she collects all the pieces that end up creating her true self.
With each character and the cast as whole overcoming different phases to uncover their true purpose, you can easily compare them to a teen who's undergoing puberty. The characterization is obviously skewed in a certain direction to properly underline that comparison, and the structure of the plot itself feels like it was put together with that thought in mind. The episodic nature of the show allows for a much clearer, short and direct messages, like "trust in your own abilities", "uncover the things that you're good at", "let people see your true talent", "don't hide your true thoughts", and many other moral lessons that could prove useful someone with a teenage-like mentality.
Another thing that's worth remembering, is that the cast is in a constant state of danger, right in the middle of an ongoing war. They are quite literally, at the turning point of history. They hold the strongest weapons of the Federation, their most talented, skilled and experienced mobile suit pilots, and they travel in the most innovative and powerful spaceship out there. It's not easy being in a center of attention of your allies, but it's the enemies that actually disrupt your sleep, and you can see that weight being put on them as time goes on.
Those people don't have time to rest, not with the constant array of death that they have to face. You could almost say that Death travels alongside them at all times, just so it won't have to move too far to collect each soul that they will unavoidably provide to it sooner or later.
So not only have they been thrust into a new reality without any warning, but they never have the time to properly collect themselves in the midst of what's been going on. They can't adapt appropriately to their current situation and each other's personalities. That's the thing that creates the chaos aboard the ship and the huge amount of misunderstandings and conflict among them, however, after all the fighting and madness, they're able to develop a bond and a stable relationship with each other, becoming a proper team, where everyone's considered a worthy comrade.
But why is all that actually important?
I'll tell you: because it creates a stable connection between the viewer and the cast despite massive barriers that divide them. If you look at the world of Mobile Suit Gundam, you'll realize that it is nothing like ours. Technological advancement far beyond our reach, political systems that we can't imagine coming back, and the sheer idea of traveling in space would normally create a huge disconnect between our world and the one that is presented to the viewer, but thanks to the show's ability to portray problems that all of us went through, without breaking the immersion or turning any characters into obvious mouthpieces, it's able to make the cast seem believable, realistic and worth following.
This is definitely one of the biggest strengths of original Gundam, but what's more, it is able to perfectly represent those ideals through its main character.
2. Amuro Ray is a perfect Gundam protagonist
Take all the ideas that I've presented before and mix them up into one person, and you will inevitably end up with Amuro Ray, and if you couldn't tell, that is really damn good.
Amuro, at the start, is an indecisive, impulsive, egoistic brat that perfectly represents the stereotypical puberty stage. Not to say that he's not smart, far from it, he is quite capable when it comes to robotics, Gundam repairs and adapting to the battlefield, so his biggest enemy often ends up being his own rebellious side, as seen when he's arguing with Bright; his feeling of undervaluation, especially noticeable when he's monologuing to himself about how a woman gives him orders or how he think Bright is an idiot; and sexual frustration, which you can spot on numerous occasions when he gets to be around mature women like Mirai or Matlida. All of it cumulates and explodes when he decides to leave the ship along with Gundam, eventually returning and deciding to fight out of his own volition. He decided on it after meeting a true man, Ramba Ral, and noticing his desire to become manlier and stronger.
And he does, as the series progresses, we see Amuro turn into a true warrior, who, instead of blindly charging into the battle blinded by the need for violence, calmly dissects each battle and trusts in his abilities to carry him to victory. He becomes more comfortable and each life experience appears to make him stronger and more reliable, which resonates with the rest of the crew as they begin to respect and value him.
Amuro's progress teaches the viewer, which I assume was intended to be around 15 while watching it, that simply working hard and not complaining will turn you into a great, respectable man. It's a tale that we all know but done well enough to not feel boring, especially since we see it being presented in such a manly setting. War is a place where true heroes and true men arise to present themselves onto the pages of history, and the show is all about it. Not to mention that there are some truly beautiful women around Amuro. All around, you can really see how a teenager like him could end up with his hormones almost bursting out.
*Ekhm*
Moving on.
But that's not the end of his story. Amuro is actually so much more than just a skilled teenager. He's actually a staple of the next generation of humanity, and in a way, you might not expect.
3. The new era of humanity
Normally, when someone writes about the idea of a "new generation of humanity" in fiction, they try to simplify it as just one generation going away, and a new one stepping in to change the flow things. Not to say that there's anything wrong with that, especially in something as grounded as, let's say, Legend of The Galactic Heroes, but watching Mobile Suit Gundam really opened up my eyes to possibilities of just going for that extra step, pushing the suspension of disbelief further to include a certain thing that would easily help the viewer with both the understanding of the topic and with the entertainment factor: evolution.
In the last arc of Mobile Suit Gundam, we find out that Amuro, as well as his main rival Char and a bunch of other people, are Newtypes. Newtypes are people that evolved an ability to adapt to living in space, which comes with higher mental awareness, as well as better perception, which naturally comes with better military potential. Now, you may say that such a turn completely undervalues the effort that all the characters underwent throughout the series, but I don't think that's true.
Despite the problems that the crew that worked behind Gundam had to face with the last episodes, I feel like they did a good enough job at setting down their stance on the topic. Despite having the same advantage, Amuro is better than Char at piloting Mobile Suits, despite Char's clear technological advantage. That's purely because Amuro is better at utilizing his potential, coming to terms with it and building off of it. Char has problems with coming to terms whether or not he is a Newtype and whether he has the same potential as others, while Amuro never cared about that. He just pushed on, learned in a lot of different ways and evolved not only as a human but also as an individual.
It's important to really understand how well crafted this storyline is, or perhaps how well thought out would be the better term, because the execution turned out to be very minimal due to the production issues. The idea that even if we can get on some sort of a higher plane of humanity, people who will worry about it will never catch up to people who continue striving even further to better themselves. It honestly boils down to "no matter how far we go, the humanity's problem will remain the same", which can also be said about the war that's been going on in the Gundam universe, but it's done within an already thematically complete show, as Amuro's story almost came to a halt at the point of introducing it. Not to mention how filled to the brim with awesome action scenes the show is, making it so that it rarely gets boring. Speaking of not being boring...
4. Old but gold: Gundam's visuals and music
You may be surprised when I say it, but one of Mobile Suit Gundam's strongest advantage is the visuals. The character designs are great, very distinguishable and surprisingly detailed with their faces, especially for the time. They all feel different due to their postures, face shapes or hair. There's clearly a lot of effort put into this area. Same goes for the Mobile Suits, which have become a staple for one of the most expensive and popular toys, especially in Japan. Such a nationwide phenomenon couldn't be achieved if not for their brilliant designs. The Gundam is white and easily reminiscent of a hero when stepping on the gloomy battlefield, the darker designs of the Zeon mobile suits that just scream "that's an enemy" from the first moment we see them, and those are only a few examples. They really get creative with some of them.
Another asset that it has in this area are the fights. The show has possibly some of the most systematically high-quality fight scripts in all of anime. There's a fight in pretty much every episode, but each one is truly different, the pilots pull off different moves and even if there are some reused shots, there's always a lot of variety that makes it fresh. Of course, a lot of it goes to the setup, where there are different enemies to fight and different terrain, but there are long stretches of time where those don't change, and yet the show can still feel refined in that area. It's a huge achievement that really won over my heart while watching.
That's not to say that the animation doesn't have its fair share of problems. I already mentioned the reused shots, which during fights can just be seen as using the same move again and that being somewhat of a trademark of the show, same can't be said about others that take place onboard the White Base, most notably Bright picking up his phone which is ingrained in my mind ever since I finished it. Even worse are the clearly repeated backgrounds. Imagine if backgrounds in anime were just an image on a conveyor belt, which restarted whenever the picture was shown in its entirety. It's really silly and embarrassing, but even that can't take out from the rest of the show's visual strengths.
As for the music, there's almost nothing more to say than that it's a classic. The wide range of emotions throughout the show is perfectly embodied in the variety of the tracks on the soundtrack. From the ambient, creepy ones, to the grandiose and louder ones, it keeps being consistent with the militaristic feel, the usage of trumpets and drums that are used in military bands bring it out especially well. While the soundtrack isn't large, it doesn't have to be. It makes it so each track becomes more recognizable and specific. You can understand what scene's about to go down when you hear it, like "Oh, it's time for Char to strike!", or "finally, the battle is over". With that, the repetition proves to be an asset, especially when the show is pretty episodic and it has a somewhat consistent outline.
I don't believe I need to mention how amazing the opening "Tobe! Gundam" is, or how majestic the ending "Eien Ni Amuro" is, but I'm just going to leave it here.
All in all, Mobile Suit Gundam, despite not aging particularly well, works because of the effort put into it even back then. There were some cut corners occasionally, but you can't dispute the sheer magic of watching Gundam. There are really very few things that can rival it in some of its areas even to this day.
5. The impact of Gundam
Last but not least, I feel it's only fair to talk about the impact that Gundam had on the industry, even though it was mostly the movies that truly got the ball rolling.
Mobile Suit Gundam is easily one of the most influential works for all of anime. It's considered to be a "father" of the "true mecha genre", without which we would never see the birth of shows such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gurren Lagann, Escaflowne or Code Geass. It is also one of the first anime ever to humanize villains, giving them a clear sense of morality, Char being the prime example of that. It was also innovative for its use of "Minovsky Physics", which rationalized the normally completely fictional systems of a world, helping it become even more grounded than it already was and creating a world that truly felt like it was just our future, where a next big step in technology occurred. It's something that series such as Legend of the Galactic Heroes used later to a similar effect.
In Japan, it spawned multiple sequels and sold thousands of toys, it became engraved in Japanese culture so much that there are numerous statues and other tributes to the show all around the country.
As for some trivia to see how much the people in Japan care about the show, the Japanese military's code name for their underdevelopment advanced personal combat equipment is "Gundam", the series’ robot designer Kunio Okawara has begun designing real-world electric cars, and there's even a project to build a real-life, functional Gundam with the budget being around a billion dollars, funded by the government. I think that last fact alone is enough to make people understand, but what I said here is just the bare-bones of all that it did, and if you're interested, you can surely find more if you do your own research.
6. Overall thoughts
Mobile Suit Gundam is a true classic, a must-watch for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the history of anime, but also a damn good watch as a piece of media. Perhaps on the outside, it didn't stand the test of the time as much as some would've liked, but on the inside, it can still be influential and its themes can be applied to any era of humanity. As we evolved and changed, as we fought and died, as we tried to understand everything around us and the passage of time only made it harder, humanity always remained the same on the outside. That's what Mobile Suit Gundam exemplifies, and does so through a really cool, action-packed, relatable, animated TV series. If you want to learn more, I can only implore you to check it out for yourself, be that either through this TV series or the movie trilogy. I know that after this I became a serious Gundam fan, and I will surely be checking out more, more of this legendary series that, to me, lived up to the status that it holds. All that it has done has been done better by the time I'm writing this review, it's storyline ends up becoming pretty basic and the forcefully rushed last stretch is easily visible, there's nothing that I can say to refute that. However, I wholeheartedly believe that any viewer will be able to look past that and truly enjoy it to the fullest if they truly want to, and an ability to make the show overlook mistakes is not something to be undervalued. So if you haven't checked out the original Gundam yet, you should. I'll leave it at that.
As always, this is purely my opinion. I recommend you to develop your own.
