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The face that launched a thousand spinoffs.
"What the heck? That's a Mobile Suit! IT'S A GUNDAAAAAAAAM!"
— Mooks throughout the franchise. It usually ends badly for them.
The franchise bearing the name Gundam can be considered the anime equivalent of Star Trek. In 1979, a planned 52-episode series got cut down to 43 due to low ratings, Mobile Suit Gundam (Kidou Senshi Gundam in Japanese) became easily one of the two most well-known and long-running series of the Humongous Mecha genre (the other most well-known being Macross) Created by Yoshiyuki Tomino, it's a veritable merchandising empire encompassing manga and video game tie-ins, plastic models and toys, (theme park rides and race team sponsorships). The comparisons to Star Trek line up in the rousing success of reruns, movies and the sequel series Zeta Gundam, which solidified its status as a franchise, and where a western show would have a Trekkie, a Japanese show is likely to include a Gundam fanatic. Theme-wise, however, the franchise could be considered an antithesis of what Roddenberry's work represented; if there are strange new worlds to see, expect them to either host space-fascists or simply blow up.
Gundam effectively invented the Real Robot genre, depicting mobile suits as mass-produced machines of war similar to planes or tanks, rather than unique creations solely responsible for defending against enemies. Of course, its Super Robot roots remain in the Gundams themselves — unique mobile suits (typically Super Prototypes or Ace Custom units) piloted by the main character(s) and the focus of much of the show
The face that launched a thousand spinoffs.
"What the heck? That's a Mobile Suit! IT'S A GUNDAAAAAAAAM!"
— Mooks throughout the franchise. It usually ends badly for them.
The franchise bearing the name Gundam can be considered the anime equivalent of Star Trek. In 1979, a planned 52-episode series got cut down to 43 due to low ratings, Mobile Suit Gundam (Kidou Senshi Gundam in Japanese) became easily one of the two most well-known and long-running series of the Humongous Mecha genre (the other most well-known being Macross) Created by Yoshiyuki Tomino, it's a veritable merchandising empire encompassing manga and video game tie-ins, plastic models and toys, (theme park rides
and race team sponsorships). The comparisons to Star Trek line up in the rousing success of reruns, movies and the sequel series Zeta Gundam, which solidified its status as a franchise, and where a western show would have a Trekkie, a Japanese show is likely to include a Gundam fanatic. Theme-wise, however, the franchise could be considered an antithesis of what Roddenberry's work represented; if there are strange new worlds to see, expect them to either host space-fascists or simply blow up.Gundam effectively invented the Real Robot genre, depicting mobile suits as mass-produced machines of war similar to planes or tanks, rather than unique creations solely responsible for defending against enemies. Of course, its Super Robot roots remain in the Gundams themselves — unique mobile suits (typically Super Prototypes or Ace Custom units) piloted by the main character(s) and the focus of much of the show
