Love, War, and Gundam
SPOILER ALERT: Plot details for Mobile Suit Gundam and Neon Genesis Evangelion follow.
Forty years have passed since the release of the original Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979. While Gundam wasn’t the first mecha anime, having been preceded by such titles as Go-Nagai’s Mazinger Z, it has undeniably had the most enduring impact. Gundam brought the complexities of the political space opera to the mecha genre, with an emphasis . The influence can clearly be felt in later works of mecha anime, like Macross, Evangelion, and Code Geass. Further, Gundam’s flagship robot suit, the RX-78, is one of the most recognizable icons in all of anime, selling millions of figures, doing battle with Mechagodzilla in Spielberg’s Ready Player One, and even inspiring a real-life statue in Japan. In light of all this, perhaps now would be a good time to celebrate the original anime that launched a thousand robots.
To be more specific, the machines the populate Gundam are not “robots”, but “mobile suits.” They are weapons that are controlled by the humans behind them. This is an illustrative metaphor for what is at the heart of most great mecha anime: relatable human drama played out through technology. Gundam is about war and what it takes from us. While there are ostensibly heroes and villains in Gundam, the villains are not without humanity and the heroes are not without cruelty. The central conflict, set in the year 2179, is between a world government called the Earth Federation, and a collection of separatist space colonies called the Principality of Zeon. This war for independence results in the cataclysmic destruction of half of humanity, and we see such destruction upfront in the first episode. Zeon attacks a Federation colony, where numerous civilians are slaughtered. It’s still unsettling to watch. The protagonist, Amuro Ray, desperately seeks shelter in one of the Federation mobile suits, the RX-78, and learns to fight on the fly, beginning his journey as fighter pilot.
As I noted earlier, the RX-78 is one of the most recognizable icons in anime. Designed by Kunio Okawara, it drew inspiration from Kazutaka Miyatake and Naoyuki Kato’s illustrations of the high-powered armor suits in Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Okawara’s design of the Gundam is easy of the eyes with its simplicity and bright colors, and evokes both Western and Eastern warriors. The Gundam’s face was clearly modeled after the samurai mask and helmet, which immediately makes it feel more human. Its cross-emblazoned shield and its beam sabers evoke the medieval knights, with a beam rifle thrown in for modernity. The beam saber also invokes the lightsabers of Star Wars, as does the Gundam’s targeting computer. Watching different parts of the Gundam come together brought back memories of watching the Megazord combine on Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers as a kid. It was every 90’s kids dream to have a transforming Megazord toy, and sure enough, this had an effect on Gundam’s design. As Okawara told Forbes,
“What was happening is at the time of Daitairn 3 obviously I’d design the mecha, but I was coming at it from the point of view of selling it as a toy. So I was delivering presentations, making mockups and speaking to the toy company. Gundam was after this but it took a similar sort of process. So I was mainly telling the sponsors about the toys and how to make them sell.”
The RX-78, of course, wasn’t the only notable machine in Gundam. There’s also the Guntank and Guncannon, not to mention the spaceship White Base. On the side of Zeon we have the infamous Zakus, with Char’s being the The Red Comet. There’s also the blue-horned Gouf with its tentacle whip and the swift, purple Doms. It cannot be understated how important the sales of Gundam toys were to the survival of the series, as it wasn’t very popular when it first aired. When Bandai bought the rights to merchandise from Clover, instead of continuing the Chokogin metal models, they made plastic model kits. The success of these kits led resurgence of popularity in the original Gundam and gave Bandai’s Gundam kits, now called “Gunpla”, a permanent place in the otaku culture.
A mecha series, however, is often as good as its characters, and Gundam’s are no exception. This is as much about Amuro’s coming-of-age as it is about robot wars in space. Amuro, still a teenager, is thrust into the role of soldier for reasons beyond his control. He is the only one who can pilot the Gundam and becomes a vital part of the Federation. This newfound role puts him through incredible stress and exhaustion. There’s a point when he even wants to abandon the cause altogether, and you can hardly blame him for it, either. Amuro has to suffer the growing pains of being a teen whilst also leading a war for humanity’s survival. One such intersection occurs when he develops romantic affections for the older Matilda Ajan, who later gives her life to save White Base.
Amuro’s rival is the formidable Char Aznable of Zeon, one of anime’s best villains, with his memorable silver helmet and red costume. He is the older brother of White Base’s Sayla Mass. They were both members of the Deikun royal family, but their father was slain by the Zabi family, who then seized power over Zeon. Char seeks to kill every member of the Zabi family in revenge, but does so by discreetly by joining the highest ranks of the Zeon military. In pursuit of this goal, Char has little problem with the horrible acts he must commit as a Zeon warrior. My favorite encounter he has with Amuro is when the latter’s car is stuck in the mud. They had never seen each other face-to-face before, and Char has no idea the pilot he’s helping is his most formidable enemy. Char comes off as so affable here that one almost wonders how anyone could see him an enemy. His rivalry with Amuro is among the most intense in anime, with their climactic battle leading to the destruction of both their mechs and ending with literal swords.
Gundam has two strong assets. The first is its depiction of war. Many characters die over the course of the show, and you feel bad for nearly all of them, even the villains. Of course, you have the heroic sacrifices, like Ryu’s, which are handled with solemnity, and then there are the broken romances. Garma Zabi, a Zeon commander who has done little earn the Federation’s sympathy, is in a forbidden romance with Icelina Eschonbach. When he is slain in battle, it devastates her. She tries to go after Amuro in revenge, but falls to her death. Ramba Ral, like Char, is one of Zeon’s most charismatic warriors, and has a delightful romance with his lover, Lady Hamon. Ral also has something of a rivalry with Amuro, but it doesn’t come off anywhere near as mean-spirited. Ral openly respects the strength of his opponents, in spite of their youth, and his suicide charge into the Gundam’s palm is a pitiful sight. There’s also an episode on an island where Amuro meets a former Zeon soldier who changed his ways and lives peaceably with a family he once terrorized. The point in all of this is to humanize Zeon. While they are ostensibly “the enemy”, they’re still three-dimensional human beings. Even our adversaries have loved ones who care about them, and are capable of honor and redemption.
On the other hand, Gundam doesn’t let you think that its heroes are above cruelty or failure. When Amuro revisits his old home after the war, he finds that it’s been ransacked by fellow Federation soldiers. He also tries to stop a Federation soldier from cheating a civilian out of their money, and gets beaten up for it. Amuro’s father, who helped build the Gundam he now pilots, has spent so much time in the low-oxygen areas of space, that he has become delusional. All his father does now is spend time on building the set of updates for the Gundam, with no love left for his own son. The war has consumed him whole. Amuro himself isn’t completely beyond this, either. Shortly after reuniting with his mother, she is appalled by how quick he is to use lethal violence. She can hardly recognize her own son anymore. While our heroes are fighting for a righteous cause, Gundam doesn’t away from the fact that war is war. It demands ruthlessness without hesitation and can make a murderer out of the meek. As Tomino himself has said, “one thing I think is very unique to the Gundam series is that you have heroes and you have enemies, but they are both viewed as people with concerns. They are both viewed equally.”
Amuro reminded me a great deal of fellow mech pilot Shinji Ikari from 1997’s Neon Genesis Evangelion. They are both growing boys who struggle with the roles that they were thrust into. Some argue that Evangelion’s portrayal of mecha pilots as child soldiers isn’t as subversive when compared to older mecha anime like Gundam. As Ollie Barder of Forbes wrote, “While many focus on the shy introverted nature of Shinji Ikari as the pilot of Eva-01, this was not a new thing in terms of mecha anime, as characters such as Amuro Ray from Mobile Suit Gundam was hardly a willing or eager pilot to begin with.”
Though Shinji clearly owes a debt to Amuro, the two are ultimately very different. Gundam is about the challenges of heroism. Evangelion is about people who fail to be heroes. While Amuro struggles with being a pilot, he is able to overcome his doubts and claim victory for the Federation. Shinji, at the climax of End of Evangelion, succumbs to his depression and allows the apocalypse to absorb all living souls. Shinji constantly runs away from his duties as a pilot. Amuro, at one point, runs away with his Gundam because he’s afraid of being replaced. While Gundam is morally complex, it isn’t as morally ambiguous as the finale of Evangelion. Evangelion, like Macross, is a spiritual successor to Gundam, and while it goes in a different direction, its success is a testament to the human resonance of Gundam’s characters.
Gundam’s second strong asset is its animation. For a show that was released 40 years ago, the animation has aged considerably well. Compare it to 1982’s Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, in which budget constraints forced the animators to expend most of their talent on mech fights. The result was that every scene that didn’t involve a mech ranged from mediocre to garish. While Gundam’s mech battles aren’t as detailed as those in Macross, they are still very fluid, bright, and exciting. Many of these battles occur in space because the mechs are so huge that Earth’s gravity would slow them down too much. This need for space battles is what spurred on the creation of a space colonies as a setting. As a result, a stylistic animation choice contributed to the formation of the plot.
Gundam, though, is not without its problems. The ending is rushed, with many new ideas, like Newtypes, being thrown in at the final hour with little exposition. The overall storyline, however, continues in three sequels: Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, and Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack. While we do want to follow these characters more, knowing that this awful conflict between the Federation and Zeon continues is disheartening.
This is why Gundam inspires in me feelings of both joy and sorrow. It’s an entertaining drama, but not always easy to sit through. We share in the heroes’ aspiration for an end to war, though that dream always feels more elusive by the day, it isn’t one we should give up on. I think now about what Tomino said when he first saw the life-size Gundam statue in Odaiba:
“I’m sure you know that there is this huge Gundam robot that is being erected in Odaiba. When the project was first explained to me, I’m embarrassed to say I really lacked the imagination to imagine what it would be like, and I was very against the project. You’d have this large object that looked really cheap and tawdry. However, now that I’ve seen it, I’m really moved and I feel tremendous strength and power from this huge Odaiba robot. It really focuses on what I like to call toy-like colors. These toy-like colors don’t have the color of real weapons and real tools of destruction. They’re peaceful colors. Happy colors, the kinds of colors that little kids like. And they are the kinds of colors that encourage people to say, ‘don’t give up hope. Have great expectations and have great hopes for the future of human kind.’”
