#gundam igloo

[gremoria411]

How to get into Gundam

Because fuck it, I was gonna do one of these sooner or later anyway.

So you want to know what this Gundam thing’s about, maybe you like the mecha design, maybe you caught part of an episode one time and want to catch up, or maybe you saw a nice piece of Chamuro fanart and want to go to the source.

But there’s so many shows and timelines that it can be quite daunting on first look, so this guide is intended to give a rough overview.

I would however like to stress two four things beforehand however:

This guide is not intended as “The One True Way” or anything. There’s no harm it coming into it a different way, and these are only my own opinions.

There’s nothing stopping you from just watching one show and leaving it there. You don’t have to watch every single show going, even I’ve only seen most of these, not all. Gundam typically has variations on similar themes - it’s very nice watching multiple shows because they complement one another, but it’s not necessarily required.

I am very much an insider looking out here, so let me know if there’s any details I’ve missed.

I’m not gonna recommend these on a “if you like X, then watch Y basis”, mostly because I don’t personally find genre recommendations helpful, so I’d recommend picking based on promotional material (vibes, if you will).

I’ll be using this chart, supplied by the excellent@l-crimson-l, to illustrate everything.

Gundam as a whole can principally be divided into three sections: Universal Century (or UC), the Alternate Universes (AU’s) and the Build Series.

The AU’s are below the light blue line, near the bottom of the Chart, the Build Series is within the bright green line at the top-right corner of the chart and UC is the big line in the middle. We’ll talk about each of them individually.

The AU’s

The Alternate Universes were conceived as a way to get away from the continuity-heavy nature of Universal Century and provide an easy jumping-on point for new fans. The AU’s are standalone and require no prior knowledge, and are thus an excellent place to start. Honestly, I’d recommend quickly searching some promotional materials (like posters) and just going with the one you find most appealing based on that. They are (in production order):

Mobile Fighter G Gundam (1994)

New Mobile Report Gundam Wing (1995)

After War Gundam X (1996)

Turn A Gundam (1999)

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (2002)

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (2007)

Mobile Suit Gundam AGE (2011)

Gundam: Reconguista in G (2014)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans (2015)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (2022)

There’s side series and movies and other things besides, but these are the mainline shows, if you will. I have specific notes on a few of them:

Witch From Mercury - It’s of a shorter length than is usual for mainline shows, so consequently it’s a much smaller time investment than the others.

Mobile Fighter G Gundam - While undeniably rad as hell, I would recommend watching another AU first. G Gundam differs from its stablemates in a few key areas, and I find it helps to have a contrast to fully appreciate those differences.

Gundam AGE - is probably the only one I wouldn’t recommend. I didn’t like the art style and the technical explanations just got on my nerves, so I stopped watching.

Turn A and G-Reconguista are technically part of UC as well, but it’s not really crucial information so don’t feel like you have to watch UC first (I’m only including this detail for completionism).

I’ve found all the AU’s I’ve seen to be pretty good, so I’d say that which one you start with really just comes down to personal taste.

The Build Series

Is just kind of doing its own thing. The Build series is basically Buy Our Toys: the series. It’s got a far lighter tone, and I’ve had cause to compare it to pokemon prior. It’s also chock full of references and in-jokes to the other series.

Build Fighters and Build Fighters Try are the ones I’d recommend - they’ve got actual stakes and the fight scenes are really good.

Build Divers and Build Divers Re:rise I can’t recommend - I just find Build Divers aggressively boring. Build Divers Re:Rise is just okay - neither standout good or particularly bad. Its main flaw is that it’s a sequel to Build Divers.

The OVA’s are pretty much bad across the board - I’d particularly recommend avoiding Gundam Build Metaverse.

Universal Century

Universal Century is the big main timeline of Gundam, and is the timeline the original Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979 takes place in. There’s a tendency among certain fans to place UC as the one-above-all of Gundam, but I wouldn’t really go that far. It’s all pretty good, but I wouldnt really say one timeline is better than another (save personal preference, anyway).

Because UC is so big, it can be subdivided a couple times. The primary division is “Mainline” UC versus everything else. Basically there’s four-five shows in Universal Century from which everything else flows. As long as you know roughly what happens in these shows, then you can watch basically anything else in UC and have a good idea of what’s going on. These are (in order):

Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) - sometimes called Mobile Suit Gundam 0079.

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985)

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (1986)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack (1988)

With Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (2010) as a nominal fifth (honestly I feel like you could argue either way).

The rest of the shows are:

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (1989 Three-Episode OVA)

Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (1991 Movie)

Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory (1991 Thirteen-episode OVA)

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (1993)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (1999 Twelve-episode OVA)

G-Saviour (2000 Live Action Movie) - nobody ever talks about or acknowledges this one, it’s just here for completionism.

Mobile Suit Gundam MS Igloo (2004-2009 Three OVA’s with three Episodes each)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (2015 Six-Episode OVA, adapted from the Manga of the same name)

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt (2015 Eight-Episode Series, adapted from the Manga of the same name)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Twilight Axis (2017 episode, adapted from a light novel of the same name. Later rereleased as Gundam Twilight Axis Red Trace, with additional footage)

Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative (2018 sequel movie to Gundam Unicorn)

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway (2021 ongoing movie series, very much adapted from the novel Hathaway’s Flash)

Most of the other series relate to events in the aforementioned “mainline” shows in some way, but a lot of the sidestories set during the One Year War require very little introduction (Thunderbolt, 0080 and 08th MS Team). Similarly, works set in “Late UC” (F91 and Victory Gundam) carry on from the other series thematically but don’t have any plot connections, so they can all be watched without any background knowledge of the rest of the Universal Century.

Compilation Movies

Just a quick note here - many of the Gundam series have compilation movies, where either a whole series or part of one are compressed down into a movie. While each movie compares differently, they usually boil down to this: Compilation Movies usually have worse pacing, but really nice animation.

One of the great things about Gundam is that different shows offer variations on themes, so seeing how different characters react to similar situations, or how different settings change their approaches can make it incredibly rewarding.

I haven’t seen enough of SD Gundam to make any sort of recommendations there, and Manga is something I might touch on another day.

EDIT: Oh hey also: You can watch a good chunk of these on YouTube, for free, officially. The Official Gundam.Info YouTube channel rotates the series shown on its channel periodically. I think it’s got F91 and SEED on there currently? But it’s had Wing, 00 and Witch From Mercury before. Also all of the Build Fighters series are there.

So yeah, that’s a thing.

[robedruby]

HG EMS-10 Zudah

[bagea]

Zudah doodle

tags from on last post, by @miltonlibassistantn1fan

also, the zudah happens to be one of the mobile suits with the most banging theme to it

[rayoftruth]

MY GUNDAM VIDEO FREE FROM COPYRIGHT PURGATORY! Since G-Witch was announced, I saw debates if Suletta was the first female Gundam protagonist. I did lots of researched and made a video on my findings on Gundam anime and Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury.

[die-nasty-warriors]

when u ask a man what kind of underwear he wears

[yeeticusdeleticus]

EMS-10G-4 Ground Zudah Test Type (unit 4)

A Zimmad attempt at reviving the Zudah project near the end of the OYW, based on the data gathered from the brief deployment of the Zudah F. While it kept the large thruster on the back, it was now mostly used in short bursts to counteract the newly attached anti-air cannon. It now had Zaku style pipes in the legs where two of the thrusters once were, an extension of the improved coolant system.

[gundamfight]

[temmye-temmye]

HGUC MS-14 GELGOOG for Herbert Von Kuspen

[kazsartcorner]

EMS-10 ZUDAH

I managed to get my hands on a HG Zudah kit, a delight to build with complex and robust arms and legs, I did decide to omit the front bar on the face because I prefer the more open look.

[average-transdalorian]

MS IGLOO 2: Gravity Front is so absurd that I couldn’t NOT enjoy it

There is a literal angel of death (and she’s a manipulative girlboss)

Half of the machines are just about possessed

Even more characters die than in Zeta

It gives us faces like these

It has a new model Guntank that fucks expeditiously

It is never talked about but it’s sososo funny to me

I cannot recommend it. I also cannot recommend it enough

[dangus-doo]

I draw a pen doodle every day until I forget

Day 289: GM Camouf (MS Igloo 603)

I was telling my friends about GMs today, and we got to talking about the GMs that Zeon used. The GM camouf is my favorite! A Zeon machine (that reminds me a little too much of the Zudah) that is designed to look like a Federation GM. It worked so well that it got blown up by Zaku’s upon returning from it’s mission. And it got to keep it’s sick monoeye! Good GM, this one!

[gremoria411]

Alright so, new Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance 5-minute clip, looking to be the opening of episode 1. This’ll probably be my last post on the series until it actually comes out, so I’m gonna talk about the clip itself and predictions for the series in general (and maybe a few other things).

Yeah, it looks pretty good overall.

The Good

The mobile suit animation’s nice and smooth, the visuals are gorgeous (I particularly like the redesigned GAW and Dopp aircraft). I really like the look of the rest of the Red Wolves squad’s Zaku’s, and the score sounds nice. We still haven’t seen anything of the plot or any non-Zeon characters, so it’ll be interesting to see how they play this (they seem to be building up the Gundam as this horrifying monster, which is a neat take). We know the team is operating in Romania on November 6, which puts them very close to the Battle of Odessa on November 7th. It’s unlikely that they’ll be directly involved in the battle (otherwise we probably would’ve seen it in the trailers), but it seems likely that they’ll be involved in the fallout as the Federation begins to get its act together. This is also fun as Odessa is the Federation’s first deployment of their GM units (specifically GM Ground Types), which Zeon has no experience against. The existence of a Gundam on top of that is essentially the worst-case scenario for any Zeon Force, so suddenly Iria’s look of horror has some nice context to it. There’s obviously a lot of influence from Gundam Igloo, so it’ll be nice to see that too. I’m personally really hoping we see some space combat, but I won’t be too disappointed if that isn’t the case.

The Bad

Voice acting and lip-synch are looking kinda rough - buuut we kinda already knew that from the previous trailers (like that pink-haired soldier). And honestly, I don’t think it’s really an all-over problem, just a few specific performances - a lot of the bit soldiers were pretty good and, though maybe this is just me, it’s probably going to have a Japanese dub track, so if the voice acting’s flat enough then I’ve no issue watching it subbed (not that that’s a solution I’d suggest for everyone, obviously). It’s also possible that the actors were given poor direction with what the scene was going to be, hence their performances feeling disconnected.

I do feel like it’s suffering a bit with it needing to “set-up” Gundam a bit - the two soldiers conversing where one says “yeah, I’m looking forward to going back to my girlfriend, in space” then gets shot shortly after. Like, if he had been shot by a mobile suit than I would’ve said that was Gundam in its bare essentials, but it does feel like there’s an….. obligation? Towards it? Sorta like “yeah yeah, war is hell and all that, oh gotta mention that we’re a sci-fi property too, that’s important….”. I don’t know, it’s just I can quote multiple scenes that have done a better job of establishing stakes and tone like that off the top of my head, so Requiem for Vengeance’s take just feels pretty flat. Also - and this is very nitpicky - the individual space colonies in the sides have names, like Tigerbaum or Achilles, so the soldier could’ve just said “my girlfriend in the Achilles space colony” or something. Yeah, it’s still a bit hackneyed but it would’ve made more sense. Dang, if only we’d solved Gundam’s need for set up back in 1979, isn’t it a shame we can’t take 20-30 second to be like “Oh hey, Zeon declared Independence and now there’s a war on *shot of operation british*. It’s not going well though”. C’mon guys we already cracked this, what’s the issue?

The character animation’s rather lacking too - I don’t know much about Unreal Engine, so it’s possible that it’s rather tricky to animate convincingly using it and they wanted to use those resources on the Mobile Suits, but several of the Zeon and Federation Soldiers just look like tap-dancing deer in headlights in the opening scenes. The Tanks….. I’m probably remembering IGLOO’s animation as better than it was, but they feel so cumbersome here, and the way that the Federation tanks just line up behind each other when attacking feels kind of lazy - especially since they outnumber the Zeon tanks nine-to-four.

Other stuff

There’s been basically nothing on the characters as yet, so there isn’t really anything to go on in terms of personality. Honestly, it could go either way with them, though I fully expect at least one of Iria’s wingmates to be killed (likely by the enemy Gundam, but it might be thematically interesting if an enemy tank gets them). Furthermore, it looks like one of the tank commanders seen in the clip is going to be a recurring character, which’ll be interesting. It’s unclear as to whether Newtypes will feature - Iria has an explanation on what they are but it’s unclear if this is just scene-setting or not. I’m not really sure how they’d fit into the plot, so I guess it’ll be a wait-and-see affair. I’m also still interested in seeing if we’ll get anymore kits out of this - I can’t imagine there’s any reason we wouldn’t see some more Zaku’s or the new GM, since most of the design work is already done. I’ve noted previously that the “new” Gouf Custom design appears to be so it will require the minimum amount of work to turn into a kit, since it’ll most likely be a variant of the existing one.

Apologies if this posts a good deal more scattershot than usual. It was partially to collect my general thoughts on the new clip in general, and also because I wanted to interrogate my own thoughts a little bit. This is because my immediate thought at the end of the clip was: “Man, Code: Fairy was crap”And I have absolutely no idea what brought that on.

[canuckianhawkbi]

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin – chapter 83

The Solomon Offensive was already in full swing.

[youreaclownnow]

just a quick doodle of one of my fave zeon creations, BIG RANG

[kerbrobro]

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[holmslice69art]