A thud rings out as a Gundam-type mobile suit walks into the battlefield. Spanning a whopping 18 meters, the appearance of the mobile suit will for sure change the tide of battle forever.
History of Gundam
Gundam is a Japanese military and science-fiction series created by Yoshizuki Tomino. The series contains gigantic robots – or mechas – called mobile suits. The series first began with the 1979 show Mobile Suit Gundam, which included the famous RX-78-2 Gundam (the RX-78-2 referring to the model and Gundam being the type of mobile suit). Since then, the series has created many TV series, films, OVA’s (Original video animation), manga, novels, and even video games. However, one of the largest aspects of Gundam is Gunpla or Gundam plastic models.
The brand Gundam, as of March 2020, is owned by Bandai Namco Holdings through subsidiaries Sotsu and Sunrise. The Gundam franchise is one of the biggest franchises, having grossed over $5 billion in retail since the 2000’s. By 2022, Gundam had reached ¥101.7 billion, around $1 billion, per year, ¥44.2 billion, approximately $436.5 million, much of which was made through sales of toys and hobby items.
Mobile Suit Gundam was developed by animator Yoshiyuki Tomino and a changing working group of Sunrise creators with the collective pseudonym “Hajime Yatate.” Originally called Freedom Fighter Gunboy for the robot’s gun, the Yatate team combined the English word “gun” with the last syllable of the word “freedom” to get Gundom. Tomino later changed it to Gundam, suggesting a unit wielding a gun powerful enough to hold back enemies like how a hydroelectric dam can hold back vast amounts of water.
Most Gundam mobile suits, keeping the concept of an impenetrable dam, are usually prototypes or of limited production with much higher capabilities than the average mass-produced unit referred to as mobile suits.
Most Gundams are humanoid vehicles controlled from a cockpit by a human pilot. The cockpits are usually located in the torso with a few exceptions. The head mostly serves as a camera that transmits images back to the cockpit. Most of the pilots controlling the Gundams are also, in a sense, superhuman, with heightened sensory awareness and massive amounts of talent that surpasses other pilots.
The show Mobile Suits Gundam is responsible for the development of the “real robot” subgenre of mecha anime. In contrast to many similar series, Mobile Suit Gundam attempted realism by having the robot experience malfunctions and shortages of ammunition. With much of Gundam’s science having been derived from real physics and a few fictional elements as major components of function.
What is Gunpla?
Gundam as a franchise is massive: with an upcoming live action film, multiple mangas, several light novels, video games, and Gunpla. Gunpla is one of the most popular PLA (short for plastic) models (and is the vast majority of the profit). There are hundreds of Gundam scale-models with many different rankings and quality.
Each increasing grade shows an increase in size and detail. From the lowest grade of Entry Grade (children’s toy kits) to hobbyist and museum-grade models. The ranking goes as follows: High Grade (HG, 1/144 scale), Real Grade which is more detailed than HG (RG, 1/144 scale), Master Grade (MG, 1/100 scale), and Perfect Grade (PG, 1/60 scale), though occasionally releasing a 1/48 scale model.
The Gunpla community is enormous (the biggest community of the series), with many different people from all over the world building and customizing their own mobile suits. Due to the tendency of having to cut plastic, there are many different tools used, from nippers to tweezers and even sandpaper. For example, the most preferred nipper is the Godhand brand Ultimate Nipper. The Godhand brand is one of the most popular brands, as many other tools are products of them.
Gunpla, however, does not simply stop at the creation of the kit. Some extremists take it beyond the norms and create their own unique pieces, creating their own color palette. Some even make dynamic dioramas featuring a specific scene from the series. This level of customization possible from just a simple plastic kit is unmatched, as it takes up to hundreds of dollars and hours and hours of their time for one to create a Gundam model.
Life Scale Gundams
For Gundam’s 30th anniversary, a full-size RX-78-2 Gundam model was constructed and displayed at Gundam Front Tokyo, in the Odaiba district. It was, however, taken down on March 5, 2017. A new statue of the Unicorn Gundam was erected at the same location, now renamed The Gundam Base Tokyo.
Gundam Factory Yokohama, was created as a tourist attraction in order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Gundam as well as the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The attraction was opened on December 19th, 2020 and was planned to close on March 31st, 2022, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was delayed to March 31st, 2023, then once more delayed to March 31st, 2024 due to its lasting success. The Gundam Factory Yokohama was closed and celebrated with a drone show including 1,000 drones.
The old life-scale model of the RX-78-2 Gundam will be reused at the Osaka Expo 2025, where it will be on exhibit with a new pose, kneeling as the Gundam points its hand to the sky, from Sunday, April 13th, 2025 to Monday, October 13th, 2025. For the 45th anniversary of the Gundam series the “GUNDAM NEXT FUTURE – ROAD TO 2025,” a massive expo will be available in all 47 prefectures of Japan.
A new life-sized v (pronounced Nu) Gundam was set up in Fukuoka, Japan alongside the opening of Gundam Park Fukuoka, on April 25th 2022. Gundam as a series is such a major part of their pop culture that many have not watched the anime, but still know the characters. The statue is the RX-93ff ν Gundam, based on the old RX-93 ν Gundam from the series Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack, but equipped with a newly added Long Range Fin Funnel (a type of remote controlled weapon used for both offense and defense). The v Gundam features a highly vivid tri-color marking supervised by Yoshiyuki Tomino, the general director of the Mobile Suit Gundam series.
The statue is 24.8m tall, making it the largest life-sized Gundam statue ever made. The right shoulder and head are automated to move and change poses for the special performances held over ten times a day. In the evening, a special performance is held with video projections on the walls of LaLaport Fukuoka, entertaining visitors with a stunning battle scene between the RX-93ff ν Gundam and its counterpart, the MSN-04FF Sazabi.
Stories of Gundam, and the Message of Freedom
There is a consistent narrative that Gundam as an animated series conveys: the struggles of war and oppression. It is a story of liberation and anti-corruption, but why? This point is driven by a major aspect of the pilots in the Gundam mobile suits; most of the pilots are children or teens from ages 12-18, as well as being a soldier in an active war. However, what distinguishes these soldiers from the rest is that they either have an innate talent or are biologically altered from the average soldier.
In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, the protagonist Ray Amuro is 15 years old when he becomes the pilot for the experimental RX-78-2 Mobile Suit. Ray is a Newtype, a type of people that have evolved to have a heightened mental awareness to adapt to life in space. This supernatural ability allowed Ray to become a feared opponent, receiving the aliases of The White Devil, White Shooting Star, and the White Unicorn. He would continue to fight until the age of 29 when, in a fight with his rival Char Aznable, would disappear in a magnificent aurora caused by the overloaded ν Gundam’s Psycho-Frame construct.
In the alternate universe of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans (my personal favorite), the pilot of the series protagonist’s mobile suit–ASW-G-08 Gundam Barbatos–Mikazuki Augus is equipped with 3 of the Alaya-Vijnana System. In this series, the Alaya-Vijnana System is a prosthetic attached by injecting nano-machines into the pilot’s spine at a young age. If attached successfully, the pilot is granted the ability to move the mobile suits in a way that is natural for them(simply allowing the mobile suit to become a part of their body). However, if the surgery was to fail, the end result would be lifelong paralysis, crippling the host. For someone to get 3 of the dangerous surgeries was unheard of and considered something only a person with a loose screw would ever consider to undergo.
Mikazuki Augus,The Devil of Tekkadan, would lose the function of his right body as he continues to push his gundam frame into overdrive as the series continues. The Gundam frames from the series totalled 72 and were all given the name of the demons of the Ars Goetia (one of the books in the The Lesser Key of Solomon). Fitting to his name, Mikazuki would trade the functions of his body to further push his Mobile Suit, Barbatos, into overdrive resulting in overwhelming power at the downside of losing the function of his right body. To liberate and defeat corruption, Mikazuki has to limit the functions of his body to fulfill his goals of giving his family, his comrades of Tekkadan, a better life. To let others be able to move freely, he has to be confined to his Mobile Suit (as when he is connected to the suit, he regains his body functions) and lose his freedom.
This idea of sacrifice to obtain the rights of their comrades to be liberated from whatever oppressive force is apparent as one of the most profound and common themes presented in most Gundam series. The concept of corruption runs rampant in the series with the use of child soldiers. As Bryan Le-Phan ’25 said, “Gundam allows you to build the world you seek to escape the prison you are confined in.” What may seem like a simple action-oriented animated series, a simple plastic kit, is actually quite detailed with all the political and economic struggles between different factions. Gundam as a series is as much the cool fights between big robots but also the conflicts between philosophy and personal belief. It is a revolutionary series that has forever changed the mecha genre, as well as being able to portray the chaotic and intellectual nature of war in a single TV series.
This idea of sacrifice to obtain the rights of their comrades to be liberated from whatever oppressive force is apparent as one of the most profound and common themes presented in most Gundam series.