Mobile Suit Gundam 0079
Originally airing as simply
Mobile Suit Gundam on 4 April 1979 in Nippon's national television network ANN, the original Gundam depicted a group of youths being swept up in an apocalyptic war in a hardish sci-fi future. The brainchild of Nipponese animation veteran Tomino Yoshiyuki , with character designs and direction by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu, Gundam was marketed to all audiences, especially the growing teenage to young adult hobbyist demographic.
Though much of the funding came from the promise of lucrative merchandising opportunities for hobbyist collectives, the project would ultimately be realized due to a grant that Tomino secured from the central government to promote the growth of the arts and the flowering of the Ŝin Esperanto auxiliary language. An Esperantist himself, Tomino was a natural choice for such endeavors.
Production began in 1978 amid a period of domestic cultural renaissance and tightening relationships between the Nippon, Chosun and China. Tomino's major goal in developing the drafts alongside Yasuhiko was to explore the themes of Japan's imperialist history through the lens of science fiction, preventing the possibility of distortion of real history that came from historical fiction.
Gundam begins
in media res in September of the year 0079 in the future Universal Century calendar (epoch date unspecified). An intro describes a very brief synopsis of the setting: most of humanity now live in Lagrange space colonies, grouped together administratively as Sides. A billion or so more live on Luna or in the outer planets. Nevertheless, Earth remains the spiritual home of humanity, and the seat of the Earth Federation government that administers it. Nine months prior, the colonies of Side 3, formerly the Autonomous Republic of Munzo and now the self-styled Zeonic Commonwealth
1, began a supposed "war of liberation" against the Earth. The narration states that the indiscriminate use of WMDs by Zeon has killed half the human population in a single month of fighting. The animation depicts a final titanic act of barbarism: the de-orbiting of an 8 kilometer wide, thirty-two kilometer long "Island Three" colony as an improvised weapon of mass destruction.
The protagonist, Ensign Amuro Ray (Furuya Tōru) of the Earth Federal Space Force
2, is being redeployed to his home colony in Side 7. En route, he learns that his father has been working on a secret project that may help turn the tide in the war. Meanwhile, the primary antagonist, Zeon Navy Lieutenant Commander Char Aznable (Ikeda Shūichi) has been ordered to capture the Federation's Project V with hopes of breaking the stalemate.
Char's forces attack just after Amuro is reunited with his father. A desperate defense by Federation tanks and the obsolete RM-75 mobile suits holds off the greatly superior Zakus, forcing them to regroup. But Amuro's father and the intended pilots for Project V have been mortally wounded. In desperation, Amuro jumps into the cockpit of the RX-78 "Gundam", and dispatches two of Char's subalterns.
After a stand-off at the colony's docks, both Amuro and Char are forced to retreat, neither realizing the other had expended his consumables. Against Char's recommendations, the commander of the Zeon cruiser orders the destruction of the colony. Nevertheless, the experimental warship
Pegasus escapes, evacuating civilians as well as the prototypes of Project V.
The show follows Amuro's and Char's stories through to the end of the Zeonic War. Amuro's presence convinces some of his old friends from Side 7 to join the Federal Forces: the embittered Kai Shiden (Furukawa Toshio), the naïve Fraw Bow (Ukai Rumiko), and the loyal Hayato Kobayashi (Hiyama Nobuyuki). Bright Noa (Suzuoki Hirotaka), a junior officer with leadership thrust upon him, serves as the commander of the
Pegasus, trying to maintain order and discipline among the fraying crew.
Amuro soon meets the enigmatic Federation political commissar Sayla Mass (Sakakibara Yoshiko). Over the course of the apocalyptic conflict with Zeon, Amuro and Sayla become close confidants. Sayla's growing dissatisfaction with the Federation is used as an exposition tool; the Federation is an ugly mess of competing sectional interests, the promise of a global worker's state long since abandoned to bureaucratic degeneration. Both continue the fight because Zeon's fascist barbarism must be stopped at any price.
The story interleaves Amuro's POV with Char's, giving glimpses of the masked pilots ulterior motivations. Over the course of the show, it is slowly revealed that Char is not who he seems to be. As he plots his revenge against Zeon's ruling Zabi family, his true identity emerges as Casval Deikun, son of the murdered colonial revolutionary Zeon Deikun. Deikun, it is revealed, was murdered by the Zabi family in a false-flag assassination. Degwin Sodo Zabi (Nagai Ichirō), Deikun's rival/ally in the Munzo Liberation Front, turned the broad-tent colonial liberation movement into a third-positionist "social-nationalist" regime. Side 3 was renamed in Zeon Deikun's honor, but through the course of the liberation process the regime became more insular and authoritarian.
Through the occasional asides featuring Degwin interacting with his inner-circle, we come to find that the Sovereign is a conflicted character. It is hinted that he may not fully believe in the regime's ideology, having described the promotion of Spacenoid chauvinism, nationalism and the rigid state capitalist development regime as means-to-an-end, a short-cut taken in these difficult times. His eldest son Gihren Zabi (Ginga Banjō), however, is a true believer in the worst aspects of Spacenoid chauvinism and totalitarianism. A genius manipulator, Gihren has ultimately usurped most of the practical control of the state and the war effort from his increasingly old and withdrawn father.
The death of the naive young Garma Zabi (Mori Katsuji) at the hands of Char's treachery heightens the conflict, strengthening Gihren's grip on Zeon. Since it was ostensibly the
Pegasus and the "White Devil" RX-78 that killed Garma, Zeon puts more resources into Char's hands, fueling his growing rivalry with Amuro.
The story arcs on Earth showcase the horror and the devastation of the war on its people and its environment. Once the privileged strata of the Federation, Earthnoids now shelter in the bombed out ruins of once splendorous cities. The drive for the war effort results in a massive despoiling of the land through resource extraction and pollution, which takes center stage during the campaign to retake Odessa and shut down the conduit of raw materials and manufactured goods to the Zeon war effort.
Char and Amuro face off several more times. Their rivalry becomes more personal after Amuro meets the Indian mobile suit pilot Lalah Sune (Han Keiko). This arc revealed the concept of the Newtype: human evolution driven by the changing conditions of life in space, manifesting in an emergent gestalt consciousness and psychic powers.
Amuro, Char, Lalah and Sayla eventually learn of their shared connection as Newtypes, but the rivalry turns bitter with the accidental death of Lalah as the Zeonic empire begins to collapse. Sayla nearly succeeds in her mission to kill the famed "Red Comet" Char, but can't pull the trigger at the pivotal moment; their psychic connection reveals their true identities: Sayla was born Artesia Deikun and thus is Char's twin sister.
In spite of the cavalcade of merchandisable prototypes put out by Zeon as their forces are pushed from the Earth proper and back to the Moon, it is clear by the latter half of the show that the Federation will win the war. After Char manages to manipulate events to secure Dozle Zabi's (Gōri Daisuke) death in the battle at the Solomon fortress in the ruins of Side 1 at L5, he is arrested by Kycillia Zabi's (Koyama Mami) security forces. Gihren comes personally to his cell to taunt him, revealing to Char that not only had he known his alter ego since before the war, he'd subtly been encouraging and manipulating events to ensure that Char would eliminate Gihren's rivals within Zeon, especially those in his own family.
Before Char can be executed, the prison on the Lunar city of Goddard is attacked by the
Pegasus. After a dramatic mobile suit raid led by Sayla, Char is rescued. But he has lost the will to live, until Amuro goads him into a fight in the
Pegasus's officer wardroom, after which Char starts to overcome his ennui at being a puppet dancing on Gihren's strings.
In the assault on A Baoa Qu, the last defense line before Side 3 itself, Gihren sabotages peace talks and arranges the death of his father during his meeting with General Revil. In retaliation, the Earth Federal Forces attack the Jupiter energy fleet, turning the confrontation at A Baoa Qu into a diversion. Char raids a Zeon research facility on the Lunar city-state of Granada, and captures a prize prototype mobile suit, the MS-18 Kämpfer. He joins Amuro's RX-78 and Sayla's RX-79-EZ8 in the final assault on A Baoa Qu.
The Federal Forces succeed in disrupting the Colony Laser before it can be used again. But to Char's dismay, he infiltrates the crumbling hulk of the fortress only to find that Kycillia has already iced Gihren for his treachery. He completes his hollow revenge against Kycillia in a short mobile suit duel with Kycillia's MS-08 Gouf Custom.
The tide of the battle in the Zeon heartland turns as many Zeon soldiers begin to recognize Sayla as the lost Artesia Deikun. With a heavy heart, Sayla leads this fifth column into spurring defeatism in the Side 3 home colonies, effectively ending the war out from under the surviving Zabi loyalist government.
Reception
Mobile Suit Gundam was a sleeper hit on its arrival. Broadcast in primetime in Ŝin Esperanto, it's popularity grew strongest with the 12-17 and 18-24 demographics, who had been made proficient in the language through public schooling. As the show's fifty-two episode run continued, demand for hobbyist kits grew, along with music and art merchandise, keeping the production barely afloat.
While the initial merchandising and art-direction of the show were strongly influenced by the demands of toy manufacturers, emphasizing bright color pallets, the titural Gundam's repainting in camouflage pattern at the start of the Earth arc came with the production committee's increased leverage over art direction, and the increased emphasis on unpainted model kits for the older demographics.
As word of mouth spread around the middle of its run, rating improved as more closed-caption decoders were deployed through the Accessibility Initiative. With the availability of Nihongo closed-caption subtitles, Gundam and the other shows promoted under the program were promoted rather shallowly as "learning aids" for the auxiliary language.
Broadcasts began three months later in Chosun and China. Though Gundam competed in a cluttered field of Chosunese animation and entertainment, it proved to be even more popular than in its home country. In China, the allusions to the conduct of Imperial Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War sparked controversy initially, but this died down as ethnic Chinese characters were introduced on the side of the heroes, and it became abundantly clear that the narrative was highly self-reflective of Nippon's imperialist history.
The secondary merchandising market for models and tabletop games, and the new Laserdisc home video market extended the life of the show's fan community, prompting rerun syndication of the show. Fan comics and prose fiction became popular in the growing youth science fiction fandom, which began to reach outside of East Asia. North America and Eurasia were first introduced to the show through fansubs created by college A/V clubs, paving the way for official localizations. Growing fan interest led to comic and novel spin offs, and finally a sequel series in 1986.
More than anything, the themes of Gundam reflected the bitterness of Nippon's post-war generation, and the tumultuous history since the fall of the Empire. Mobile Suit Gundam emerged when the sterile artistic culture and economic austerity of the post-war era had finally blossomed. The 1970s were a period of political and artistic flourishing, out of the shadow of the Purification campaigns.
For Tomino, Gundam was a meditation on the "guilty political culture" in post-war Nippon. As the domestic partner to the Comintern's JDPON-Nippon, the Nippon Communist Party had been essentially resurrected by the occupation authorities, and reconstituted from members of pre-war left-wing groups who proved amenable. But much of the membership of the party were themselves guilty men. The revolving door between communist groups and
Kodoha's brand of social-nationalism was a guilt that burned in the hearts of many post-war political leaders, yet this shame could only ever be borne in silence. In art, it was referenced in hushed whispers, and few desired to dwell on it, even as a new generation unburdened by this guilt took the reins.
In the mid to late 1970s, this began to change. In Gundam, this rupture was at its most direct, with the principle antagonists of Zeon adopting very liberally the theatrics of Imperial Japan and the
Kodoha's ideology of "Concordism". By being set in the future, characters are empowered to talk with historic self-awareness of this parallel, with Degwin Zabi himself referencing the movement by name, and compares Zeon Deikun, or at least the version that is historically remembered, with the ideological cipher that was philosopher Kita Ikki, who like Nietzsche in the West served as an inspiration for many in East Asia both on the extreme left and extreme right.
While Western viewers typically see the implicit racialism of the Zabi's Spacenoid chauvinism as an echo of Nazism, and this is further complicated by the parallels and allusions provided in the course of the plot to the titanic military struggle between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the ideology of the Zeonic Commonwealth is the "chauvinism of the oppressed", as Yasuhiko would put it in an interview shortly after the series concluded its initial broadcast run. In this, it parallel's Nietzschean slave morality even as it tries to struggle against it, as the Spacenoids, who have been ethnically cleansed from Earth
by the billions to preserve the Earth's biosphere for the elite, struggled and suffered in austerity for decades as a colonized people.
The tragedy of this is the mirror between the history of Nippon and Zeon, who in their history both "got off easy" compared to other colonized people, yet could transition all too easily from bearing the lash to wielding it. Side 3 was the last of the principle colony clusters to be formally established, and its principal inhabitants came from the more prosperous parts of Earth and much more by choice.
Gundam was not, as was suggested by the EBC Board of Film and Television Classification when it refused certification, lionizing a conflict between the virtuous "Communist East" and fascistic "Capitalist West." For Tomino and Yasuhiko, the Federation represented the gray future where neither liberal capitalism nor proletarian socialism triumphed, but instead the victory of the eternally compromised present.
This would be borne out more fully in later entries, when the Earth Federation and its many repressive and bureaucratic arms would serve as the primary antagonists. But in the original series, it is, as Yasuhiko would write in the voice of Sayla Mass, "an evil regime sustained by the existence of a far more evil foe."
Some commenters interpreted the themes of Gundam as a total rejection of the principle of national liberation, an assessment usually made in the form of a scathing rebuke. And while indeed Gundam as a series, and its writers always showed a deep antipathy towards nationalism as a destructive, intoxicating ideology, the series painted characters with a deep color of empathy, even the soldiers of this regime.
The Zeon War represented the tragic outcome of the grapes of wrath growing heavy for the vintage among Spacenoids, but also the paradox at the heart of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. Side 3 chose to lead its fellow Spacenoids to glory, whether they wanted it or not. And it truly was a popular sort of totalitarianism; there were always malcontents in Zeon who stuck to the original vision of Zeon Deikun, but they were far outnumbered by the people willing to make whatever compromises to take the short road to victory. And like in the case of the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Asia, far more Spacenoids were directly murdered by the Zeon regime than Earthnoids.
Gundam certainly proved its broad appeal, but at its heart the original was very intimately informed by Nippon's own troubled history, and this current would carry through into the sequels, even as their thematics shifted towards more topical matters.
- Esperanto: Ŝtatkomunum de Zeon, a gloss on the Nihongo 公国 (Kōkoku) "principality" or "regency". The English word "Side" is used rather than the Esperanto "flanko" for the Colony groupings.
- Esperanto: Tera Federacia Kosmoforto. It is ambiguous and often contradictory whether the future depicted speaks Esperanto; background text is in a mixture of Esperanto and English without clear in-universe reasoning, and Earth Federation forces variously be marked with "E.F.S.F." and "T.F.K."
