Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has finally hit theaters, and with it, the classic film series is holstering its blasters for the immediate future. We’ve previously written about Star Wars’ murky future post Episode 9, and with the film’s mixed reviews, that future is only thrown further into doubt. While the series has a tentative release planned for 2022, even that movie has recently lost its directors. However, as Star Wars fans brace themselves for a potential series lull, let’s take a look at another ‘70s space opera that’s still going strong. In Yoda’s own words, “There is another…”
Mobile Suit Gundam is a space opera anime that first premiered on Japanese TV in 1979, two years after Star Wars: A New Hope hit theaters in the United States. Set in a near future, post-common era (or AD), timeline called the “Universal Century” the show deals with the ramifications of ecological disaster on Earth, humankind’s construction of massive, self-sustaining space colonies, the evolution of psychic powers within some of the children born in space, and the ultimate culmination of all of these factors in a mech-based war for independence between space colonists and the unified Earth Federation government.
If some of that sounds familiar to you, it should. The book Anime Interviews: The First Five Years of Animerica, Anime & Manga Monthly (1992-97) quotes Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino as saying “The space colony concept and Star Wars were very much an influence on me; in fact, you could say they’re the basis for the whole Gundam drama.” Watching the show, the influence is clear. While Tomino followed up his statement by saying he had already written the show’s story outline when Star Wars hit theaters, the two series show more than a little similarity, and that’s beyond both series’ disco-heavy sound design.
From the parallels between lightsabers and beam sabers to those between Jedi and Newtypes, Gundam gives Star Wars loyalists plenty of space for a happy landing. Here are just three of the reasons why Star Wars fans should try Gundam, and hopefully fill the Skywalker sized holes in their hearts. Star Wars is already just anime anyway.
1. Used Future and Real Robot
The sci-fi landscape in American film and television looked nothing like Star Wars when A New Hope hit theaters. From Star Trek to The Jetsons to Lost in Space, previous attempts at showing interplanetary society on screen tended to trend towards the utopian. From uniformed jumpsuits to matter replicators to instantaneous transportation, these looks at the future speculated wondrous possibilities in decades to come. While it is true that books like Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles had explored dirty futures decades before Star Wars, televised sci-fi did not share the same aesthetic. Even the thoughtful politics of Star Trek generally portrayed Federation space as orderly, socially conscious, and above all, clean.
Similarly, when Mobile Suit Gundam first hit Japanese airwaves in 1979, it did so in a crowded climate of unambiguous, good vs evil “super robot” shows. In these episodic, monster-of-the-week style shows, small children not unlike the target audience would befriend giant protector robots and fight against criminal or alien menaces. Here, technology is frequently presented with a somewhat utopian worldview, as the newest toy or discovery comes in at the end of each story to save the day. Despite coming out in the postwar era, the politics of war are largely relegated to either background elements or quickly forgotten origin stories, at least in the text itself. Some series, like Giant Robo, make nods to the technological devastation Japan faced in the waning years of World War II, but even with such direct recognition, neither the feasibility of operating a giant war robot or the psychological well-being of those piloting giant war robots are given much focus.
With both series coming into such techno-utopian landscapes in speculative media, then, each shook up its respective field by suggesting new aesthetic styles that focused on futures of grit, rust, economic desperation, and the raw manpower behind technological innovation as opposed to technology as a solution for society’s woes. Academics name Star Wars’ approach “used future,” while the anime community has taken to calling Gundam’s stylistic trappings “real robot.”
In his article “The Used Future” for his website KK*, Wired founder Kevin Kelly codifies what makes Star Wars’ worldbuilding and set design so special. “The most shocking aspect of the original Star Wars films on first viewing so long ago was not their gee-wizardy, or the coolness of the alternative worlds so richly rendered, or even the arch-mythic story of a hero in the space age, but the brand new idea that the future could be gritty, worn, dilapidated, and a mixed bag of modern and ancient,” writes Kelly.
To back this up, he references film critic Charles Champlin’s biography of George Lucas, where Champlin coins the term “used future” and writes that Lucas intended his films “to be experienced as reality rather than fantasy.” This is why we open A New Hope on a small family eking out a modest living by farming moisture, a basic necessity of life, in a desert. This is why our first introduction to the wider, alien universe is in a dive bar…that discriminates against robots. This is why, as artist John Powers notes in his essay Star Wars: A New Heap, the Millennium Falcon reinterprets the flying saucer as a “slum,” or a “dingy Dumpster full of boiler parts, dirty dishes, and decomposing upholstery.”
When compared to the stark beige, well-lit, almost minimalist design of the Starship Enterprise or the brutalist curvature of Klaatu’s flying saucer in The Day The Earth Stood Still, or even the no-questions-asked multicultural Enterprise crew, the Millennium Falcon and the design sensibility it embodies instead re-envisions the future as harsh, rotting, and an intensifier for modern problems rather than a more aspirational escape from the current day. While Star Wars does still have its clean starship bridges and matching uniforms, they always belong to space fascists, human supremacists obsessed with order and monoculture at all costs, as opposed to the heroes. In this way, Star Wars adds texture to its universe, and in so doing, makes it appear like a diverse world with room for each individual’s life story. But crucially, it also serves as a warning that the progression of time alone is not an escape.
With its “real robot” aesthetic, Mobile Suit Gundam takes a similar approach. Whereas anime as early as Astro Boy treated robotics as an excuse for writing impossibly strong superpowers into a story, Gundam sees it as a limitation. For instance, the series’ mechs, called mobile suits, can’t enter into battle without being launched from rail cannons. Like real space shuttles, they generally can’t leave the atmosphere without external support. They get stuck in the mud, larger weapons need to be launched into battle separate from the robot, and some suits shows clear coolant tubing, ammunition racks, and other accessories that expose the finer details in keeping a war machine of that scale upright and functional. Most importantly, even the smallest grunt suit is powered by its own miniature nuclear reactor, posing great risk to enemy and ally alike. In essence, the mechs of Mobile Suit Gundam carry weight and heft, and outwardly acknowledge their impracticality and the danger both in piloting one and being targeted by one.
Like John Powers’ Millennium Falcon standing on two legs, Gundam’s mobile suits serve as a reminder of present day tensions, which the show takes great pains to make inseparable from each suit’s origin. This is because, unlike super robot shows, Gundam’s recognition of the inefficient nature of giant war robots means it must also take an extra step in acknowledging why characters still bother to use them, which it does with haunting consequences.
Prior to the series, as certain space colonies formed the Principality of Zeon and declared war on Earth’s Federation, both governments wielded the full might of their traditional arsenals against each other, including nuclear weaponry, poison gas, and the dropping of a whole, ahem, “depopulated” space colony on the Earth. These attacks resulted in the devastation of the entire Australian continent, both sides losing half of their respective populations, and each agreeing to ban nuclear weaponry and other weapons of mass destruction in the “Antarctic treaty.” Looking for a new, treaty-compliant weapon to turn the tides of the war, the Principality of Zeon hastily adapts its labor robots into increasingly powerful “mobile suits,” using their humanoid form to help them navigate the multidirectional combat of space more easily than traditional fighter jet style designs. The Earth Federation responds in kind, and soon each mobile suit and its power source not only serves as a grim reminder of the death of half of humanity, but also as a player in yet another nuclear arms race.
Here, real robot mirrors used future’s concept of technology as intensifier for strife rather than escape, as we see mobile suit pilots victoriously score kills on each other, only to have their freshly slain targets explode in nuclear fire, punch holes in the siding of whatever space colony is hosting their battle, and destabilize the atmosphere for every individual inside.
Which leads us to our next point: Jedi, Newtypes, and the hijacking of human connection for war.
2. Jedi and Newtypes
“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power,” explains Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: A New Hope. “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.” Later, as Obi-Wan faces Darth Vader in a lightsaber duel, he tells him “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine,” before seeming to disappear. Finally, as the movie concludes, we hear Obi-Wan, now one with the Force, give Luke the advice he needs to destroy the Death Star just moments before it fires on the Yavin IV Rebel base.
Here, in defiance of the bleak used future aesthetic, we see Star Wars finally suggest what the “new hope” in its subtitle is. Yes, Jedi can lift objects with their minds. They can wield lightsabers with deadly precision, block blaster bolts, and have limited precognition. But Obi-Wan’s simple three-act story, introduced in the first Star Wars movie, is how we first come to understand the Force. And whether it’s mind tricks or posthumous advice, Obi-Wan’s favorite use for the Force is not destruction, but communication.
Though the Star Wars galaxy is endlessly diverse, it also serves as a home for those whose anxiety over that diversity leads to governments like the Empire. This anxiety causes the Empire to enslave and destroy life before building a monument to death in the Death Star. However, despite positioning itself as the ultimate power in the Galaxy, this repulsion to life in its many forms ultimately leads the Empire to its own destruction.
As a Jedi, Luke is able to combat the Empire by using the Force, which comes from all living things, to talk to Obi-Wan and destroy the Death Star, to sense when his friends are in danger on Cloud City, to communicate with Leia over long distances, and ultimately to reach out to and redeem his father. All living things contribute to the Force, and in destroying living things, the Sith-lead Empire only makes itself weaker. Rather, Star Wars suggests that connection, cooperation, and understanding between the Galaxy’s many species, whether they be Wookies, Mon Calamari, or yes, Ewoks, is the ultimate path the prosperity in a used future, as embodied by Luke’s ally-building approach to the Force. This is the strength the Rebels and the Jedi have that the Empire and the Sith do not. In using the Force to protect and gather allies, they strengthen themselves, whereas the Sith’s wanton destruction only lessens the Force as a whole.
Meanwhile, in Gundam, we see the same phenomenon in Newtypes. While for the most part lacking the telekinetic abilities of Jedi, Newtypes mirror and perhaps even surpass Force users when it comes to telepathy and empathy. Evolving as a way for humanity to maintain contact as it moves into space stations and eventually planets millions of miles apart, Newtypes are capable of “perfect communication,” able to read the meaning of others and also share their own intent instantly, without losing any information in translating their thoughts to language.
In combat, this leads to heightened reaction times, as a Newtype’s empathetic powers allow them to determine hostile intent more quickly than most, as well as communicate with other Newtypes to quickly assess threats around them. For instance, if one Newtype sees an attack about to hit another Newtype from behind, then they can instantly warn the fellow Newtype in time for them to dodge. In the same vein, a Newtype can usually also pilot a mobile suit with more precision than most, as they can quickly process movement information without calculation, leading to them using more sensitive controls and getting more performance out of even basic machines.
Bordering on telekinesis, Newtypes can also use remote weaponry by controlling it with their minds, leading to suits with dozens of flying guns, called “bits,” surrounding them in a deadly cloud. Finally, Newtypes can occasionally channel their emotional energy into direct physical or mental attacks, such as a climactic moment towards the end of Mobile Suit Gundam’s sequel series where the protagonist uses his powers to lengthen his beam saber’s blade (Yes, Gundam has lightsaber equivalents), or a later moment in the same series where two characters engage in a psychic battle, with one dying and the other leaving in a near-vegetative state.
Outside of combat, however, is where Newtypes tend to live their best lives. Regardless of allegiance, their powers often draw them to each other, where they learn about the arbitrary nature of conflict and instead see a new possibility in further developing their gifts with each other rather than fighting. Outside interference rarely makes this a possibility, except for the rare occasion where a Newtype is able to abandon conflict, either through victory or defection. But even in the occasion where Newtypes are forced to fight for their whole lives, they will usually make peace after death and continue to aid the living. Yes, like Jedi, Newtypes can also talk to the dead.
It is for these empathetic reasons that Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino recently said “We all must aim to become Newtypes.” during an interview at AnimeNYC 2019. Unfortunately, in both Gundam and Star Wars proper, neither fares as well.
In the Star Wars prequel trilogy, we see the Jedi drafted into a war as generals. We see unknown forces hand them an army, and set them against a vaguely defined enemy. We see them unknowingly pave the way for fascism, and lead a young slave boy they adopted into its arms. We see them cut themselves off from emotion, and then lose the connection they need to foresee this. We see this lead to their genocide. And we see them accept all of this because they refuse to acknowledge the flaws of the Republic’s status quo.
Meanwhile, Gundam sees Newtypes, who are essentially empaths that evolved to help humanity remain unified across great distances, instead exploited for the fringe aspects of their powers useful for war. With the youth of space just starting to come into their own and many adult soldiers killed by the time the series proper begins, Oldtype adults who fail to understand these teenagers’ needs instead bolster their depleted ranks by forcing them into conflict with each other. Serving against their more friendly purpose in so direct a manner, Newtypes forced to kill each other feel each death heavily, as the final emotions of the slain reach back to affect the attacker. This trauma follows them throughout their whole lives, causing people who series protagonist Amuro Ray says are meant to “show the world the light within the human heart” to instead start new wars and continue the cycle with the next generation of Newtypes.
Star Wars eventually gets its happy ending in The Last Jedi, as Luke reforms the Jedi order, decides to democratize the Force, and finally shows the full communicative abilities of the Force through his astral projection that saves The Resistance. Meanwhile, Ben Solo and Rey carry on a Newtype-esque psychic dialogue that ultimately ends in Supreme Leader Snoke’s defeat, and (let’s avoid spoilers) further development in the newly released film.
Unfortunately, Gundam usually eschews happy endings for bittersweet ones where Newtypes may win one conflict (at a cost), but set up another, and never get to fulfill Amuro’s wishes. This leads us to…
3. Epic Space Combat and Lightsaber Duels
Gundam is a series known for introducing overt politics to the mech genre, while Star Wars is known for a greater action focus than prior sci-fi. However, just as Star Wars has thematic depth in its aesthetic and mystical elements, Gundam does not lose the action of super robot shows in its more thoughtful exploration of giant war robot anime.
Take, for instance, the 1988 movie Char’s Counterattack. Despite focusing on a beloved protagonist’s fall from grace late in life, as well as how war tends to feed itself, it also fulfills the secondary role of giving audiences a climactic battle between old rivals, with its advertising evoking wrestling commercials. The actual battle doesn’t disappoint, either, cutting between long-range Newtype sniper bouts, to close-range beam saber combat, to on-foot hit-and-runs as the characters argue about each other’s motivations, to a desperate mech-based fistfight.
Essentially, it has all the beats of a good Jedi duel. And with Newtypes having such similar powers to Jedi, as well as beam sabers aping the utility of lightsabers in most ways except for blocking shots, these duels aren’t rare, either. In the original Mobile Suit Gundam’s final battle, we see the fight that would inspire the rematch in Char’s Counterattack, as the titular Gundam and an even stronger suit, the Zeong, duel in the midst of a busy space battle. As artillery salvos fire behind them, both pilots skillfully navigate the larger battlefield, evoking the Death Star trench run. However, once each suit is destroyed, the battle eventually shrinks to a more intimate sword fight, with the Zeong pilot testing if the Gundam pilot is worthy to live, much like Luke’s confrontation with Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back.
Less intimate fights also compete with Star Wars for spectacle, as mobile suits take the place of X-Wings and TIE Fighters while ace pilots single-handedly fend off capital ships and launch banter at each other. For example, the Battle of Loum from Gundam: The Origin not only serves as a great example of this, but also as the debut of wider mobile suit combat for the series as a whole. Here, we see mech squadrons essentially interrupt the equivalent of Star Wars’ Battle of Coruscant or Battle of Endor and display the multi-directional prowess they bring to space combat. The resulting slick camerawork and quick transitions between perspective make for a hectic, exciting watch that sells the viewer on Gundam’s premise while still hitting all the notes of the space battles from prior sci-fi.
There’s a reason why “Wow, cool robot” is a meme. Even though Gundam’s themes give the audience more to consider than just its cool robots…they are still pretty cool.
Conclusion
As Star Wars claims the throne of most popular American space opera series, Mobile Suit Gundam does the same for Japan. There’s a reason why each series has maintained a steady stream of releases, across multiple fictional eras, for over 40 years. Whether in the form of films, television, comic books, or games, both Star Wars and Gundam not only offer ways for each type of fan to enjoy the series, but also different places to start.
While Star Wars fans argue about watch order or if the Extended Universe material is still worth experiencing (it is), Gundam aficionados not only have the challenge of even more alternate universes to follow (the Universal Century is just one of many Gundam canons), but also grappling with the biggest shortcoming of the original show: its animation quality.
As a weekly television anime in 1979, the original Mobile Suit Gundam suffers from a low budget, so much so that its frequent off-model shots have become a bit of a meme. This leads many to skip the show, which is unfortunate, as much of Gundam’s output relies on the original show as setup. There are the alternate universe shows set outside of the Universal Century, though these shows tend to be more standalone and often receive more of a mixed response from fans due to being produced by different creative teams.
However, as a final point about why Gundam is a perfect next step for Star Wars fans, I would like to personally recommend starting with the film trilogy recut of the original Gundam series. First hitting Japanese theaters in 1981, the Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 film trilogy compiles all of the major plot points of the original 50 episode anime, distributes them across three features, fixes all of the television version’s animation errors, and introduces new animation to help fill in gaps in the storyline. It also removes lingering super robot elements from the show’s original run, such as the toylike Gundam Hammer, and Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino considers it the definitive version of the story.
Watching the Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy feels every bit as epic as watching the original Star Wars trilogy. Anime compilations have a reputation of rushed and episodic pacing, but because of the extensive reshooting done for the films, the Gundam movies manage to tell the show’s whole story while still feeling like a cohesive three part narrative. More importantly, they give the viewer an introduction to a larger Gundam whole that offers even more film and television content to explore than Star Wars, all with the same or even better animation quality than the film trilogy.
While contenders like Stargate or Macross struggle for relevance in 2019, the release of Rise of Skywalker and the declaration of an official Gundam Day in New York prove continued interest in these stories. For fans of Star Wars looking to expand their interests to another gritty, space wizard happy, bombastic franchise during the next series lull, Gundam is sure to provide regular, quality releases for years to come.
For a property as vast as Gundam, it’s tough to find everything on just one source beyond buying a bunch of DVDs or going to YouTube. But you can catch a lot of Gundam on Hulu, Netflix, Crunchyroll and other streaming TV services.
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