Mobile Suit Gundam is one of the most influential works in Japanese animation. © Bandai Ent.

Mobile Suit Gundam F91: The Motion Picture.
Theatrical feature, 1991. Director: Yoshiyuki Tomino. 118 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: Bandai Entertainment.

Mobile Suit Gundam, created by writer/director Yoshiyuki Tomino and the Sunrise animation studio, is one of the most influential works in Japanese animation. It was the pioneer of the "second generation" of giant-robot TV cartoons. It upgraded them from juvenile comicbook superheroes battling evil monsters to adolescent sci-fi semi-realistic futuristic military combat vehicle.

When the original Gundam appeared as a TV series in 1979-1980, fans demanded a sequel. The 43 TV episodes were edited into three theatrical features (with some new footage), but this was not enough. They demanded more original Gundam stories. And ever since 1985, Tomino and Sunrise have been churning them out for TV, original video releases, and movies: Zeta Gundam, Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, Victory Gundam, G Gundam, Gundam Wing, Gundam X, Turn-A Gundam and many others including Japanese TV's current Gundam Seed Destiny.

Mobile Suit Gundam F91: The Motion Picture, released March 16, 1991, was promoted as a new Gundam story in theatrical-quality animation; a distillation of the best of the Gundam concept. Unfortunately, it serves best as an example of what is wrong with too many theatrical features based upon popular TV series.

Gundam F91 does have higher-quality animation than the original TV series, but not enough better to make it stand out by today's standards. Much more serious flaws are that the story is not new enough, and it is strangely chopped up. Tomino basically plagiarizes his original TV series with only superficial changes of characters' and organizations' names. The 43-episode plot is crammed into a single 118-minute story, which assumes that the viewer is already familiar with the general Gundam future-history background and plunges right into the action.

A couple of 100 years in the future, most of humanity is living in artificial space colonies circling the Earth. Humanity is politically united under the Earth Federation, but a group of colonists who consider themselves genetically superior plot to take over the colonies and proclaim the space nation of Cosmo Babylonia. Warfare breaks out, with heavy casualties among the civilians in the colonies as squadrons of mobile-suited fighter pilots battle in their midst. Seabook Arno is one of a group of high school students and younger children who become separated from other refugees and are picked up by a military training ship, the Space Ark, which is carrying the prototype of an improved Gundam battle armor model, the F91.

Any fan of the 1979-80 Gundam series can guess where the story is going after the first five minutes. Seabook Arno, who becomes the reluctant pilot of the Gundam F91, is just a copy of Amuro Ray who was the reluctant pilot of the original Gundam battle suit. Cecily Fairchild, Seabook's girlfriend who turns out to be the disguised daughter of the enemy Cosmo Babylonia's rulers, is Sayla Maas who was the daughter of the founder of the enemy Zeon. The space colonies Frontier I through IV are the space colonies Side 1 through 7; the Space Ark is the military training ship White Base; and so forth.

Gundam F91 is nominally a sequel set 43 years after the first series, but history has never repeated itself this exactly. Worse, anyone not familiar with the original story is likely to be confused over who is fighting in this future war and why, because there is little background information. The compression of the plot into 118 minutes strips it of all character development as well as the complex "future history" background details that makes the first Gundam still such a great adventure. If you are not familiar with the original Gundam, F91 is at best a "Cliff's Notes"-type plot synopsis with all the names changed.