Mobile Suit Gundam revitalized the exhausted giant robot genre. © Bandai Entertainment. All rights reserved.

The robot as an advanced battle vehicle in Mobile Suit Gundam. © Bandai Entertainment. All rights reserved.

The first sequels were set between one and thirty years following Gundam's conclusion with the defeat of Zeon. They generally established that "everybody is no damn good," switching back and forth between the Earth Federation and Zeon as the good and bad guys depending upon which political faction is in charge of which nation; with the civilian population sinking into despair as the fighting continues apparently endlessly. Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, set on a different battlefront of the One-Year War, attempted to recreate the relatively positive mood of the original story, when both sides expected a quick and permanent victory. The Earth Federation has manufactured enough Gundams to send a division to Southeast Asia to take it back from an occupying Zeon army. Freshly graduated Lieut. Shiro Amada, assigned to command the 08th Mobile Suit Team, must prove to his veteran squad that he has what it takes to lead them; must help still rawer rookies fit onto the team; must win the friendship and aid of native guerrillas who consider both the Feddies and the Zeeks to be destructive invaders; and must overcome and defeat the Zeons' experimental Apsalus superweapon. The 08th MS Team starts out as basically a cleaned-up boys'-adventure version of the 1965-1975 Viet Nam War with giant robot battle armor instead of tanks, evolving into an improbable Romeo & Juliet romance between Shiro and Zeon's Apsalus test pilot, the lovely Aina Sakhalin, as the two former idealists for their causes become disillusioned by seeing the reality of war. The twelve half-hour episodes were released to video between January 1996 and July 1999; an unusually long period caused in part by original director Kanda's death in July 1996.

Military action meets sci-fi in Mobile Suit Gundam. © Bandai Entertainment. All rights reserved.

Mobile Suit Gundam, which started it all, is still considered the best of all the series in story depth and character development, although the animation quality (produced when Sunrise was a poor, struggling newcomer) is primitive compared to the sequels. The VHS video version presents Gundam as it has been edited for American TV broadcast; the DVD version is uncut. Unlike most DVDs, however, the original Gundam series is dubbed in English only. Due to business decisions in Japan, the original Japanese dialogue with English subtitles could not be included. Both English dialogue and the Japanese dialogue with subtitles are available on The 08th MS Team series. Its twelve episodes offer a good summary of the Gundam plot and spirit in a new story featuring the higher-quality animation of the late 1990s.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s.