Gundam

The Gundam Series (ガンダムシリーズ, Gandamu Shirīzu^?) is a metaseries of anime created by Sunrise studios that features giant robots (or "mecha") called "Mobile Suits"(MS), usually the protagonist's MS will carry the name Gundam. The metaseries started on April 7, 1979 as a serial TV show called Mobile Suit Gundam. That first TV series has since spawned a franchise that has come to include works released in numerous media. Titles have appeared in the form of multiple television series and OVAs, movies, manga, novels and video games, among other modes. The story from the original 1979 series has been considerably extended with sequels, prequels, side stories and alternate timelines. As a result, the title "Gundam" has become a collective term for the seven distinct but related timelines that can be pieced together from the stories that appear in the Gundam franchise. Generally speaking, the timelines do not intersect, but they do contain a few common elements such as the titular war machines called Gundam. However, all Gundam timelines/worlds long after their own anime series will eventually intersect and combine back to one in the series Turn A Gundam.^[1][2]
The original timeline for the Gundam series was the Universal Century (UC) series, which included Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985). Since the 1990s, alternative timelines have been produced and developed, including the Future Century, After Colony, After War, Correct Century, Cosmic Era and Anno Domini timelines.
As of January 21, 2008, the Gundam franchise is a 50 billion yen trademark.^[3] A year 2000 press release stated that retail sales of Gundam items had totaled $5 billion.^[4] In the 2008 ranking of average sales figures for anime copies sold in Japan (1970-2008 total sales figures averaged by episode), Gundam series were in four of the top five places: Mobile Suit Gundam ranked second, with Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny third, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED fourth, and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam fifth. Also, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing ranked 18th and Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ ranked 20th.^[5] Gunpla's (Gundam Plastic model) holds 90% of the Japan character plastic model market.^[6]
Academic fields in Japan have also viewed the series as a good inspiration in research fields, with the Gundam academy (or officially International Gundam Society) being the first academic institution based on an animated TV series.

Concept

Mobile Suit Gundam was principally developed by renowned animator Yoshiyuki Tomino, along with a changing group of Sunrise creators who went under the collective pseudonym of "Hajime Yatate".
During its conceptual phase, the series was titled Freedom Fighter Gunboy, or simply Gunboy for the gun the robot was armed with, and the primary target demographic were shōnen (boys). In the early production stages, there were numerous references to the word "freedom": the White Base was originally "Freedom's Fortress", the Core Fighter was the "Freedom Wing", and the Gunperry was the "Freedom Cruiser". The Yatate team combined the English word "gun" with the last syllable of the word "freedom" to form the name Gundom. Tomino then changed it to the current title, suggesting that Gundam signified a powerful unit wielding a gun powerful enough to hold back enemies, like a hydroelectric dam holding back floods.^[8]
Most Gundams are large, bipedal vehicles controlled from cockpits by a human pilot. The majority of these "mobile suits" have a cockpit in the "torso" of the machine, with a camera built into the "head" to transmit images to the cockpit (with the exception of the head-mounted cockpits in Psyco Gundam) and are non-sentient machines, with the exceptions of the artificial intelligence A.L.I.C.E. in the side-story Gundam Sentinel^[9] and four mobile suits built with the EXAM System and sharing a Newtype human soul in The Blue Destiny.

Narrative

The narrative itself revolves around the mobile suits and their pilots fighting in a war, in which destruction and dehumanization are inherent, through multiple sides; each faction having their own heroes and villains, all of which have their own unique motives, failings, and virtues. Gundam also features political battles and debates on various important philosophical issues and political ideals on the nature and meaning of war, the ideal of pacifism, and the continuing evolution - natural or engineered - of humanity and its consequences. These are often framed in the series as a debate between the protagonist and antagonist over the course of a duel, as they try to convince each other of the righteousness of their causes.
Finally, most of the stories are basically structured as "coming-of-age" dramas, where the main protagonist (and sometimes the main antagonist) and most of the cast's personalities, points of view, allegiances, goals, and actions may or may not change dramatically as events unfold. This makes the plot seem more realistic than earlier super robot animated series where the hero and cast usually act in the same predictable manner, with little connection between the episodes. The best example of this is how the personalities of longtime rivals, Amuro Ray and Char Aznable, are influenced by their experiences in the Gundam saga.