Gundam Series PicturesGundam is a metaseries of Japanese anime, featuring giant robots, or "mecha", created by Sunrise studios. The series started in April 1979 as a TV series called Mobile Suit Gundam, and later became a franchise name with more sequels, prequels, side stories and alternative timelines, published and aired in various media including TV anime, OVA, manga, novels, and video games. Gundam became a collective term for 7 different time lines, all featuring their own story-lines, with a few common denominators and war machines called Gundam.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. 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 4 of the top 5 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, New Mobile Report Gundam Wing ranked 18th and Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ ranked 20th. Gunpla's (Gundam Plastic model) income is 90% of the Japan character plastic model market's income.
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. 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 primarily 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.
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 and four mobile suits built with the EXAM System and sharing a Newtype human soul in The Blue Destiny.
As of January 21, 2008, the Gundam franchise is a 50 billion yen trademark. 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 4 of the top 5 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, New Mobile Report Gundam Wing ranked 18th and Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ ranked 20th. Gunpla's (Gundam Plastic model) income is 90% of the Japan character plastic model market's income.
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. 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 primarily 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.
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 and four mobile suits built with the EXAM System and sharing a Newtype human soul in The Blue Destiny.
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