Anime Impact. Chris Stuckmann
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ones I was seeing in Galaxy Express 999, but in full color and with flashier outfits. Like any self-respecting fourteen-year-old, I loved pirates, badass women, and beautiful men with good hair, and found all of these things personified in Queen Emeraldas & Captain Harlock, who at this point were just images to me. It did not take long to realize these characters existed in the same universe as Galaxy Express 999 and thus began my now lifelong fascination with the “Leijiverse.”
While the promise of “cool” characters like Captain Harlock drew me in—I’m pretty sure I bought Harlock Saga, Matsumoto’s take on Das Rheingold from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen the minute Central Park Media released it under the US Manga Corps mantle in the US—it is ultimately the complex (and admittedly, sometime convoluted) morality of Galaxy Express 999 that forms the heart of Matsumoto’s vast, frequently interconnected body of work. The reverse Pinocchio journey of tenacious Tetsuro Hoshino, who dreams of replacing his perishable human body with an immortal machine one upon reaching the Andromeda Galaxy—the final destination of the Galaxy Express 999—is full of all the emotional turmoil you’d expect in the journey of an orphaned ten-year-old who’s discovering the value of a finite lifespan. His relationship with Maetel, part surrogate mother, part first love (in a one-sided crush kind of way—it’s mostly not creepy) is sweet and compelling, especially as we learn more about who this mysterious blonde woman—who also bears an uncanny resemblance to Tetsuro’s late mother—is.
While not every stop along this galactic train journey across the Sea of Stars is a winner (there’s an episode wherein a planet commits suicide out of embarrassment after Tetsuro cuts it open), some of them are truly gut-wrenching. For example, Tetsuro’s discovery that the human bodies of people who’ve abandoned them in favor of machine ones are stored under the ice on Pluto. The stories of many of the more prominent side characters who were deemed important enough to appear in Rintaro’s really excellent film, like the glass-bodied waitress Claire, the elegant Ryuzu, and the bandit Antares, all resonate in the hearts of the viewer as deeply as they do in young Tetsuro. The revelation of the true nature of the free mechanized bodies being offered up to those who complete the journey to get them. Galaxy Express 999 is a coming-of-age tale that elegantly undermines childhood fantasies of the glory of immortality, addresses issues of classism, corrupt leadership, and the emotional repercussions of physically sacrificing your humanity.
Despite the original manga having never been licensed in English, all 113 episodes of the original 1978 anime series are available streaming in Japanese with English subtitles on Crunchyroll (as of this writing). The 1978 film also has some staying power, with the film finally receiving an uncut, official English-language DVD release in 2011 thanks to Discotek. This version features both the original Japanese-language version and the Viz dub, which isn’t terrible, but I highly recommend watching in Japanese, if only for Masako Nozawa’s performance as Tetsuro. And while you could get the DVD right now, Discotek has announced that they will be releasing the film on Blu-ray soon, so hopefully by the time you’re reading this you can and absolutely should purchase it. Though I don’t expect you to love every second of it, because Matsumoto’s art and storytelling does take some adjusting to, it’s impossible to walk away from this series without at least appreciating the amount of thought and detail behind it, and its lasting impact on the science fiction genre.
Emma Fyffe currently resides in Los Angeles where she hosts a Sailor Moon podcast Love and Justice and an anime talk show Hyper Otaku on Hyper RPG’s Facebook page. She is also the “Golden Mic” of the Movie Trivia Schmoedown (it says so on her IMDb) and the Captain of a ragtag crew of smugglers on Hyper RPG’s Twitch-based Star Wars roleplaying game series “Pencils and Parsecs.”
1979–Present • Mobile Suit Gundam Series
Kidō Senshi Gandamu
— Derek Padula —
Gundam is a gigantic, genuine, and glorious space opera that expresses the human condition through wars fought by young super soldiers piloting humanoid robots. It’s one of the biggest pop culture phenomena in Japan and is akin to a homegrown Star Wars, both in popularity and revenue. Just as everyone in the civilized world knows who Darth Vader is even if they haven’t seen Star Wars, everyone in Japan knows who Char Aznable is even if they haven’t seen Gundam. For this reason alone, you should be curious to watch Gundam and discover for yourself what makes it so popular.
Like many Americans, I was first introduced to the Gundam franchise through the forty-nine-episode Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (1995) starting March 6, 2000. Gundam Wing was the first Gundam series to be televised in the United States, on Toonami. It had an attractive cast, story, voice acting, music, action, humor, political intrigue, and designs, so it became a daily treat alongside Dragon Ball and others. It influenced me enough that I aspired to dress like Duo Maxwell, a character who wears a black and white outfit similar to a clerical collar. He was just so cool!
I later discovered that Gundam Wing is one of many standalone series in the Gundam franchise that starts in 1979 with Mobile Suit Gundam. There are over 30 Gundam anime series, 20 movies, 113 manga, 47 novels, 220 video games, 1,000 model kits, 3 theme park rides, 1 life-size robot statue in Tokyo, and countless forms of merchandise. In 2014, the Gundam franchise generated ¥80 billion yen ($726,400,000 USD), and in almost four decades has generated several tens of billions of dollars. As a result, Gundam is a household name in Japan.
Mobile Suit Gundam was created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, without a manga predecessor. He loved the Super Robot genre of anime made popular in the ’60s and ’70s. These giant robots can transform, have quasi-magical super powers, represent good or evil, have mythical origins, are made by mad scientists, or are even gods incarnate. They are controlled by young boys, often by remote control or simple one-button and a joystick controls, as they fight a cartoon-like villain of the week. Famous examples include Gigantor (Tetsujin-28), Mazinger Z, and Voltron.
But Tomino wanted to create a robot series that was more realistic. One that depicted the horrors of war, and was targeted at young adults, rather than boys. To do this, he partnered with character designer Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and mecha designer Kunio Okawara, an illustrator who is the first to ever be credited as a “mechanical designer” for anime.
Together they created the Real Robot genre. These are robots that do not transform, do not have super powers, and are not gods. Nor are they controlled by little boys from outside the robot. Instead, they are a mass-produced weapon used by soldiers for the purposes of political agendas. They are inanimate extensions of the frail men who control them from inside a cockpit. As a result, Gundam felt real. People died—the main characters are the ones who killed them—and there were consequences for their actions.
Gundam’s signature invention is the Mobile Suit. These are humanoid tanks piloted by a single user in a cockpit that extend the user’s natural abilities. Mobile Suits are inspired by the powered armor exoskeleton in the American sci-fi novel Starship Troopers (1959). This suit protects mobile infantry, augments their strength and movement, includes powerful weapons, and yet is sensitive enough to handle delicate objects. Tomino took this western idea and increased its size to those of Eastern robots.
The story of Mobile Suit Gundam is set in a futuristic earth where the world is united by a global government known as the Earth Federation. The planet is overpopulated, so they create orbital colonies in outer space—called Sides—inhabited by tens of millions of people. The main character, a young mechanic named Amuro Ray, lives on Side 7.
A colony faction called the Principality of Zeon argues the Earth Federation is corrupt, so they enact a war of independence. The story begins when Zeon attacks Side 7 with Mobile Suits and is defended by the Federation’s floating carrier, named White Base. Amuro is forced to fight in a white prototype Mobile Suit invented by his father, called the RX-78-2 Gundam, and then becomes entangled in the war.
Zeon Lieutenant Commander Char Aznable leads the rebellion, nicknamed the “Red Comet” for his iconic red Mobile Suit. Likewise, through numerous battles, Amuro’s nickname in the war becomes the “White Devil,” because of his white Gundam that brings death. As the war rages