Mobile Suit Gundam: The Movie Trilogy (1981-1982)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Series Concept by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hajime Yatate
Character Design by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
Mechanical Design by Kunio Okawara
Directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino

Features:

• Newly remastered transfer
  
• Japanese audio (stereo or Dolby 5.1)
  
• English subtitles
  

Doc's Anime Warnings:

• DRAMA!
  
• Reluctant-Hero syndrome
  
• Big pink mecha
  

Rating: 13+

Anamorphic: No

My advice: Buy it if you don’t mind subtitles, rent it otherwise

Yoshiyuki Tomino may well be one of the most influential figures in the entire history of anime. Twenty years ago, he surveyed the landscape of science fiction anime, and found it seriously lacking. So he took the traditional theme of giant robots, and added what was to be a revolutionary change, one that led to a total paradigm shift in the mecha genre. Put simply, he gave them pilots. Previously, giant robots in anime were controlled by remote joysticks, or were mysteriously self-willed. But Tomino wanted pilots inside, turning the giant robots from technological aberrations into standard machines of war in his universe.

Thus was Mobile Suit Gundam born. In the future, a world overcrowded has begun building complexes in space to house their overflow population. One of these complexes, tired of being ruled by distant Earth, declares its independence, and launches an all-out assault on the forces of the Earth Federation. This newly-independent Principality of Zeon wants nothing less than the total destruction of the Earth government, which it views as corrupt and imperialistic. All of which is little more than rationalization for Zeon’s constant terrorist assaults on civilian colonies throughout Earth orbit.

After a surprise attack leaves the new experimental warship White Base with little more than a skeleton crew, Amuro Ray and his young friends become conscripted into service as soldiers. Amuro himself becomes the de facto pilot of the Earth Federation’s secret weapon: Mobile Suit Gundam. With these weapons and a crew barely halfway through their teens, the White Base sets out to stay alive long enough to put down the Zeon rebellion. What follows is known as the One Year War, with White Base as the flagship for a new generation of warriors, and a new evolution of soldier with the discovery of the Newtypes – empathic humans whose intuitive skill and ability at piloting mobile suits cannot be matched by normal people.

Amuro struggles with the loss of his family, his friends, his home, and his humanity, as it becomes more and more clear that he is himself one of the near-mythical Newtypes, and because of this, he cannot put down the mantle of warrior until the threat of war is passed. And standing opposite him throughout the conflict is Zeon mobile suit ace Char Aznable, a masked “Red Baron” figure that constantly keeps the pressure on the White Base crew with surprise attacks and his own formidable skill as a combat pilot.

This trilogy of films covers the One Year War in its entirety, known in the Gundam cycle as Universal Century 0079. What follows is two decades of dominance in the mecha genre by all things Gundam. Tomino’s brainchild is still largely the standard by which other work in the genre is judged, and is, beyond its genre, one of the finest and deepest stories in all of anime, spanning half-a-dozen films and as many television series.

The DVD presentation looks and sounds as good as can be expected of two-decade-old anime (better, really, as the remastered transfer restores a level of sharpness and color density unseen in older video releases). The biggest disappointment about the video release is their decision not to include an English dub. The discs are Japanese-only. Their also completely devoid of special features, which is a shame given the long shadow that the films have cast over the past 20 years of science fiction anime.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much hope of a more comprehensive DVD release, so if you want the granddaddy of all mecha stories, these discs are your only chance.