In the future mankind has expanded into space with humanity now living on both Earth as well as self-contained colonies in space. Eventually several of these colonies form the Principality of Zeon and succeed from the Earth Federation leading to war. On Earth Federation colony, Side 7, a surprise attack is lead by Zeon forces who are targeting both the warship White Base, and the newly developed mobile suit, Gundam. A teenager named Amuro Ray stumbles upon the Gundam during the siege and out of desperation boards it and against all odds manages to hold off the Zeon forces long enough for White Base to evacuate. Amuro now finds himself embroiled in the conflict between Zeon and the Federation reluctantly piloting the Gundam for the Federation and often squaring off against Zeon's best mobile suit pilot, Char Aznable also known as The Red Comet.

In the past 40 years since the first Gundam series graced airwaves in 1979, Mobile Suit Gundam has become not only one of the most recognized "giant robot anime" ever made, but also one of the most recognized media franchises spread across TV, OVAs, video-games, manga, models, and even a forthcoming live-action film, but that almost didn't happen. Ratings for the original series were so poor that the show's sponsors, now defunct toy company Clover, cut the episode order from 52 to 39 with staff able to negotiate an extension for 43. After Clover cut ties with the series, Bandai acquired the rights and with their release of models the series popularity soared giving second life to the series and spurring the creation of three compilation films retelling the story. Series wrtier/director Yoshiyuki Tomino took the concept of "power armor" found in the novel Starship Troopers and mixed this concept with traditional tropes of giant robot anime and manga to tell a story about war making Gundam the earliest examples of the Real Robot genre where giant robots are more grounded in terms of how they're utilized and operate forgoing the more over the top Super Robot elements seen in things like Giant Robo. Following the renewed success of Gundam, Tomino revisited the series by recombining footage into a trilogy of feature films which became massively popular to the point crowd control measures were implemented due to the large crowds drawn by the first film with grosses for the films only growing with each subsequent installment. In terms of the first Gundam series, this is probably Tomino's definitive version of the story, but it's inescapable that it feels like a series of episodes daisy chained together.

In terms of getting across the story beats, the movie does it well with clear establishment of characterization with Amuro Ray's reluctant hero who's world is shaken when he becomes a reluctant participant in a war with very clouded motivations (which is to be expected as we're experiencing his exposure to the conflict primarily from Amuro's viewpoint). The movie creates a world where all the key military personnel on board the White Base are all either very old or very young giving the impression of a world where the most able have been lost to this widespread conflict. There's also other plot threads such as character Sayla Mass and her set-up familial ties with Char Aznable which in turn leads to Char's ties with the ruling Zabi family of Zeon. The plot threads are engaging and keep you interested, but since this story was originally told in the format of a TV series, the movie feels like a TV series with really no sense of finality to so it really doesn't stand on its own as a film (at least individually).

If you are curious at checking out the original series, the Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy is probably the most convenient and polished way to do so. While the movie is pretty obvious in how it's scrounged together from episodes of the original TV show, it's about as well as one could expect given the circumstances, and the movie's themes of war and its wide reaching consequences and inherent shades of grey are well conveyed to the audience.

A true cinematic treasure from the earlier days of anime. When other shows featuring robots were either too childish or too outlandish, Yoshiyuki Tomino's vision of a world that featured giant robots, but was also filled with emotion, politics, and the basic human nature of conflict and war would be the very first movie to feature a more mature undertone for such categories in anime.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Movie is the very first installment of the retelling of Yoshiyuki Tomino's original story first featured in the TV series which had ended early due to bad ratings but quickly bounced back in popularity and would become popular enough to be the Japanese equivalent of Star Wars.

The first movie of the trilogy introduces us to the world already ravaged by war, where the earth's overgrown population has migrated partially into space with the aid of colossal space colonies. After being oppressed by the combined earth governments known as 'The Earth Federation', the group of space colonies furthest from the earth launches a war under the flag of the Principality of Zeon. Due to technological advances, the earth and space becomes flooded with static that makes long ranged weapons useless, so the Zeon develop close combat vehicles in the form of giant robot suits. Greatly outnumbered, the Zeon forces still ravage the Earth Federation fleets with their use of their mobile suits, invading and partially controlling earth. However, unrestricted gas and nuclear weapon attacks, as well as the action of dropping a colony on the earth, has caused massive casualties on both sides and resulted in the loss of half of humanity's total population. After 9 months the war grinds to a halt, and a stalemate takes grip of both sides until one faithful day when the Earth Federation finally develops mobile suits to fight back with, the main prototype called the 'Gundam'. But as the Federation is about to test it's new suits a special Zeon scouting team lead by the top Zeon ace Char Aznable attacks the space colony the suits are housed in, killing nearly all the crew for the also new Federation carrier 'White Base' and also killing all of the suit pilots. It is this fiery confrontation which leads to the death of many of the civilian population in the colony, and also leads the destiny of a 15 year old boy named Amaro Ray to stumble across the Gundam and out of desperation pilot it to defend himself and the those left alive. So begins the crucible of the White Base crew, most of which are the civilians of the colony forced to man the carrier out of desperation, in their attempt to survive the countless waves of attacks by the relentless forces of Zeon in their attempts to capture the new and vastly superior mobile suit which renders their own suits as useless as tin cans.

The Characters in this anime are both realistic and entertaining, each one struggling to adapt to being involved in such a brutal and relentless war, and as the movies progress, they evolve into very deep personalities which are amazing to witness. Most notably, the bitter personal rivalry between the Char and Amaro takes seed in this movie and will eventually bloom into the massive hatred visible in the later installments.

This movie is a true testament to Anime, timeless in its message and comparable to most conflicts we have seen in current times. The story leads most views to be compelled to watch the rest of the series play out and find out the fate of the White Base Crew, and Tomino's skillful storytelling draws emotional involvement to a few, if not all of the characters in the movie. Some will find themselves cheering for the survival of the White Base crew while others will be cheering for the success of the Principality of Zeon, but there can only be one winner in the great war. The catchphrase of the movie still rings out; "Who will survive?"

I came into contact with Mecha anime way after the first Gundam movie came out, but I think it was some sort of newer Gundam or Evangelion thing. At the time I thought it was stupid and it turned me off Mecha forever. Yet, with unlimited time to "work from home", I now had the opportunity to watch the original Gundam animes on Netflix. And, for 1981, I think Gundam is brilliant!

Now, the animation is decent but dated, the acting and individual scenes are very Japanese and annoyingly communal. You get the classic woman who can't stop herself to care about children and some man, whether they like it or not, and who knows what's decent and good. You get the glorious nakamas who would do anything for each other except listen when they are told to run or save themselves or something like that. Apparently standing around and shouting someone's name when they are in danger is a genius military strategy. You get the senior people getting to decide how to bring someone down or humiliate them a bit in order for them to not get too cocky. So it might be difficult to get into the mood, especially if you are some American gen Z person who still hasn't acknowledged that the rest of the world exists. Ironically, if you are into fight movies, you might not like it either, because it shows how ugly and petty war is.

However, with all that said, the show has a complex political and historical universe to play on. The characters, good and bad, are complex and relatable. The little details of space combat and giant robot mechanics are pretty thought out, to the point that you start to believe that it makes some sense to have huge metallic humanoids fighting it out. What I liked most was that it showed war as it really is: groups within groups within groups of people, all scheming and positioning themselves towards some goal that only they know (or care) about, senseless death, backstabbing, uniformed politicians and generals and nobles that feel other people are their toys to play with. For people who witnessed a world war from the losing side, war is not fun.

So yeah, it is a show about giant robots fighting each other, but also a very adult antiwar show. I can't quite recommend it, because some people might not quite connect, but I think that if you get into it, you will love it.