As you may or may not know, the first episode of the Gundam Unicorn OVA comes out next month (although you may be able to find it around ye olde internet now, hint, hint). It’s set in the same universe as the original Gundam, as well as Zeta Gundam and a few other things and it’s set to have 6 50-minute episodes.
Now I realize that you may want to watch it, when it comes out next month of course, but that you may be a little lost if you haven’t seen all the other stuff that comes chronologically beforehand so I thought I’d put down a little primer here so you don’t have to sift through Wikipedia. Which doesn’t really have a good synopsis of Gundam plot-lines anyway.
I guess it makes the most sense to start with the first series. It takes place during the year Universal Century (UC) 0079, which by the way is why you hear this universe called the “Universal Century” time-line. During the course of the war the Earth Federation is fighting the Principality of Zeon, which had recently declared a war for its independence, which would later be called the One Year War. Despite the noble intentions, the war was really started by the head of the Zabi family, who killed the previous leader of the Republic of Zeon, for the purpose of furthering his own ambitions. Early battles resulted in the complete destruction of numerous space colonies (named “sides”, depending on where they were located).
Flash forward a little bit to where the series protagonist Amuro Ray finds himself a Gundam after an attack on Side 7. Amuro manages to save a good portion of the population of the colony even though the colony itself gets destroyed. Amuro and the rest of the civilians board the prototype battleship “White Base”, commanded by officer Bright Noa. The ship and its ragtag crew somehow manage to survive despite the best efforts of Zeon and one of its ace pilots Char Aznable, “The Red Comet”. Over the course of the story, it is revealed that Amuro (and possibly a large portion of the crew aboard the White Base and Char) are “newtypes”. A newtype is the supposed next stage in human evolution and is brought about by an adaptation to life in space. Therefore, Spacenoids can be newtypes but Earthnoids cannot. Newtypes exhibit some amount of psychic power, which changes from newtype to newtype.
We can safely skim over the rest of the story until the end where Amuro, Bright, and the White Base are instrumental in the war effort, ending in the final battle of the war at A Baoa Qu. It is during this battle that Char’s plans are revealed, the revenge against the Zabi family for killing his father, the previous head of Zeon.
So the war ends and the Zabi’s are all killed and there’s peace for a while until UC0083 where remnants from Zeon try to crash a satellite into the Earth. The plan is successful but the only result is the Earth Federation decides to create an elite force called the Titans in UC 0084.
Zeta Gundam chronicles the fight of previous Earth Federation troops, who are aided by Char, as they fight against the oppressive and un-regulated Titans. Eventually, most of the main characters from the first series, including Amuro and Bright, team up to take down the Titans.
Long story short, they are successful and a new elite group is formed called Londo Bell. This time however it is a just group and is led by Bright Noa, and whose ranks include Amuro Ray. Char disappears during the final battle.
In 0093 Char returns and wants to crash a giant asteroid into the Earth, rendering it uninhabitable so that people will be forced into space to evolve. Char in his Sazabi fights against the Londo Bell units, and specifically Amuro. Amuro defeats Char by using his Nu-Gundam built by Anaheim Electronics, which is a “psychoframe”, meaning it has a system in place (”psycommu” system) that allows the pilot to control the Mobile Suit telepathically, or rather, in the same way they would move their own body. Since this requires some telepathy, only newtypes can use this system.
Even though Amuro wins, he is seemingly too late to stop the crashing asteroid. That is until he uses his newtype power, amplified by the psychoframe to telepathically push back the asteroid. Both Amuro and Char possibly died at this point.
Which leads us to Unicorn Gundam in UC 0096, and which you should hopefully now understand provided I made this clear enough. I leave you with the trailer and the unrelated statement that animetake.com is really cool.
-Tony
