Happy Birthday Mobile Suit Gundam!

Happy Gundam Day everyone! Let’s take some today time to celebrate one of the biggest anime franchises of all time Mobile Suit Gundam. On this day 38 years ago, the franchise that brought us giant fighting robots was born. So lets dive into the history behind Mobile Suit Gundam, and look at what has made the franchise the highly regarded household name that it still holds over 30 years later.

The first series to start it all was Mobile Suit Gundam, first premiering on Japanese television on April 7, 1979. The series lasted for 43 episodes, and was just the beginning of the franchise that took the world by storm. The original series was set in the future and showed the war between the Principality of Zeon and the Earth Federation. The earth had a special weapon though, the new giant robot called the RX-79-2 Gundam, which is piloted by the teen mechanic Amuro Ray. This dichotomy of a young teen piloting a giant mechanical robot weapon, revolutionized the mech genre.

The series originally had low ratings which lead the show to be canceled, however, after the show ended, the series blew up in popularity due to Bandai’s Gunpla models. After the rise in popularity, the show was re-edited for a theatrical release, and was made into three movies. From then there were manga spin offs, and a slew of anime followed suit and became the franchise we know and love today.

Mobile Suit Gundam wing was the second series to come out of the franchise and was the first to make it across the ocean to America. A highly edited and English-dubbed version of the show premiered on Cartoon Network’s Toonami Block in 2001. The success and exposure on Toonami spawned an entire toy line from Bandai, and led the toys to be one of the most collect model series of all time. Since then there has been countless television series, OVAs, Movies, figures manga and novels to come from the Gundam franchise, as its revered as one of the most influential franchise in anime history to this day.

To celebrate Gundam day, Crunchyroll is currently running a sweepstakes and giving away all sorts of Gundam goodies, and all you have to do is watch a series from the franchise, check it out here.