Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

• 1. Introduction

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  Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, a Japanese mecha anime series from 1995, gives its lead pilot a borrowed name. The boy called Heero Yuy shares that name with a pacifist leader of the colonies, yet his own name is only an alias. In Japan the series carries the title New Mobile Report Gundam Wing. Five teenagers pilot extremely advanced machines, and at first they do not even know one another exist. Who trained them, and what are they meant to destroy? And why did a show that did only modestly well in Japan find a far larger audience abroad? The answers begin with a set of space colonies living under the thumb of a united Earth.

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• 2. Colonies Under Pressure

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  In the year After Colony 175, an assassin shot and killed Heero Yuy, the pacifist who led the colonies' movement for freedom. By then humanity had settled space, with clusters of colonies at each of the five Earth-Moon Lagrange points. Down on Earth, the nations had joined together as the United Earth Sphere Alliance, and it used its vast military might to oppress the colonies.

  Yuy's death forced the colonies to look for other paths to peace. It also unsettled five disaffected scientists of the Organization of the Zodiac, usually shortened to OZ. The moment they finished a mobile suit prototype named Tallgeese, they turned rogue.

  The sixth installment of the Gundam franchise unfolds in a timeline called After Colony. As in the original series, the plot is a future war between Earth and its orbital colonies in the Earth-Moon system. The scientists' revenge would not begin until the year After Colony 195, two decades after Yuy's death.

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• 3. Operation Meteor

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  Only in outer space can anyone forge Gundanium, the rare and astonishingly durable alloy that gives the Gundams their name. Each of the five scientists designed one suit from it. Each also chose and trained one teenage boy to pilot it. The plan was called Operation Meteor. The boys were sent to Earth independently, each launched from a different colony, and none knew the others existed. Their mission was to strike OZ directly, strip the Alliance of its weapons and free the colonies from its oppressive rule.

  The five pilots are Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, Quatre Raberba Winner and Chang Wufei.

  Beside them stands Relena Peacecraft, heir to the pacifist Sanc Kingdom. She becomes an important political ally to the pilots, and above all to Heero. Around these six heroic and antiheroic figures, the series builds a large supporting cast of protagonists and antagonists with complex, interconnected storylines.

  Heero's place at the center of that cast was not part of the original plan.

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• 4. Drama Over Mecha

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  Duo Maxwell was originally set to be the protagonist. The staff replaced him with Heero Yuy because Heero differed so much from earlier Gundam protagonists, and they feared audiences would not warm to him. The series itself was nearly named Gundam Meteor, after the operation at its heart.

  The idea of five main characters was influenced by Mobile Fighter G Gundam. Bandai suggested a Gundam able to change into a plane-like form, which led to the Wing Gundam and its Bird Mode. The writers spent one week together conceptualizing the characters, the mobile suits and the first 40 episodes.

  Director Masashi Ikeda reacted to their work by comparing it to the first Gundam series, Zeta and G all at once. The result leaned toward drama rather than mecha. The staff credits that emphasis for the show's popularity with female viewers.

  Character designer Shūkō Murase turned Ikeda's early sketches of the protagonists into finished designs. Ikeda had worked with him on Samurai Troopers, which is why he was chosen. The director wanted the designs to appeal to a female audience.

  Writer Katsuyuki Sumizawa found the work harder than writing novels, because he handed duties to other members of the team. Handling five leads came easily, thanks to the setting. Voice casting proved harder than for earlier series, since the atmosphere was so different.

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• 5. Songs and Ratings

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  On the 7th of April 1995, the terrestrial network TV Asahi aired the first of 49 episodes. The run ended on the 29th of March 1996. Two-Mix performed the opening theme, Just Communication, for episodes 1-40, and a broadcast on the YTV channel used it for all 49. Rhythm Emotion, also by Two-Mix, opened episodes 41-49.

  Rumi Ohishi sang the ending theme, It's Just Love!, across all 49 episodes. Two-Mix songs doubled as insert music. Just Communication played in episodes 3 and 49, and Rhythm Emotion in episodes 36, 38, 39 and 41.

  In Japan the series succeeded during its first run. Together with G Gundam, it was the only Gundam series of the 1990s to average a television rating above four percent. In 1996 it ranked number two in the Anime Grand Prix run by Animage magazine. The same publication later placed it at number 76 among the 100 most important anime of all time.

  Among dōjinshi authors, the series is infamous for stories that pair several of its protagonists in romantic relationships.

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• 6. Toonami Takes Over

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  On the 6th of March 2000, Gundam Wing premiered on Cartoon Network's weekday after-school block, Toonami. Other Gundam titles had reached the United States about two years earlier. They were the compilation film of the original series and the OVAs War in the Pocket and Stardust Memory. Gundam Wing was nonetheless the first Gundam series to air on American television. Sunrise licensed the dub, and Ocean Productions did the voice work.

  Before the premiere, a long promo narrated by voice actor Peter Cullen told the back story and recalled the opening credits of Voltron. It was said to be so gripping that Bandai adopted it as the official promo.

  Just over a week after the debut, the show was the top rated program in every age group. Through the summer of 2000, it stayed first or second among kids and teens, airing twelve times a week on Toonami. It often beat veterans such as Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon. For a time, it was the highest rated series on all of Cartoon Network. John Oppliger, writing on Animation Anime News Blog, credits it with single-handedly popularizing Gundam among American audiences. IGN ranked it the 73rd best animated series. It said the show was "so good that even those opposed to anime have to give the show its due credit".

  Toonami ran two versions. An edited cut aired in the daytime, and an uncut one aired past midnight in a slot called the Midnight Run. The edits removed blood, profanity and atheism, and the word "kill" became "destroy". That rule reached Duo's nickname, "The God of Death", which turned into "The Great Destroyer" and forced changes to two episode titles. The word "death" mostly survived. Home video followed the same split, with edited episodes on VHS and uncut ones on DVD.

  Licensees on the American side made wallscrolls, apparel, school supplies, skateboards, trading cards, model kits and action figures.

  Elsewhere, GMA Network broadcast it in 1999 as the first Gundam series on Philippine television, dubbed in Filipino. In Indonesia, the station Indosiar, then owned by the Salim Group, carried it from mid-2001 until mid-2002. It was the first Gundam series broadcast there.

  After Bandai Entertainment closed, the series fell out of print for some time. On the 11th of October 2014, Sunrise announced at a New York Comic Con panel that Right Stuf Inc. would distribute the Gundam franchise in North America from Spring 2015. Right Stuf issued the series on Blu-ray and DVD in two sets in November 2017. A collector's edition followed in December 2017, bundling the complete series, Endless Waltz, Operation Meteor and the Frozen Teardrop picture drama.

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• 7. Endless Waltz

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  Neither director Masashi Ikeda nor executive producer Hideyuki Tomioka had planned a sequel. The studio asked for one after the finale anyway, citing the show's popularity. Writer Sumizawa was the one who felt the ending had come too abruptly. Tomioka asked whether he could write a continuation, and he agreed.

  In 1996, four OVA episodes were released as Gundam Wing: Operation Meteor I and II. They compiled scenes from the series with a few minutes of new footage.

  A three-part OVA titled Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz followed in 1997 as a direct sequel. Its story brought the After Colony timeline to a close. Hajime Katoki gave every Gundam a massive redesign for it, including a new angel-winged look for the Wing Gundam Zero.

  On the 1st of August 1998, a compilation film of Endless Waltz reached Japanese audiences. It added footage, altered the music score and changed the ending theme. Cartoon Network premiered Endless Waltz in the United States on the 10th of November 2000. The OVA and film versions were later released together on DVD.

  Even in the modern releases, Operation Meteor remains un-dubbed.

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• 8. Beyond the Screen

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  In September 2010, Gundam Ace magazine began serializing New Mobile Report Gundam Wing Endless Waltz: The Glory of Losers. This manga retells the anime while weaving in facts from Episode Zero and the novel Frozen Teardrop. It drew on Hajime Katoki's redesigns rather than Kunio Okawara's original designs from the anime. It ended in November 2017 and filled fourteen volumes. Vertical published English editions from July 2017 to November 2019.

  Other manga include adaptations of the series and of Endless Waltz, plus several sidestories. Episode Zero is a prequel. Its collected volume also holds Preventer 5, a brief open-ended interlude set after Endless Waltz. Last Outpost (G-Unit) tells a storyline that runs alongside the series. Blind Target, Ground Zero and Battlefield of Pacifists are sequels set between Gundam Wing and Endless Waltz. Tokyopop published Gundam Wing, Battlefield of Pacifists and Endless Waltz in English. Viz Communications handled Blind Target, Ground Zero and Episode Zero. Tiel's Impulse, printed in 1998, looks at the future of the colonies and has not been published in the United States.

  Natsume Co., Ltd. developed Shin Kidō Senki Gundam Wing: Endless Duel, a fighting game for the Super Famicom. It reached Japan on the 29th of March 1996, the same day the television series ended. Natsume also made a second fighting game, Shin Kidō Senki Gundam Wing: The Battle. It came out for the PlayStation on the 11th of October 2002 as the 13th volume of the Simple Characters 2000 series. The characters and mecha also appear in Super Robot Wars, Gundam Battle Assault, Another Century's Episode, Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs. and Dynasty Warriors: Gundam.

  In April 2025, Overwatch teamed with Gundam Wing to mark the 30th anniversary, with skins inspired by the original series and by Endless Waltz.

  In early 2010, Gundam Ace announced a "New Gundam Wing Project", later revealed as the novel Frozen Teardrop, written by Sumizawa. It opens a new timeline, the "Mars Century" or "MC" calendar, successor to After Colony. By the author's account, it reaches backward into the AC century, and the pilots, Relena and their children all appear. On the 25th of July 2025, artist Sakura Asagi and Sumizawa reunited for a new manga. It connects the events of Endless Waltz and Frozen Teardrop.

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