Gundam
From The Encyclopedia of Pointless
Gundam is, in all honesty, an Anime. More specifically it's a bunch of Anime series that have some common thread. By far the most important series in the Gundam Mythos is "Gundam Wing" which I have seen all of. Some may think it foolhardy to base a discussion of Gundam on only a single series, but you're forgetting three things. One: Gundam Wing is about one million episodes long; two: all the series are basically alike; and three: "truth and accuracy in reporting" is not one of the tenents of this site.
For the uninitiated, Gundam is an Anime about enormous robots, or Mecha, that people use to kill other people. These robots (Or "robotto") are called "Mobile Suits". Unlike earlier "Stationary Suits" and "Mobile Nudists" Mobile Suits managed to combine enormous mecha with intensely powerful weapons in ways never before conceived.
On many occasions nerds have wondered why military weapons designers haven't created some kind of bipedal robot. The simple reason is it's a really crappy idea. If any of you have watched CNN since the Gulf War you've probably seen some poor unsuspecting tank get creamed by a casually launched missile from a helicopter miles away. Now you wonder why something that is basically a tank with the difference of costing millions of dollars more is a bad idea. Nonetheless, whenever depicted in Anime Mecha are always the ultimate battle device, turning tanks, helicopters, more tanks, and gas stations into small piles of rubble.
In any case, the Gundams are special because they're made of Gundanium, whose main claim to fame is that when you make something out of Gundanium it won't explode instantly once it takes damage. That's one of the endearing qualitites of Gundam series, Once you shoot something or hit it with a missle or slash it with a light beam saber or poke it with a stick it will instantly be consumed in an explosion. The only logical reason for this I can think of is that everything is equipped with a self-destruct that instantly goes off when the vehicle is damaged to keep the enemy from recovering important information or maybe the designers and the pilots had a falling out or something, I don't know.
The plot of most Gundam animes revolves around war between a bunch of space colonies and the earth. Things are looking grim for the Good Guys but then somehow a Mobile Suit built from Gundanium is built and it helps turn the tide or some such. This is repeated over and over in Gundam 0079, Gundam 0080, Gundam 0083, Gundam X, Gundam Seed, G Gundam, Gundam Wing, Cowboy Gundam, Trigundam, Neon Gundam Evangelion, Gundamball Z, and finally Gundámon. But since I'm most familiar with Gundam Wing, here's a little information about the Gundams appearing in Gundam Wing.
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Gundams: A Short List to Get You By
Wing Gundam
- Wing Gundam is probably the most practically designed gundam of them all. Unlike the rest of them Gundams which require having the pilots steal big C-130s or tucks to tote around their Gundams, this one just turns into something vaguely dragonlike and flies off. Well-known for making dramatic poses whenever it does something important. It also has an enormous gun that fires a beam that kills you if you just look at it, which is impressive until you remember that everything in Gundam Anime explodes if you sneeze.
Gundam DeathSythe
- This gundam has a big Sythe and even bigger style. Surprisingly that makes it really cool. The designers, so impressed with its coolness later give it a more powerful sythe with two blades. This kind of lowers the coolness factor a bit. I mean, yeah, it probably does shave the hair slightly below the skin as well resulting in a smooth kissable face, but does that extra blade right behind the first one really make the weapon any more useful, or is it more along the lines of "My mecha is so cool it has two, two, two sythes in one?"
Gundam HeavyArms
- This Gundam was designed by someone that the Professor would get along with nicely. It has more guns than a small army made of guns. It has guns in its head, guns in its chest, guns on its shoulders, missile launchers in its shoulders, missile launchers on its thighs, and one enormous gun on its arm reminicient of the alaskan oil pipeline. It, like DeathSythe, gets upgraded later on with, you guessed it, more guns! Sure, it's pretty unoriginal, but try to tell that to its face and see if it doesn't shoot your country apart.
Shenlong Gundam
- This one sounds mildly peaceful at first, but that's before its arm turns into a dragon and bites your head. Seriously. You don't want to mess with a big mech that has a fire-breathing dragon for an arm. I don't even want to make fun of its weird weapon that can't decide if it's a polearm, a beam sword, or a spear. Still, I wouldn't taunt it for having a polearm thingy because I don't like my head being gnawed off by a dragon-arm. It gets a powerup too, and guess what! Now BOTH of the arms turn into dragons. Not the kind of thing you want to meet in a dark alley.
Gundam Sandrock
- This is the only Gundam that gets the help of a bunch of regular mobile suits stationed in the middle east. I guess it's supposed to have a sort of egyptian theme to it, with big overly curved scimitars that it can throw at things, but in my opinion it's sort of crappy. I was thinking maybe it gets more useful later in the series but then the pilot blows it to smithereens. Maybe the mysterious upgraded model will be better, but I'm not holding my breath.
Gundam Zero
- I think the writers were feeling sorry for the pilot of Gundam Sandrock because soon after the destruction of the Sandrock the pilot shows up in this bad boy. Very much like Wing Gundam, Gundam Zero can transform and has a big gun. Unlike Wing Gundam, the overly powerful big gun that Gundam Zero totes around has two barrels and seemingly doesn't have the limited number of shots that Wing Gundam has. The result? Your own personal Death Star, with more destructive firepower than the entire Imperial Starfleet. You do not want to piss this guy off. Even HeavyArms walks on the opposite side of the street when he sees this guy coming. This is one of the only Gundams capable of holding its own in the Charhouse. Yeah, it's that powerful.
That's about as much effort as I'm willing to put into an article about Gundam. If you enjoy senseless violence and seeing stuff blow up a whole lot, this is the Anime for you. Even people that hate Anime can just ignore the big eyes and sit back for a treat as big humanoid robots hit each other and explode.
| -- Mr. Encyclopedia |
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