Yes, rounding out the third article is another pun for the original Gundam movie trilogy. I think this is just as fitting and probably less controversial than the previous title. Gundam’s sorted history in North America deserves it’s own article. When dealing with a meta-series the size of it, it’s easy to do one off here and one off there as it relates to a specific series or such. But doing into detail in how the locally released series were locally released when I’m trying to hit overviews of all the big series, it gets tedious and jumbled. But, there’s another reason for it as well. Since Gundam went nearly twenty years before any of the anime was made commercially available in North America, the sheer magnitude of entry points makes the story interesting enough for a full article on its own. A lot of people still talk about the raw (Japanese language only) copies of the last four episodes of Zeta Gundam that were circulated in clubs, fansubs traded that were of dubious quality, all video, audio and translation or some bizzare side-interest, like I did, with their plethora of model kits.

Mobile Suit Gundam, as an anime in North America, has its beginnings in North America solidly rooted in the fandom that spawned the early anime clubs and featured names that would later go on to work in the industry itself. As the raw Zeta Gundam finale is probably one of the earliest attempts at North American fandom happening upon Gundam, it feels only proper to start there. The series ended in Japan in 1986, so it is only safe to assume that these tapes didn’t time travel and arrive in North America before then. Though, it’s still unclear as to how much further away from 1986 these tapes first appeared. Through clubs, fanzines, and mailing lists (things that existed before the Internet exploded) the tapes were traded, duped and otherwise made their way from one segment of fandom to the next. Of course, being the last four episodes of the series, everyone was naturally claiming for more. If they could find one with translations, all the better.

American fans continued to put up with untranslated Gundam for the next several years, usually ordering tapes or LaserDiscs through places like Books Nippan or actually making connections with individuals in Japan. As anime fandom grew slowly through the late 1980s and 1990s, piece of Gundam animation were fansubbed, notably Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack and Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team. Eventually, even Zeta was fansubbed. What’s striking the most to me was that it wasn’t just the fansubbers or “hardcore” fans who were getting into Gundam. As small as the North American Anime Industry was in the late 1980s, even official publications were talking about Gundam. An issue from 1988 of Animag had some of the first English-language information about Char’s Counterattack, which had appeared earlier that year in Japan. Gundam fandom seemed to grow with anime fandom. In 1990 the first official Gundam release hit American store shelves, albeit breifly. Frederik L. Shodt provided official translations in 1990 of the Mobile Suit Gundam novels that Tomino had written outlining his original story ideas for the anime back in 1979. While far from a commercial success, the novels floated around fan circles and were, at times, criticized for the lack of “adherence” to names that fans were used to. Schodt revised his translation, with more cooperation from Sunrise, and all three novels were collected together and republished in 2004.

I was introduced to the Gundam animations in a very haphazard sort of way. I used to go to an import gaming store because it was one of the only places where I knew to get anime back in my early days of fandom. When I was much younger, I used to love building model planes and the store had some Gundam models for cheap (the little BB Senshi/SD Gundam models for all the model builders out there) and I bought a few of them, took them home and built them. There, I got into the modeling and as I discovered other anime outlets, I got to talking with some of the other modelers, who actually had some of the Gundam fansubs. So, I ended up starting to watch through some Gundam Wing fansubs, then moved on to Char’s Counterattack and then to Zeta fansubs. Fortunately, the method of going with little guidance, incomplete subbed television series, and having to find people who didn’t have the same tapes I did only went on for a few years.

The first commercially licensed anime for Mobile Suit Gundam came in 1999 when Bandai Entertainment Incorporated, a North American subsidiary of Bandai Japan, opened their AnimeVillage.com label and released the original film trilogy, 0080 and 0083 Stardust Memory on sub and dub VHS. The release was welcomed with little, if any, fanfare that I remember. Bandai released a number of titles on the AnimeVillage label, and I think the Gundam stuff got lost in the mix. I did however, manage to get subbed copies all of the movies and the two OAV series. While the 0080 and 0083 dubs were good, the movies had a different dub which is considered especially horrid that has to heard to be believed. On the bright side, finally, I could watch the original storyline and maybe start making sense out of those grainy tapes! The true day of reckoning wouldn’t come until the following year.

In 2000, Cartoon Network’s Toonami programming block, becoming more of a source for anime to be brought mainstream, picked up New Mobile War Report Gundam Wing to be aired in the afternoons during the week. While anime fandom experienced another large population bump due to Toonami airing more Japanese animation, Gundam fandom sky-rocketed, particularly among girls. Gundam Wing also proved to be influential in how America received anime on television. During the afternoon broadcasts, there were few minor edits to the content; this matter was resolved when Toonami’s late-night block The Midnight Run began airing it uncut. It had a strong dub to go along with it, too. It was odd for me to adjust my ears at first, as it usually is when I’ve watched something for years in one language and then have to watch it in another but it wasn’t a painful process. Wing continues to be the most successful Gundam title released in North America. Unfortunately, fandom was then introduced to the Wingers: mostly squealing teenage girls over the “subtle yaoi undertones”; like ones today who do it over something like Naruto, these were their big sisters. Wingers did have male counterparts, though they were usually more obsessed with how Wing Zero could blow stuff up; you could work around them with how bio-sensors lead to crippling people’s minds or funnels and bits were so much better than Mobile Dolls. Female Wingers were obsessed with pretty boys and the anal sex they “desired”.

Success of Wing gave Bandai Entertainment a lot of capital and they announced the licenses for the first Mobile Suit Gundam television series and Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team OAV in 2001 and scheduled an airing on Toonami. Nicknamed, appropriately, First Gundam, there was apprehension about whether or not this new generation, used to clean nineties animation, pretty boys and model kits with English instructions, would latch onto the original as they did its alternate universe counterpart. Naively, I thought they would. Bandai did much to clean up the animation but even with the clean up (and the glimmering pistol effects!) First Gundam fell flat. It didn’t help that the subsequent VHS and DVD releases were dub-only and it’s broadcast was interrupted both in the afternoon and late night slots due to the al Quaeda Terrorist Attacks of 11 September. With Wing being the most successful release, this is probably the worst. To offset the dismal performance of the original, Toonami’s late night blocks also aired 0080 and 08th MS during the week with 0083 on the weekend (on the new Adult Swim action block). These, like Wing, were also aired uncut at these hours and were met with modest success.

As Gundam fandom ramped up in North America, Bandai decided to close AnimeVillage.com as a label and begin selling titles under their own name. At the beginning of 2002, they began releasing their old (and small) VHS catalogue on DVD and announced that they would be releasing a DVD version of Char’s Counterattack. I was elated. Of all the grainy, crappy Gundam tapes I had, my cope of Char’s Counterattack was probably in the worst condition. In 2003, Bandai tried to repeat the Wing success by localizing and airing Mobile Fighter G Gundam on Toonami. While it was met with better success than First Gundam, it overall really failed to find an audience. Personally, while the animation is not much different than Wing (they are fairly contemporary), nor was it much different than other anime on Toonami about the same time, it’s goofy, super-robot nature was too different than Wing or even people watching SEED fansubs on the Internet at the time. It was at this time that Bandai was beginning to focus more on their domestic DVDs and later Cartoon Network moves shifting the Toonami programming block around meant that the conditions that had caused Wing to thrive were gone, at least for the moment.

After SEED was licensed in ‘03, Bandai later announced that wherever Toonami was, Bandai was buying space for airing the latest in the franchise. It took a great deal of time, but SEED was finally released on Toonami sometime between 2004 as part of Toonami’s new Saturday Night intiative, where it was met with a relatively late slot and then, due to poor ratings, shifted to “ass in the morning” slot. I think it finally finished somewhere about 01:30, where it was canceled, because, surprise, surprise, no one was watching. Maybe SEED was the worst venture for Bandai rather than First Gundam? In about the same timeframe, the epic Zeta Gundam was released which was met with more jeers than cheers. Bandai announced back in 2002 they were working on it; about two years later we had a thin-pack boxset with music removed and some people claimed were dubtitled. I personally didn’t like the concept of a boxset that was nearly $300 full of the shittiest extras imaginable. Mobile Suit Gundam F-91; however, was a much better release and I don’t think anyone heard a peep about it.

With a shoddy (but, re-done and I-hear-better) Zeta release, SEED pushing up daisies on television, other Gundam DVDs that no one apparently cared enough about to buy and Japan’s latest getting panned unceremoniously, things for Gundam fans looked bleak before the markets started going tango-uniform. Bandai’s premium label, Honneamise (hummus-and-mayonnaise for short) / Bandai Visual USA released some of the MS Igloo shorts, at their normal fire sale prices of “$Goddamn Expensive”. Fortunately, Japan seemed to get its act together by releasing Gundam 00, selling it to Bandai Entertainment, and folding Bandai Visual USA into Bandai Ent. Gundam 00 currently at this writing airs on Sci-Fi Channel, Mondays at 11:00.

But – what about all that other stuff I talked about? Sure, Zeta is here, but what about Double? Where’s Victory? And X or Turn A? Or… anything else I might be forgetting? Yeah, in the scant near-decade that Bandai’s been releasing Gundam in North America, most of the franchise has made it over here. There was once a time that the Bandai Gundam licensing model was “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when …”. That was true several years ago but the normal growing pains of the North American industry affect Gundam as well but unless new pricing models can be met, the market for many of the older series is probably going to shrivel and die and it’s only going to shrivel more and more as the series get older and older. Trust me, I’d love nothing more than to have fair-priced Gundam DVDs along my shelves all from North American producers. But, one’s desires aren’t always market reality.

Drew Sutton is a long-time Japanese animation fan, operator of Akihabara Renditions: Anime of the Bubble Economy and host of its component podcast.