Gundam

Gundam (Japanese: ガンダム, Hepburn: Gandamu), also referred to as the Gundam Series (ガンダムシリーズ, Gandamu Shirīzu), is a science fiction media franchise created by Sunrise that feature giant robots (or "mecha") called "mobile suits", with titular mobile suits that carry the name "Gundam."

The franchise started on April 7, 1979, as an anime TV series called Mobile Suit Gundam, which was revolutionary in that it defined the real robot genre of anime by featuring giant robots in a militaristic war setting. The popularity of the first TV series and the merchandising that followed spawned a franchise that has come to include works released in numerous media. Titles have appeared in the form of multiple television series and OVAs, movies, manga, novels, and video games. The franchise has also led to the creation of one of the biggest toy and hobby franchises in the Japanese toy industry.

As of 2014, the Gundam franchise generated a total of 80 billion yen in revenues. The 2014 retail sales of Gundam toy and hobby items totaled 18.4 billion yen. In the 2008 ranking of average sales figures for anime copies sold in Japan (1970-2008 total sales figures averaged by episode), Gundam series were in four of the top five places: Mobile Suit Gundam ranked second, with Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny third, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED fourth, and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam fifth. Also, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing ranked 18th and Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ ranked 20th.Gunpla (Gundam Plastic model) holds 90% of the Japan character plastic model market.

Gundam (mobile suit)

The RX-78-2 Gundam is a fictional manned robot, introduced in 1979 in Yoshiyuki Tomino's and Sunrise's anime series Mobile Suit Gundam. In the series, it is a testbed weapon for the Earth Federation when it falls into the hands of Amuro Ray, the son of its designer in story (Tem Ray), who goes on to pilot it in the Earth Federation's war against the Principality of Zeon.

As the success of the series began the Gundam franchise, the robot's design was the first of many variations in subsequent works. The design appearing in Mobile Suit Gundam serves as the iconic symbol of the Gundam franchise and sparked the creation of its multiple sequels and spinoffs.

As part of the 30th Anniversary of the Gundam series, the company officially announced a project on March 11, 2009 called Real-G planning to build a 1/1 real size scale Gundam in Japan, it was completed on June 9, 2009. The 18-meter tall statue was reconstructed in Shizuoka Prefecture and was dismantled in March 2011. It now stands in Odaiba along with a gift shop called "Gundam Front Tokyo."

Turn A Gundam

Turn A Gundam, stylized as ∀ Gundam (Japanese: ∀（ターンエー）ガンダム, Hepburn: Tān Ē Gandamu) is a 1999 Japanese Mecha anime series produced by Sunrise and aired between 1999 and 2000 on Japan's FNN networks. It was created for the Gundam Big Bang 20th Anniversary celebration and considered as the eight incarnation to the series. It was later compiled in 2002 into two feature-length movies entitled Turn A Gundam I: Earth Light and Turn A Gundam II: Moonlight Butterfly.

Turn A Gundam was directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, who was the main creator of the Gundam franchise and had written and directed many previous Gundam works. Tomino created the series as a means of "affirmatively accepting all of the Gundam series," which is reflected in the series title's use of the Turned A, a symbol representing universal quantification.

Overview

Turn A Gundam takes place in the year Correct Century 2345 (正暦2345年, Seireki Nisen Sanbyaku Yonjū Go Nen, CC 2345), in a different calendar era than the previous Gundam projects. The Japanese term for Correct Century, Seireki, is a wordplay on the Japanese term for the Common Era (CE) Western calendar system (西暦; pronounced Seireki). The population of the Earth is, at the beginning of the series, limited to simple, steam-driven technology after past cataclysms; the Moon is populated by the Moonrace, humans who left Earth after a great war long ago to reside in technologically advanced lunar colonies until such time as they deemed the Earth suitable to return to.