Do people, like myself, spend time imagining what it would be like if Gundam robots were actually present on the streets of our cities? Are you sure you're not limiting yourself to the images that were offered in the animated series? One of the reasons that I fell in love with Gundam was that it excites me to imagine what it would be like if these machines actually existed, and I worry that other fans may be losing out...
Hajime Katoki
Hajime Katoki is one of the most well-regarded mecha designers, known for his infamously detailed "Ver. Ka" designs. Many years ago I found a website that had a compilation of realistic images he made using Gundams and I've finally found them again. They appear to be a series of promotional postcards for Gundam Fix, an art book that Katoki put out some time ago.
In my own vision, Mobile Suits transcend their roots as an animated show and become something bigger, a far reaching concept like the elves of fantasy lore. While it was originally a cartoon, I think this was actually a limiting factor to how much the creators were able to flesh the story out. The appeal of cartoons revolves around children who can be easily overwhelmed by excessively complex stories. There is an adult veneer to most Gundam shows, some more than others, but it always seemed that they only existed to reel kids in with bright colors and action-packed robot fights in order to sell them toys. I recognize the irony in my love for Gundam models as I complain about the commercialization of the TV show, but I feel justified in the fact that I first discovered them before I knew anything about the animated series.
I remember watching Toonami on Cartoon Network when I'd get home from school. They had a usually predictable lineup of Japanese shows: Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and for a long time Gundam Wing. Even at so young of an age I could feel something about the show I didn't like. Too much fantasy and melodrama. Even the designs of the suits didn't appeal to me, they seemed too garish and colorful. The pilots were stereotypically whiny teenagers who could somehow perform superhero robot moves (dodging thousands of missiles, constantly explosive action) with nothing but two joysticks and some pedals.
The only series I can really say I enjoyed was The 08th MS Team. It was a retelling of the original One Year War from the Mobile Suit: Gundam series but it took place in the jungles of Asia. It featured a squad of individual soldiers who had limitations and lacked the expertise of other pilots. Their equipment was believable, at one point an RX-79(G) loses its head and has it replaced with a GM head. They set up an ambush against some Zeon soldiers who have been harassing a town and on the first shot they actually miss! It's a big deal, too, because it gives their position away. They even use a hand-launched RPG to shoot the unarmored area under the Zaku skirt to incapacitate it. The battle doesn't immediately turn into mobile suits flying at each other with swords and axes, there aren't volleys of hundreds of missiles. It actually turns into a lesson about the horrors of having to kill people in war.
I like the idea that Gundams, like their pilots, are limited in their capabilities. They represent something between a super advanced jet airplane and a heavily armored tank. Their size puts them at a disadvantage; they're easily spotted, fairly slow to move, and are a huge investment. Losing a single MS would mean many billions of dollars in destroyed technology, they'd do everything in their power to minimize the risk of confrontation. Your best bet would be hiding, spotting them enemy, then attacking from range without their knowledge. This makes me think they'd probably not survive excessive battle damage. A single direct hit with a large missile (say the RX-78's 380mm bazooka) could severely incapacitate the machine. It could break their relatively unarmored joints, it could destroy critical systems for keeping balance or moving, and the trauma the pilot suffers in falling almost 50 feet to the ground would be nothing short of a car wreck. You could break bones with that kind of force!
For this reason, they would rarely if ever have the amount of damage that some modelers portray on them. I can forgive minor pock marks from small weapons fire and maybe even some soot from explosions, but when people show deep beam saber cuts across the head, huge, gaping craters from explosives, or paint weathering across the whole kit that looks like it was dragged behind a car, I have a hard time suspending my disbelief. I admire the skill it takes to create that damage, but have you ever seen an operational jet that's in such bad condition? Even a tank? There might be a few examples of rickety machines after huge battles or towards the end of the war as resources get scarce, but they would take damn fine care of those machines and only the best of the best would pilot them. A mobile suit melee would be historic, there would be only a handful of such events.
The advantage of an MS in combat is that they could reorient large weapons, like artillery, very quickly. Take the Zaku's ubiquitous 120mm machine gun for example. Wikipedia states:
Mobile suits are essentially a vehicle to shrink large weapons down to a normal size so it can be moved and fired at speed. They transform the standard artillery shell into a rapid fire machine gun that can be very accurately aimed. Close combat would probably be out of the question unless it was a last resort, even a few sprays from a 120mm machine gun could cause dangerous levels of damage. But how would a Mobile Suit reload a weapon? Maybe a computer system would take over and automatically go through the delicate motions necessary to reload such a massive gun.
Defenses against conventional ground forces like walls or fences could be kicked down, stepped over, or stepped on, tanks could be blown away like leaves, and ground forces could probably be spotted by the numerous cameras on mobile suits. However, I honestly don't know if I could see mobile suits walking around cities to defend them. Their intense weight would rupture asphalt and cement with their every step, ruining roads, knocking out power lines, and potentially even collapsing sewer and water systems. The empty weight of a Zaku II is 130,000 lbs, more than three times the maximum allowed load of semi trucks in the US. You can easily imagine how much force they'd put down after landing from flying. This makes me think their main use would be invasion of enemy cities or perimeter defense of friendly cities. They'd probably have special city patrol MS units that are equipped to fly great distances, they'd maybe even be small enough and light enough that they could walk through streets without causing such destruction.
Keeping in mind that the original Gundam timeline takes place a couple hundred years in the future (around 2250), I am assuming that they'd no longer use chemically fueled rockets and they'd have found energy sources that can power a Mobile Suit easily such as a miniature fusion generator. I can believe almost everything except for the grace of these giants. I don't think they could flip around like 40 foot tall Bruce Lees, but I do think they could walk, run, and fly very efficiently.
Gundam models, or Gunpla as it's called, appeal to me as scaled down replicas of these concepts. The 'design vocabulary' used in the Gundam universe is very appealing to me - the design of legs, feet, armor, weapons and so on are very solid. They have a similar flavor that penetrates most models in the Universal Century timeline. I think most of the kits have a very inspired look and would almost be like bragging rights for forces that have them. Even a dozen mobile suits would be more dangerous than a nuclear weapon, but to have a bright blue machine like a Gouf with its aggressive shoulders and angry look would both inspire those who are on its side and terrify those who aren't.
I remember watching Toonami on Cartoon Network when I'd get home from school. They had a usually predictable lineup of Japanese shows: Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, and for a long time Gundam Wing. Even at so young of an age I could feel something about the show I didn't like. Too much fantasy and melodrama. Even the designs of the suits didn't appeal to me, they seemed too garish and colorful. The pilots were stereotypically whiny teenagers who could somehow perform superhero robot moves (dodging thousands of missiles, constantly explosive action) with nothing but two joysticks and some pedals.
The only series I can really say I enjoyed was The 08th MS Team. It was a retelling of the original One Year War from the Mobile Suit: Gundam series but it took place in the jungles of Asia. It featured a squad of individual soldiers who had limitations and lacked the expertise of other pilots. Their equipment was believable, at one point an RX-79(G) loses its head and has it replaced with a GM head. They set up an ambush against some Zeon soldiers who have been harassing a town and on the first shot they actually miss! It's a big deal, too, because it gives their position away. They even use a hand-launched RPG to shoot the unarmored area under the Zaku skirt to incapacitate it. The battle doesn't immediately turn into mobile suits flying at each other with swords and axes, there aren't volleys of hundreds of missiles. It actually turns into a lesson about the horrors of having to kill people in war.
I like the idea that Gundams, like their pilots, are limited in their capabilities. They represent something between a super advanced jet airplane and a heavily armored tank. Their size puts them at a disadvantage; they're easily spotted, fairly slow to move, and are a huge investment. Losing a single MS would mean many billions of dollars in destroyed technology, they'd do everything in their power to minimize the risk of confrontation. Your best bet would be hiding, spotting them enemy, then attacking from range without their knowledge. This makes me think they'd probably not survive excessive battle damage. A single direct hit with a large missile (say the RX-78's 380mm bazooka) could severely incapacitate the machine. It could break their relatively unarmored joints, it could destroy critical systems for keeping balance or moving, and the trauma the pilot suffers in falling almost 50 feet to the ground would be nothing short of a car wreck. You could break bones with that kind of force!
For this reason, they would rarely if ever have the amount of damage that some modelers portray on them. I can forgive minor pock marks from small weapons fire and maybe even some soot from explosions, but when people show deep beam saber cuts across the head, huge, gaping craters from explosives, or paint weathering across the whole kit that looks like it was dragged behind a car, I have a hard time suspending my disbelief. I admire the skill it takes to create that damage, but have you ever seen an operational jet that's in such bad condition? Even a tank? There might be a few examples of rickety machines after huge battles or towards the end of the war as resources get scarce, but they would take damn fine care of those machines and only the best of the best would pilot them. A mobile suit melee would be historic, there would be only a handful of such events.
The advantage of an MS in combat is that they could reorient large weapons, like artillery, very quickly. Take the Zaku's ubiquitous 120mm machine gun for example. Wikipedia states:
Heavy mortars are typically between 120- and 300-mm caliber... a 120 mm mortar bomb has about the same explosive capability as a 155 mm artillery shell.For reference, here is a video of a 155mm GPS guided artillery round:
Mobile suits are essentially a vehicle to shrink large weapons down to a normal size so it can be moved and fired at speed. They transform the standard artillery shell into a rapid fire machine gun that can be very accurately aimed. Close combat would probably be out of the question unless it was a last resort, even a few sprays from a 120mm machine gun could cause dangerous levels of damage. But how would a Mobile Suit reload a weapon? Maybe a computer system would take over and automatically go through the delicate motions necessary to reload such a massive gun.
Defenses against conventional ground forces like walls or fences could be kicked down, stepped over, or stepped on, tanks could be blown away like leaves, and ground forces could probably be spotted by the numerous cameras on mobile suits. However, I honestly don't know if I could see mobile suits walking around cities to defend them. Their intense weight would rupture asphalt and cement with their every step, ruining roads, knocking out power lines, and potentially even collapsing sewer and water systems. The empty weight of a Zaku II is 130,000 lbs, more than three times the maximum allowed load of semi trucks in the US. You can easily imagine how much force they'd put down after landing from flying. This makes me think their main use would be invasion of enemy cities or perimeter defense of friendly cities. They'd probably have special city patrol MS units that are equipped to fly great distances, they'd maybe even be small enough and light enough that they could walk through streets without causing such destruction.
Keeping in mind that the original Gundam timeline takes place a couple hundred years in the future (around 2250), I am assuming that they'd no longer use chemically fueled rockets and they'd have found energy sources that can power a Mobile Suit easily such as a miniature fusion generator. I can believe almost everything except for the grace of these giants. I don't think they could flip around like 40 foot tall Bruce Lees, but I do think they could walk, run, and fly very efficiently.
Gundam models, or Gunpla as it's called, appeal to me as scaled down replicas of these concepts. The 'design vocabulary' used in the Gundam universe is very appealing to me - the design of legs, feet, armor, weapons and so on are very solid. They have a similar flavor that penetrates most models in the Universal Century timeline. I think most of the kits have a very inspired look and would almost be like bragging rights for forces that have them. Even a dozen mobile suits would be more dangerous than a nuclear weapon, but to have a bright blue machine like a Gouf with its aggressive shoulders and angry look would both inspire those who are on its side and terrify those who aren't.
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