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The Alternate Universes Given free reign to do as they wish with the GUNDAM franchise, each creative team has done as it pleases with fifteen years' worth of tradition, provided it features plenty of new GUNDAM designs for the sake of the toy industry. Both of the previous alternate universe series have borrowed selected elements from the GUNDAM saga, though neither to the extent that GUNDAM X does. GUNDAM's new direction
kicked off in 1994 with the super kung-fu fightin' show MOBILE FIGHTER G GUNDAM. Directed by GIANT
ROBO's Yasuhiro Imagawa and
plotted by Fuyushi Gobu, this new series marked a dramatic departure
from the serious, if not always totally realistic, GUNDAM of yesteryear. In a reversal of GUNDAM tradition, G GUNDAM has
the space colonies oppressing the huddled masses who remain on Earth.
Every four years, each colony dispatches a Gundam, styled after its own
national stereotype, to do battle on the ravaged Earth in an Olympian
tournament. There all resemblance to the traditional GUNDAM universe ends, as Imagawa's story combines
giant-size martial arts tournaments, nanomachine plagues and armies of
zombies into a bizarre free-for-all.1995 saw the launch of a slightly more
traditional GUNDAM series, NEW MOBILE WAR CHRONICLE GUNDAM W. GUNDAM W could almost pass
for a regular GUNDAM series were it not for its
handsome, superheroic main characters, who could have stepped right out
of Yoroiden Samurai Trooper (broadcast here as RONIN
WARRIORS), the series for which director Masashi
Ikeda and main writer Katsuyuki Sumisawa are best known. But the plot
elements - revolution, betrayal, unrequited love, evil corporate
sponsors, fascist militias and the perennial conflict of Earth versus
the space colonies - are pure GUNDAM.Now it's time for this year's model. Helmed
by director Shinji Takamatsu and writer Hiroyuki Kawasaki, whose last
project was the heroic robot show GOLDORAN,
GUNDAM X promises a more upbeat, lighthearted
approach. At the same time, it hews more faithfully than any of the
previous alternate-universe series to the classic GUNDAM history...
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The World of GUNDAM X If you're already familiar with the original GUNDAM story, the premise of GUNDAM X can be summed up pretty simply: Turn the volume of the One Year War all the way up to eleven. Rather than one falling space colony, have a hundred. Never mind one GUNDAM, have dozens. And why have the rebellious space colonists merely invade the Earth when they can turn it into a barren wasteland, so scarred and battered that it's still a desert fifteen years later? The landscape of the GUNDAM X world will be quite familiar to fans of
THE ROAD
WARRIOR, FIST
OF THE
NORTH STAR or the 1982
Sunrise series BLUE GALE
XABUNGLE
(from which GUNDAM X borrows heavily).
Following the Seventh Space War, a huge conflict in which billions of
people were killed and rebel space colonists bombarded the Earth with
falling colony cylinders, the planet was devastated. Even now, in the
year AW (After War) 0015, the continents are pockmarked with impact
craters and the surface is studded with debris and colony fragments. The
survivors struggle to eke out a meager living, with the rivalries of the
great war long since forgotten.The great war that created the GUNDAM X world appears to be a fairly faithful reprise of
the One Year War from the original GUNDAM
television series, right down to the final duel between the GUNDAM and the legless giant Ziong. But in this case, the
creators opted to play up both the scale of the conflict and the
subsequent consequences. While scientific nitpickers might argue that
the impact of even one twenty-mile-long metal cylinder would suffice to
ravage the Earth for decades to come, GUNDAM X
takes no chances and slams dozens of them into the planet to make sure
it's credibly messed up.With this detail attended to, GUNDAM X goes on to borrow some other selected elements
from its predecessors. The familiar concept of the "newtype" is back
again; gifted with psychic and empathic powers beyond the ken of the
average mortal, these rare individuals make excellent mobile suit
pilots. The mobile suit designs are intentionally reminiscent of the
classic GM, Zaku and Dom, while the colony cylinders themselves are
identical to those in the mainstream GUNDAM
universe. More so than the earlier alternate universes, GUNDAM X feels like a possible alternative to the GUNDAM world we've come to know and love.
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