My Review of "Mobile Suit Gundam"

Mobile Suit Gundam is a movie that came out back in 1981. I haven't ever seen this anime movie until recently but I had read the novels back in high school. I remember loving the three part novel series but that was back in the 90s. After reading those novels I always wanted to see the anime series but I never had access to them. Recently the movies had popped up on Netflix and I finally got a chance to check them out.

The movie starts off by telling you a little bit about the background of the universe that the movie is based in. The year is 0079 and there has been political strife and over population of earth. Humans are now living in different space zones. There are some humans that have never been to earth. So the war is basically between this group called the Zeon. The Zeon has basically declared independence but they still feel stifled by the earth federation.

Our main protagonist Amuro lives with his father and friends on a colony out in space. Amuro's father is an engineer that helped build this very advanced mobile suit called Gundam. It's this huge fighting robot machine. Before they could transport the Gundam to a ship headed for a special base a gang of Zeon forces in mobile suits comes in to steal the Gundam technology.

With the colony being attacked, much of the adults have been killed in battle while the elderly and children remained in safe zones. Amuro in a panic chases down his dad only to get into danger himself. Out of desperation he climbs into the brand new Gundam suit and uses it to fend off the Zeon forces.

This is the start of a constant battle between the earth federation and the Zeon forces. The Zeon forces have this hot shot mobile suit pilot by the name of Char. He's a schemer and you don't really know what his motivations are because he's also got a sister that works on the earth federation ship where Amuro is stationed.

There are so many characters in this movie and it's hard to even tell you all of the relationships each one of them has with one another. This movie builds on each of the characters so that they don't feel like one dimensional characters.

Even complex thoughts and emotions are talked about in this movie. Amuro is only a teenage boy and he's just suddenly thrusted into war. I was surprised that they talk about him being shell-shocked and suffers PTSD in this anime. It made me understand how mature this cartoon was and how fully fleshed out each of the characters were. I somewhat remembered some aspect of this from the novels but it was hard to remember since it has been over 20 years since I've read them.

Having such complexity and maturity in the movie made it really odd to see the childish cartoony characters that surrounded Frow Bow (Amuro's friend from the colony he grew up in). It's this cutesy art style that doesn't really blend well into the more serious tone of the movie. They just seem really out of place along with some of the wacky humor they try to add into the mix.

The movie also definitely felt like a whole bunch of TV shows blended into one long movie. You can tell because the animation wasn't the best and there are long drawn out dramatic scenes. Of course this could also be the way they made movies back in the day but this movie did seem quite long. There were points when I was just hoping that it would pick up a little bit.

That's not to say that I wasn't able to enjoy myself with this movie. It was a bit of nostalgia that helped me keep interest in this movie. Amuro's story arc was still quite fascinating and still felt different from all the stuff we see nowadays. It is a slow burning movie where you'll have to pay attention to a lot of things. There are a few weird references in this movie that don't have anything to do with the story but I know they're going to be useful to know in the second movie.

Overall, despite the long runtime of two and a half hours this movie can still be enjoyable to certain groups of people. If you're into sci-fi I think there's a good chance you'll dig this movie. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. I particularly enjoyed it out of nostalgia but by today's standards of films this movie might not be up to snuff for most people.