Not a Bust After All, New Gundam Series Announced!

Since this year is Gundam’s 30th anniversary many of us have been hoping that Sunrise would announce a new anime addition to the franchise. For a while there were rumors of an OVA in the works but it turned out to be just an upcoming PS3 game. However I have good news, everyone! After following some links on 2chan I found that Gundam Ace magazine released a special issue today in which they announced an upcoming, 50 episode TV series that will air sometime next year. I’m sure I’m not the first to announce this news but I thought I’d translate a portion of the article for you guys. My Japanese is not perfect but I did the best I could:

This new, as yet unnamed series will be unlike anything fans have seen before says Yoshiyuki Tomino, the original creator of Gundam who will be helming this project. “A lot of fans want to see more of the Universal Century, the timeline that the original TV series was set in, but we also have new fans who got into the franchise by watching shows that have nothing at all to do with the UC. So we asked ourselves, how can we appeal to both types of fans at the same time?”

The answer was an unexpected one: bring back the old characters from Mobile Suit Gundam but place them in an entirely new setting, in this case the AF or After Fighting timeline. What does this mean for Amuro, Char and the rest of the cast from Mobile Suit Gundam?

“They’ll be getting a makeover” said Tomino. “In this economy selling model kits to guys just isn’t enough. We have to appeal to girls too and what do they want? Pretty boys that you can easily mistake for women. Amuro is just goofy looking, he has no sex appeal. So we’re bringing in [Gundam 00's character designer] Yun Kouga to make him beautiful.”

On the right: Amuro’s new look.

Sunrise has released a few of Kouga’s designs to the public and they reveal startling results. Amuro, now with long braids and feminine features, could easily be taken for a girl. As for Char, Kouga says he is already “sexy enough” but adds that she thinks the addition of a reddish-pink cardigan will be perfect for The Red Comet.

These are not the only revolutionary changes the staff has planned. The one that will surely surprise fans the most is that the pilots will not actually use their mobile suits to engage in battle. “We thought really hard about this one,” said Tomino, “and I just feel like we’ve done everything we can with the concept of mobile suits being used in war. So we’re going to do away with it entirely.”

Instead, each side will throw psychic attacks at the other by using the Newtype abilities that every character now possesses. Tomino says he envisions that these battles will use a wide array of stunning special effects such as sparkly particles, flashes of light and giant rainbows. 

As for the Gundams and other mobile suits, they’ll still be present they just won’t be used for war. Tomino says he’s thought of many purposes for them including industrial applications, underwater exploration, transporting goods and even vacuuming. In other words, everything robots do now. “This is about as ‘real robot’ as you can get,” said Tomino. When asked if he thought this might decrease toy sales Tomino replied “no, Gundam fans are stupid. They will eat up Gundam kits and toys for as long as we churn them out.”

As for the fact that some of the characters who will be brought back actually died in the original series, Tomino is not worried that this could be a continuity problem. “This is not really an alternate universe, the characters have simply been transported into the future through Minovsky particle wormholes caused by a refraction of sunlight on Jupiter… which is all based on real science of course. Honestly I don’t even think fans will care that some of the dead characters are alive again. They’ll be too busy creating yaoi doujinshi to notice.”