There are always many Gundam projects in the pipeline, but unlike Star Wars, most of them land, and the fanbase eats it up along with all its playsets and toys. While there are your stalwart UC purists who cannot fathom another non-UC series being made in our year of the lord 20XX, SEED fans are still at the buffet pigging out on the free pudding, Hathaway fans are waiting for die, and IBO fans can continue getting fucked. Because it’s time for EVANGELION RE:GUNDAM YOU (CANNOT) REGLUE!
In a collaboration between Studio Khara and Sunrise, Gundam GQuuuuuuX, henceforth known as G-QUACKS, will be the newest Gundam TV series debuting in 2025, however with the usual Khara twist, a re-arranged theatrical version airs in Japanese theatres on January 17th. Directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki (Evangelion Rebuild 3.0) with script by Yoji Enokido and Hideaki Anno, this looks to most certainly be a GAINAX-flavored spin on the Gundam franchise by one of anime and mecha’s heavyweight writers and directors.
The premise seems simple enough. Kids living on a space colony participate in some series of mobile suit battles, presumably with a one-off GANDAM of great importance that kicks off the ballad that probably puts them into some wider conflict. The twist here will be what Enokido and Anno do with these characters and the usual Gundam WAR = BAD formula. The “clan battle” angle seems to suggest something more akin to recent entries Witch from Mercury or Build Fighters, but a few people think it feels more perhaps like a redress of Mobile Fighter G Gundam.
The suit design probably pissed the UC purists and hardcore fans off the most though, because like WFM’s Ariel and Ariel Rebuild, it’s much more slender and Eva-like than the usual clunky thots like Zakus, Gelgoogs, and BIG HAMS– er, Big Zams. Many a meme being tossed around about fetal positions and unhinged jaws, but honestly I didn’t hate WFM’s designs at all. But then I am not a UC purist. Like Star Trek, I got in around the DS9/VOY era, watched everything, but enjoyed those newer shows. UC purists are a lot like TOS/TNG fans that stan the one and only canon timeline and piss and shit all over themselves every time a new Gundam series is announced that isn’t Mobile Suit Gundam The True Great Definitive Edition IV or Char’s Counter-Re-Re-Fwd-Crosscounter-Parry-FifthCounterattack. Bro, I’m sorry they haven’t put out a second and third movie to Hathaway’s Flash, but you know how those novels end, they’re thirty-fucking-four years old now. Crossbone? Nah. How about a remaster of Victory? X? All Gundam is good Gundam, and I respect the originals always, but stop with the gatekeeping, it’s stupid, and the hilarious part is that unlike Star Wars fans, Gundam fans don’t take that shit. They let these new shows happen and they ultimately enjoy them. That’s why they keep getting made. You don’t see anyone trying to sabotage the whole fucking franchise because they aren’t making the same three films over and over verbatim.
As with most new Gundam series, the target audience is two-fold. Primarily, it’s not you, Longtime Gundam Fan In Your Forties. It’s definitely made for the 13-26 crowd, with the bright colors, pastels, and cyberpunk-y elements zoomers and alphas crave. However, it will no doubt do enough to entice and ultimately facilitate a comfortable experience for the veteran fan, as all the shows have done over the decades. Gundam is an enduring franchise that does miss sometimes, but never so badly that it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, and that’s sell gunpla. Of that golden era of cartoons made specifically to sell toys, Gundam remains one of the last in both the east and the west. It’s the kind of rancid 80’s consoomerism us millennials fondly remember, for some reason.
