This Week in Anime

Getting into Gundam (and Other Long-Running Anime)

Nick
Well then, I suppose it falls to us to be the stern and ethically questionable parental figures making these brats step into the cockpit. Dibs on being the one who makes it out alive.

It's a topic that I try to be understanding about. As somebody who stood outside of Gundam fandom for a long while, I remember the franchise—and plenty of other long-running IPs with tons of entries—feeling intimidating and obtuse. I sympathize with anybody struggling to crack that shell. On the other hand, stop being babies, nerds. You're scared of a cartoon. Just go pick one and watch it. Do you think your grandparents worried about what episode of I Love Lucy was the right place to get on board?

Which is even funnier since starting at the beginning of DBZ still meant skipping over 150 episodes of the original Dragon Ball, which everyone in the US had to do because that section of the anime didn't come out here until years after. So practically an entire generation of anime fans started somewhere in the middle of the middle.

To be fair even watching Wing in order is an exercise in confusion. Characters in that show will change motivation and personality multiple times in the same scene, let alone episode or story arc. But I guess just winging it and air-dropping onto a show in the middle isn't a foolproof strategy. Though with the death of linear broadcast that's also not as big an issue these days.

There are many answers, depending on the person, the franchise, and what's even available at any given time or region. From the outside, it looks impenetrable—with talks of timelines and centuries and alternate universes. Oddly enough my entrance into the franchise was from the goofy spinoff about kids smashing their Gundam models together.

Late-era Tomino is its own whole bucket of fish when it comes to being impenetrable, but I do genuinely think Build Fighters offers something as an onboarding ramp. While it's as tonally disparate from basically any mainline entry as possible, there's an intense passion for the entire franchise and its history—and that is infectious. Even if you don't get that half the character arcs are allusions, or that 90% of the background characters are cameos from other shows, seeing how much the people making it love all things Gundam made me want to see just what all the fuss was about. And from there, it's been a rewarding—if massively inconsistent—journey.

Gundam Build Metaverse sucks ass to an astounding degree. I'm gonna tell people to just start whatever entry they want later but do not start with that sack of crap.

Part of it is an issue of perception - when you simply see a giant gestalt of Gundam, picking a place to start is like picking out a single tree in a forest you just spotted over the horizon. So sometimes it's useful to just have a guide that can break down what's what—or better yet, a knowledgeable friend who can recommend a title that would be to your tastes. Having somebody explain the difference between a SEED and a 00—or just tell you that the show called The Origin isn't the best place to start—can be a huge help.

Honestly I think a lot of the friction comes down to a certain kind of mind goblin that can make people think they need to watch everything. Or that they need to start at the beginning and work their way through release or chronologically. While that's a valid approach if it works for you, it also tends to make entertainment feel like homework. I've had folks say similar things about the sheer length of One Piece and how it feels like a huge time commitment.

In that regard, my advice is to just...try it. Like, if it interests you, just go watch it and see what you think. Don't think of it as starting some huge project that you have to reach the end of—just think of it as a new food to try out and see if you like it. If you don't, you're free to walk away. If you do, congrats, you have decades' worth of new stuff to chow down on.

That's another thing: trust yourself to be smart enough to learn from context. Even with a show as lengthy and interconnected as One Piece, the storytelling itself is still familiar enough that you can get by on inference. If a new character shows up that you don't recognize, you can figure out what their deal is by just seeing them interact with the ones you do. Believe in your own media literacy!

Jojo's is an interesting reversal of this conversation since there's a decades-long argument in the fandom about whether or not it's okay to "skip parts" to get into it. On the one hand, I understand the desire of existing fans to get newbies a comprehensive, holistic view of the whole series. On the other, the cries that you have to watch in a certain order and must never skip around to your liking is a great way to drive people off.

That joy is exactly why I want to push back against the idea that any older franchise or long-running series is "impossible" to get into. When you love something the way longtime Gundam-heads do—or how I love Macross—it's great to see friends or even strangers discover all the stuff you've internalized. Sometimes it's just funny to see people get blindsided like the famous Space Oomfie tweet:

wtf space oomfie pic.twitter.com/iLZVOuQf2I

— goop wizard (@bepista) October 3, 2022

It's cool to get a new perspective! Or even to see other people go through the same journey we once did. I love it when a friend starts watching Macross 7 and goes from hating Nekki Basara to loving that stupid, singing, space hippie the same way I did.

Oh trust me, the evangelizing will only grow more zealous when those Blu-ray sets start coming out. I have the series digest and everything ready to go.

That's also valuable advice, though. A lot of franchises will branch off in different directions, and providing that context to newbies can help them manage their expectations in important ways. To reference that little infographic, I was initially really put off by the tone of Macross Plus and almost didn't continue with the franchise because so many had insisted it was the perfect entry point. It was only after I gave 7 a chance and fell in love with it that my addiction took hold.

There's not a wrong reason to start any given entry, either. I picked up the 08th MS Team because I saw a GIF from it with some cool robot animation. I tried 00 because my friend got an Exia kit that looked awesome. I watched Iron-Blooded Orphans as it aired because Mari Okada is a madwoman. All of these reasons are equally valid.

Sometimes a new entry can sell itself that well as an entry point just based on looking cool. I think of the new people who checked out the premiere of Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure, the actual twentieth entry in the Precure franchise on account of it sporting some new twists on the magical girl formula and cool designs by the Love Live! Superstar!! artist.

God help anybody who starts with Yohane the Parhelion and then spends the next 8 seasons of TV asking why there aren't more talking dogs.

Everybody's gotta start somewhere, and if they decide to watch 40-some-odd anime girls sing their hearts out after watching some of them kill monsters as sprite-art, more power to them. Maybe getting into Gundam would seem less impossible if they started putting out more left-field spin-offs. You can't tell me there's not a market for a dating sim where all the romance options are Char clones.

The moral of the story is that getting into that robot isn't nearly as hard as it seems from the ground. Sure, it's tall and imposing, but it'll open right up to you if you have the nerve to approach it—and you'll find all sorts of stuff in there you won't expect. Like mountains of violence enacted upon (and by) children! Also, there's an actual toilet seen in some of them. Don't ask about the weird stains inside Barbatos' cockpit, it's a whole story to tell.

I feel like this metaphor got away from me.

Never say that name here again.