Introduction.
This blog post is a written case study of the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam. I will use the key concepts of media studies to write my analysis – including genre, audience, narrative and representation as well as Media Language (lighting, camera, sound etc. – the concepts of media that I used to analyse the TV show What We Do in the Shadows in the previous assignment.)
From this analysis, I am hoping to get some inspiration for my own animation or website based on Gundam and the model kit hobby that originated from it named Gunpla (a portmanteau of Gundam Plastic Model).
What even is Gundam?
Mobile Suit Gundam is a Mecha anime TV series that started in 1979 and later expanded into a franchise, with separate series and movies set with the same theme and conventions. The first Gundam series was simply named Mobile Suit Gundam, but later series have adopted this name as a part of their main title – being called things like Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans, or Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. The show was initially lesser known in comparison to other anime that released at the same time (popular shows like Doraemon) and was even cancelled due to its low ratings, but gained popularity after the toy company Bandai released a model kit of the RX-78 Gundam – the main robot that is featured in the show, piloted by the show’s main character Amuro Ray. This model kit’s popularity prompted the release of more and more model kits, until eventually a hobby and fandom formed around the process of building them. The TV show is about a war between the Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon. Zeon is a military faction that wants independence from the Earth Federation, which is a global government that has moved humanity into a space age by setting up colonies on the moon and as space stations. The plot of the show focuses on an Earth Federation spaceship called White Base and its citizen crew, the protagonist being Amuro Ray – a 15 year old boy who is a skilled mechanic and pilot, with extensive knowledge of machines.
(Below images – left to right order: Amuro Ray, a promotional poster, White Base, a space colony and the construction of a space colony.)
Genre
The genre of Mobile Suit Gundam is Science Fiction. More specifically Mecha – a subgenre of science fiction (usually anime TV shows) that is centred around robots in battle that are often piloted or remotely controlled by humans. Gundam is very conventional of science fiction, and is extremely conventional of Mecha – it is one of the works of media that established the genre in the late ’70s and ’80s, after it was first conceived in the ’50s by shows like Tetsujin 28-Go and Astro Boy. Other examples of Mecha include several anime series: Neon Genesis Evangellion, Gurren Lagann and Code Geass. There are other examples from films, like the movie Pacific Rim, the Godzilla movies feature Mechagodzilla (a mech version of Godzilla) and even Star Wars includes Mecha in the form of the AT-AT and AT-ST walkers. Mecha is also featured in video games – the most notable being the Metal Gear Solid series, where mech suits called Metal Gear are used as weapons of mass destruction by different nations and factions.
How is MSG conventional of its genre?
Mobile Suit Gundam is very much Science Fiction, because it includes a lot of conventional themes from the Sci-Fi genre: it is set in the future, is based around advanced technology and includes space travel as a prominent theme.
It is conventional of Mecha as a subgenre because, firstly, it includes mech robots. It also features young people as it’s main characters – this is very common in anime because it is often aimed towards teenagers and young adults (Shonen anime is a clear example of this). However, it can depend on the anime. Some anime is clearly aimed at children, and other shows clearly include themes that are more suitable for an adult audience, like death. Actually, the creator of Mobile Suit Gundam originally wanted the show to include more serious themes, but it took eventually a direction that aimed the show towards children more. I will explain this in further detail in the ‘Audience’ section, however, I thought it necessary to talk about the age of the characters and viewers, because it is part of the genre of Mecha anime. Visually, Mecha also includes vibrant, saturated colours like red, blue and yellow. Generally, anime includes a lot of vibrant colours, because it is common belief that anime would be boring to look at if there was no colour. It is also harder to market an animation without colour to an audience of the 21st century. I think that mobile suit Gundam specifically uses such saturated primary and secondary colours in order to create more exaggerated visuals to fit in their over the top science fiction world. Also, a lot of scenes in Gundam are set in space and so primary colours stand out against that background a lot – colours in Gundam are used for practicality reasons, as well as being part of the show’s visual art. Examples below.
Examples of colour in Mobile Suit Gundam as a convention of it’s genre.
Mecha anime that came after Gundam 1979 are clearly influenced by its aesthetic.
Audience
The audience of Mobile Suit Gundam is young people; around ages 15 – 25. In Japan, Mobile Suit Gundam aired on Nagoya TV, a network that is known for airing anime from Bandai Namco Filmworks – formerly known as Sunrise. In America, Gundam aired on Toonami, a late night programming block on Cartoon Network’s adult-oriented Adult Swim channel – which ran from 12 A.M to 4 A.M on Saturday nights. This late night programming clearly shows that at least in America the show was marketed towards young adults, as children are not typically awake between 12 and 4 am. Anime is also commonly targeted towards teenagers and young people.
Narrative
This section is about the narrative of Mobile Suit Gundam.
Restricted vs Omniscient
A restricted narrative is a story in a movie or TV show that is told from the perspective of one character, and so the audience only sees what they see, and knows what they know. An omniscient narrative is a story in a movie or TV show that is told from an outside perspective. This kind of story could include a narrator, or is told from the point of view of multiple characters. That means that the audience could know more about the events of the story than the main character does.
Mobile Suit Gundam is an omniscient narrative, as the story often cuts between the protagonist’s and antagonist’s separate perspectives. There is also a narrator in a few of the episodes.
Audience Positioning
The position of the audience in mobile suit Gundam is always beside the main action in the story, often being with the main protagonist or antagonist. The audience see things that not all of the characters in the story would – for example, Char Anzable, the main villain of the series would not see Amuro Ray’s personal life on the White Base spaceship: he would only see Amuro whenever the two of them are fighting, and would not know about the deeper aspects of his life. However, due to the audience’s position in the narrative, we are able to see the moments of Amuro’s life that the villain cannot see, as well as the moments of the villain’s life that Amuro can’t see.
Mode of address
The mode of address in a narrative is the way that the narrative is told to the audience by the narrator, or whatever is telling the story. It is more commonly applied to books, where an author might write in informal colloquial language to the reader, or formal and academic language. The mode of addressing the audience may also be direct, or indirect – in a book, this may be where the author writes directly to the reader, versus just describing the events of the story for the reader to read as if there was no author. An indirect mode of address in acting for a film or stage production would be where the actor acts as though they do not know that the audience is there – the audience is an external viewer of the character’s life, which is assumed to be real and authentic, just how the life of a real person does not have any external viewers that follow the person around everywhere. This mode of address is much more common in films and TV shows. A direct mode of address would be where the character knows that the audience is there, and acts as such – perhaps even interacting with the audience. This can be seen in pieces of media such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, where the main character Ferris Bueller talks to the audience and narrates his own actions, rather than having his actions narrated by an external narrator, which would also be a form of direct mode of address.
Mobile Suit Gundam has mostly an informal and indirect mode of addressing the audience, the characters do not know that there is an audience watching them, and so they act as they usually would in their lives, informally. However, the beginning of the series has a narration to give context to the story, and this is very direct and formal to the viewer.
open/closed endings
Closed endings are endings to a story that cannot be disputed as to their events. All of the plot points and storylines are resolved and put to an end. An open ending to a story is usually ambiguous as to what happens, and often told in a more subjective manner. Not all of the storylines in an open ended narrative have to be resolved, and frequently aren’t. This is where a cliff-hanger ending to a story can lead to a sequel.
Mobile Suit Gundam has a closed ending, like most pieces of media. It ends with the end of the One Year War – the main conflict of the story – and all of the main characters re-united.
Character Archetypes
A character archetype is a role for characters in a story to play based on their influence on the progression of the story. This idea was first proposed by Vladimir Propp in the 19th century. Here are some of the archetypes:
- The Hero – the main character and hero of the story, who often has a quest. In Gundam ’79, the hero is Amuro Ray
- The Villain – the character who aims to stop the hero from succeeding. The villain of Gundam ’79 is Char Aznable.
- The Donor – a character who gives the hero an item to help them to succeed. The donor in this show is Paulo Cassius, he is a pilot of a Gundam suit who is injured, and gives his suit to Amuro.
- The Princess – the hero’s love interest or prize. The princess in Gundam is either Fraw Bow or Matilda Ajan.
- The Helper – the helper helps the hero. In Mobile suit Gundam the helpers are Fraw Bow, Hayato Kobayashi and the other crew members of the White Base spaceship.
Representation
Mobile Suit Gundam heavily represents war and the concept of space colonisation – humanity’s move into space and their population of other planets or structures built to support human life in space. In the show, the majority of humans (10 billion people out of around 11 billion) live on 8 satellites called ‘sides’ which orbit the Earth. The Sides are modelled after the O’Neill Cylinder, which is a conceptual space colony structure composed of two cylinders which rotate to create artificial gravity using centrifugal force imposed on its inner curved surface. The Sides also orbit the Earth at Earth’s Lagrange points – points in the Earth’s orbit that are ideal for satellites because it makes their orbit stable. The foundations and basis of Gundam in real scientific concepts creates a connection between the show’s science fiction and real life – the idea that one day the human race might live orbiting the earth in satellites as technology progresses.
Here is where this space colonisation becomes a problem, and it is represented in the show as a critique of war.
The Sides, the Moon, and Earth make up a region of space called the Earth Sphere, which is contested in the One Year War – A war between the Earth Federation and the separatist Principality of Zeon for control of the Earth Sphere. This war is devastating to humans everywhere – More than half of all of human population, 5.9 billion people, died. This shows that the proposed way of living for humanity, and future space travel altogether, would rely on cyclical violence and war to keep it alive – just like how modern structures of living (nation states) are supported by constant war and cyclical violence.
At the time Gundam was released in 1979, the Soviet Union was pursuing its invasion of Afghanistan – a war fought by Mujahideen insurgent militias against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. It is often called a ‘proxy war’ as the Mujahideen were funded by the USA and its allies, and the DRA was supported greatly by the Soviet Union. This war lay the foundations for many wars since – the Taliban emerged from this war, and so did Al Qaeda. Most importantly, this war killed up to two million Afghan citizens, and millions more fled the country as refugees. Upon that, the casualties from the conflict that came after this war is also massive. And for what?
To support powerful nations like the USA and the United Kingdom and, at the time, the USSR. Those powerful countries are founded on, and kept alive by, war. The United States has spent over fourteen trillion dollars on its military since the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 – half of that money going to Private Military Contractors. The money that the United States spends on its military is an investment of sorts: the US pays money and in return they get things like Oil which makes more money, or the establishment of a government that is beneficial to the US, and it can happen over and over again.
Mobile Suit Gundam is showing this cyclical violence but on a larger scale: the existence of the space colonies in Gundam creates a debate as to who has rightful power and control over them, and that creates war. Just how in the real world governments and military factions go to war for the control of a country – but the only losing side is the civillians – who see their homes destroyed and their families murdered.
Over all, the aim of Mobile Suit Gundam is to represent war as a destructive evil, rather than a righteous conquest as it is portrayed in other media. Generally, Mecha anime has very similar messages and represents similar themes – especially a popular show called Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Technical Analysis
This section of the blog post is a technical analysis of the TV show using some key media concepts.
Here is a the embedded clip I will be referencing:
It is the first minute of the first episode of Mobile Suit Gundam.
Cinematography
While there is no actual cinematography in Gundam because it is animated, the word cinematography could be used to describe the layout of each animated shot.
The first episode opens with an establishing shot of a space colony:
As the camera is panning over the colony, an explosion happens seemingly out of nowhere:
In the next sequence of shots, we see green spaceships attacking the space colony, and crashing it into the earth:
This sequence of shots is paired with narration in order to set the scene for the viewer and give context to the story that they are about to watch. Each shot in this opening monologue is on a huge scale: it shows giant spaceships, views of the earth from space, and entire cities in one frame. The grandness of this opening is to show how big the ongoing war is – how huge the weapons are, and how huge are the casualties that come from them. The use of shots on such a large scale also shows the vastness of space, which is the main setting for this war. The battlefield goes on for hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
Sound
The narration that the viewer hears over the footage explains the One Year War, the current state of humanity, and the current losses – The war has already been happening for 8 months up until this point. The narrator states: “people were horrified at the indescribable atrocities that had been committed in the name of independence.”
This sound is non-diegetic: it is outside of the world of the TV series, and its purpose is to give the context needed for the viewer to watch the show. However, the narrator is still voice acting – he speaks very boldly and seriously in order to fit with the tone of the show’s opening scene. The way that he would talk about a war would be different from the way that he would talk about something less serious, and so the narrator’s voice acting adds to the atmosphere created for the audience in the first scene.
Before this first scene is the show’s opening credits. Like many TV series, especially anime TV series, Mobile Suit Gundam’s opening credits are accompanied by a song. Here is the clip embedded:
The song is called ‘Tobe! Gundam’ or ‘Fly! Gundam’.
It is in an upbeat 70s disco style song, popular music at the time, which contrasts the depressing war theme and messages of the show. This contrast gives Mobile Suit Gundam a style specific to science fiction media from this time period: it is over the top, stylized and fictional, but if you look deeper into the content of the show, it has a real message behind it. Similar to things like Star Trek, Star Wars and such.
This contrast also makes the show suitable for older children and young people – it is suitable to be aired on a network that shows othr anime aimed at a teenage audience.
Lighting
The lighting in this scene is low-key: space is set as a backdrop for many of these shots and so they are quite dark, with the subjects of the shots providing a contrast against the dark blue background. there is no light source that is seen directly, but the audience can assume that everything in shot is being indirectly lit from the sun – light behaves differently in space as it does the earth’s atmosphere. There are also many artificial light sources in the exterior shots of the space colony: those being windows, or lights on the outside of the ship as a stylistic choice.
This still is a good example of the lighting in this opening scene.
The lighting here clearly tells the audience that they are looking at an object in space. the space colony seen under this low key lighting creates shadows that obscure parts of the structure. This creates a sense of mystery for the audience, this is their first introduction to the world of Mobile Suit Gundam and the large spaceships being attacked by an unknown force are intriguing – the audience wants to know more about what is going on, and the low key lighting adds to this atmosphere.
Editing
The editing shows these huge scale shots cut together in a chronological sequence. Each shot shows slow movement, cutting to more slow movement and each shot goes on for several seconds – in fact, the first establishing shot is on screen for the most time in this scene. I think that it is edited together in this way to show the action happening on a large scale, but in a short period of time. The space colony slowly moves towards the Earth and, in the next shot, it crashes into a city. Even though this would have realistically happened over several hours, it is edited down to being a few seconds and this is to convey the important information to the audience quickly but clearly so that the main story can start with the audience knowing the background information.
Mise en Scene
In this scene, everything on screen tells the audience something about the world of the show. The green mobile suits seen floating in front of the green spaceships is a particularly important example of this:
The fact that the suits are green shows the audience that they are for military use, as many military uniforms are green. This khaki colour green – an olive drab – separates the mobile suits from being seen as robots, or astronauts, and they look more akin to a tank. The same is true for the spaceships: the fact that they are green makes them clearly warships, if they had been white or blue the audience could mistake them for any kind of spaceship with any purpose.
Also, the way that each spaceship is placed in shot shows that they are in a formation – they are attacking all together as one force, rather than separate. (Shown below.)
The design of each spaceship also places them firmly within the style of the show.
How have all of the above shaped my ideas for my own culture product?
Through researching and watching Mobile Suit Gundam, I now understand a lot more about the show from where I first started. This will be important when I am creating my animation, as I will be able to reference the animation, colours and backgrounds of Mobile Suit Gundam to make my animation fit with the show’s style.