Anime / Mobile Suit Gundam

I pray, pray to bring near the new day

"It is the year 0079 of the Universal Century. A half-century has passed since Earth began moving its burgeoning population into gigantic orbiting space colonies. A new home for mankind, where people are born and raised... and die."

— Opening Narration

The one that started it all.

Mobile Suit Gundam (Kidou Senshi Gundam, lit. "Mobile Soldier Gundam", also known as Gundam 0079 to distinguish it from the franchise as a whole) is the original Gundam show, created by Yoshiyuki Tomino. It started in 1979 as a planned 52-episode series, but it was cut down to 43 due to the show pulling in horrible ratings.^note Actually cut down to 39, but the producers managed to bargain for a one-month extension to actually finish the story. However, the merchandise for the show sold rather well, allowing the series to go straight into syndication, where it found its audience. A largely reanimated Compilation Movie trilogy successfully convinced the people with the money to further develop the series, and Mobile Suit Gundam eventually spawned a massive franchise.

The series takes place in the year 0079^note read as "double oh seventy-nine" of the Universal Century, during a war between the Earth Federation that governs Earth and most of the space colonies and the Principality of Zeon, a group of colonies that declared independence from the Federation. Despite coexisting more-or-less peacefully for years, Zeon launched a surprise attack using their devastatingly effective new enormous humanoid combat vehicles known as mobile suits, catching the Federation completely off guard, decimating the Federation's military and then proceeding to wipe out half of humanity with a combination of nerve gas, nuclear weapons, and intentionally deorbiting a space colony as a makeshift Orbital Bombardment. When this failed to bring the Federation to its knees, Zeon follows up by invading Earth.

Months later, after the war has dragged into a stalemate, the Federation is testing a new warship (an assault carrier named the White Base) and a highly advanced mobile suit known as the Gundam when they come under attack by a small Zeon force. Local resident Amuro Ray, an Ordinary High-School Student, ends up Falling into the Cockpit and piloting the Gundam to fend off the Zeon attack. With most of the Federation staff killed during the battle, Amuro and a group of surviving locals are forced to crew the White Base themselves in order to survive.

From there, this unlikely group journeys across Earth and space, going up against the Zeon forces and a variety of enemy Ace Pilots arrayed against them, in a classic series that is both a war drama and a Coming of Age Story, focusing simultaneously on the horrors of war and the gradual maturing of its teenage cast from frightened, desperate children simply fighting to survive into a tight-knit crew of Unlikely Heroes who manage, through skill, luck, and determination, to change the course of the One Year War.

The original Real Robot series, Mobile Suit Gundam literally created a genre, and eventually spawned an entire franchise. There an accompanying novelization and the first post-series production was three compilation movies. Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin is a manga reimagining. Cucuruz Doan's Island is a movie remake of episode 15 of the series, but set in the Origin continiuty.

Zeta Gundam was a direct sequel and continuation of a new conflict after the One Year War, with Gundam ZZ and eventually Char's Counterattack concluding the overall stories of characters introduced in this series. There are several OVAs and one ONA set in the same time period during the One Year War: The 08th MS Team, Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, MS IGLOO, and Gundam Thunderbolt. More details can be found on the Gundam franchise page.

The show's production itself was comically fictionalized in Gundam Sousei.

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This show provides examples of:

• Alas, Poor Villain: Ramba Ral, Crowley Hamon, and any Zabi other than Gihren and arguably Kycilia are played for sympathy at the last.
• Achilles in His Tent: Amuro abandons the White Base twice. The first time (figuratively) he refuses to fight, causing Bright to slap him back to sanity. The second time, Amuro physically deserts the White Base when Bright threatens to take him off the Gundam.
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • The Compilation Movie trilogy, which are often considered to have higher production values than the series. They streamline the plot (albeit at the expense of crucial character and plot development), and cut out many elements that Tomino didn't really want in there to start with, such as the the G-Fighter/Armour and Gundam Hammer. They also improve on the animation, which was not great in the original series.
  • The novelization is compressed and skips the Earth-bound portion of the plot and cuts out a lot of the characters and mecha (Zeon only has two MS, the Zaku II and Rick Dom).
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • In Kazuhisa Kondo's manga adaptation of the series, the Gouf shows up in a cutaway to Gadem's supply ship as they go to deliver the replacement Zaku II's to Char; the soldiers remarking on it as a new ground type to be shipped to M'Quve's forces. At this point in the story Side 7 is still being attacked and in the original the Gouf didn't show up until Ramba Ral's attack which happened when they got to Earth.
  • This happens for a plot point as well. In the original series, Matilda considers if Amuro might have Psychic Powers but besides a flashback or two it gets de-emphasized until Side 6 once Newtypes became a major plot point for Amuro and Lalah's abilities. The Compilation and things like the game adaptations with Journey to Jaburo rewrote early dialogue such as shortly before Amuro's desertion to insert hints to the Newtype plotline much earlier.
• Adaptational Wimp: The Compilation movies changed a few skill levels.
  • M'Quve is just Armchair Military in this version and his mechs, the Adzam and Gyan, were Adapted Out(although Amuro does have a run-in with his Gyan's bombs before battling Char). His command accomplishments are roughly the same, but him shooting down the White Base was also removed.
  • In the Series the Doms' armor was explicitly tougher than previous Zeon suits and could No-Sell the Gundam Vulcans. In the films Amuro destroys a Rick Dom from Conscon's squadron using the Vulcans.
• Aerith and Bob: Standard names like Ryu, Kai, Matilda, etc. put alongside Kycilia, Dozel, Artesia, and, of course, Bright. In a funny twist to this, Tomino, the director and writer, decided to name the lead character Amuro because he thought it was exotic and a made up name. Turns out it is the name of a Japanese island and is in fact a real name.
  • According to a 2005 interview with Tomino, the reason for these strange and exotic names was because he wanted to see if the studio bigwigs were actually paying attention to the series; if they were, then they would be confused and call out strange and weird names like "Gelgoog" and "M'Quve." As it turns out, they weren't; all they cared about was how well the toys were selling.
• Age-Gap Romance: Hamon and Ramba Ral. While it certainly seems to be a May–December Romance from their appearances, Ral's much Younger Than He Looks and is actually in his 30s, his lined face and gray hair just makes him look older. There's still a significant age gap between the two.
• Agony of the Feet:
  • When Sayla takes the Gundam and takes on Ramba Ral's Gouf he surprises her and tears Gundam's foot in half. The blow basically cripples her as the Gundam's stabilization measures were neutralized.
  • Kai and the Guncannon's fight with Gaia and his Dom ends with Gaia blowing the Guncannon's foot off with a missile.
  • While the Guntank technically doesn't have feet, its main method of ambulation, its treads, are destroyed three times: during Hamon's counterattack, the second engagement with the Black Tri-Stars, and the Solomon Offensive.
• Agri World: In the lore of the Universal Century, certain space colonies are devoted to farming. In the backstory leading up to Mobile Suit Gundam, an accident in one causing famine is part of what led to the One Year War.
• All There in the Manual: Most of the One-Year War is backstory, only described in the novelization but still considered canon. Examples include the Battle of Loum, Operation British and General Revil's "Zeon is Exhausted" speech.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Twice during the series; Ramba Ral's assault on the White Base, and the Zeon's attack on Jaburo.
• Alternative Calendar: The Universal Century.
• Anti-Villain: Several examples, but most famously Ramba Ral. Often overlaps with Punch-Clock Villain and My Country, Right or Wrong.
• Anyone Can Die: The series was, after all, created by a man who was nicknamed Kill 'Em All. In this case there are only a few main character deaths, though.
• Apocalypse How: Stellar/Societal Disruption. Over half of humanity's population is killed in the One Year War, but humanity survives and is able to rebuild.
• Armor Is Useless: Zig-Zagged. Gundam's armor is one of it's best assets and allows it to No-Sell a number of crippling blows that would destroy other mechs. All other Mobile Suits use varying degrees of armor, with the Doms constructed to be especially tough. Unfortunately Gundam's introduction is when Beam Weaponry starts to become more and more standardized and that makes all of the armor in the series useless. The shields the Zaku's used for defense could be pierced easily, the Doms could be taken down in one hit and even the Gundam itself can't fully defend against the Zeong and is destroyed. By series end offense was one of the key factors in Mobile Suits rather than defense; the Gelgoogs and GM's all utilized beam weapons and tried to avoid getting hit rather than defending themselves. There were some counters however: Federation utilized particle spread to disrupt beam blasts and the Big Zam had Deflector Shields.
• Arrested for Heroism: In episode 4, the crew of the White Base make it to Federation territory, having saved the new prototype carrier and mobile suit. They are promptly arrested for handling classified material (White Base and the Gundam) without appropriate clearance.
• The Artifact: The TV series still carried many Super Robot elements. The later movie versions retconned many of them away. The YMS-15 Gyan is an example of a overly stylized design based on a chivalrous knight that was retconned out of the movies because it felt out-of-place in the now-established Real Robot Genre. Other super robot-esque features like the Gundam's modular design still remained, albeit with fewer combination gimmicks.
• Artistic License – Physics: According to the novel the "Colony Laser" is a hollowed out colony filled with a large number of mirrors with a single focal point. Therefore the Colony Laser is not, in fact, a laser. That said, the Gryps Colony Laser that shows up in Zeta Gundam is a bona-fide laser cannon the size of a space colony, so the Novel may just be the odd one out.
• The Atoner: Zaku pilot Cucuruz Doan was involved in an offensive that left numerous civilians dead. When ordered to execute the children of those civilians, he defected and took the children into hiding to raise them.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Zeon's approach to Mobile Suit design. Zeon made a lot of cool looking suits, easily more than the Federation, but while the Federation suits were well rounded, Zeon design often had a ton of issues. Zeon's Mobile Suit production was heavily privatized with different companies pumping out different designs each eating up resources in a desperate attempt to build more impressive weapons. The Gouf and Gyan were good as one off designs, but never saw major production^note The Gouf did see limited production, and for a while even replaced the Zaku as the main enemy grunt mech in the series, while the Gyan was passed over in favor of the Gelgoog because they were too specialized for dueling. The Dom succeeded in every way to the Zaku II, but the innovation paled in comparison to the leaps that the Federation made developing the GM's. Super weapon after super weapon was developed, mobile armors cycled in and out, and the entire production line of aquatic mobile suits was rendered useless when Zeon lost their foothold on earth. The fighting to get the next model out delayed the production of the much more practical Gelgoog (a Zeon MS that finally came standard with beam weaponry, armor, and mobility to rival the Gundam) up until the end of the war and by that point it was too late.
• Battle Chant: The Toonami opening credits (which replaced the original opening on the initial Region 1 DVDs starting with volume 4) show Gihren Zabi at Garma Zabi's funeral leading the Zeon soldiers in the chant "Hail Zeon!"
• BFG:
  • The signature beam rifles of the Federation forces are effectively a portable version of what are usually cannons aboard ships. This is highlighted in the second episode when Amuro lands a shot on a Zaku's cockpit and blows the whole thing from residual core damage, making Char bug out of there after seeing its power.
  • A number of Mobile Suits carry bazookas as optional weapons. These can often destroy Mobile Suits in one shot, and do bad things to enemy ships. The Dom and Rick Dom carry even bigger bazookas as standard weapons.
• Big Brother Mentor: Ryu Jose, and to a degree, Bright.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Zabi family seems to have a penchant for having goals and ambitions that clash with each other to the point where they are willing to backstab their fellow members; the Deikuns aren't far behind.
• Bittersweet Ending: Amuro fights Char to a draw but is about to let himself die until he hears his friends' voices and is able to reunite with his adoptive family. Char survives, finishes his "revenge" by killing Kycilia, and escapes but is separated from his beloved sister Sayla forever. To add insult to injury, the Cool Ship, White Base is destroyed, along with the Gundam, Guncannon and Guntank, leaving the protagonists without a home to go back to. On a larger scale, the destruction of A Baoa Qu and the death of Kycilia causes the remnants of Zeon to sue for peace, but the casualties of the war were horrific, and as the grievances between the Earthnoids and the Spacenoids were never really resolved, the war between the Federation and Zeon isn't really over, it's just on hold.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Though it did fall to Grey-and-Gray Morality when it comes to side materials and individual levels, but on the whole, Zeon is portrayed as The Empire with Putting on the Reich stylings while the Earth Federation is portrayed as more benevolent, but their mistreatment of space colonies led to conditions that would spark the One Year War.
• Bling of War: Mobile Suit Variations reveals that several of the high-ranking Zeon officers had custom-built mobile suits, many of which had highly ornate engravings and other detailing. Of particular note are Dozle Zabi's custom Zaku II and M'Quve's downright gaudy custom Gouf.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The White Base girls — Sayla (blonde), Mirai (brunette), and Fraw (redhead).
• Boom, Headshot!: For the most part, Gundam tends to avert this as mobile suit cockpits are actually placed in the machine's torso. The head usually only contains sensors and cameras so destroying it tends to only blind the mobile suit. Humourously however, the final episode both reverts and re-inverts this trope. Amuro manages to destroy the torso of Char's Zeong and thinks he scored a killshot...only to then see the Zeong's now detached head fly upward and attack him, and realize that for once, Zeon's engineers put the cockpit in the head this time. In turn, Char blasts the Gundam's head off (along with its left arm) to which Amuro retorts that Char only destroyed his main camera. And during the same episode we get two examples of this performed on humans. Kycilia blasts a neat little hole in Gihren's head as revenge for the latter killing their father Degwin. Not long after that though, as she's retreating from A' Baoa Qu, Kycilia ends up on the receiving end of one from Char. With a rocket launcher. While Char is not in any sort of MS, free-floating in zero gravity, blasting said rocket from a considerable distance straight through the windscreen of Kycilia's warship, straight dead center into Kycilia's head, blowing it right off. Wow.
• Bootstrapped Theme: Soldiers of Sorrow/Ai Senshi. It's not the series' theme, yet it pretty much became the theme of the entire franchise, even becoming the BGM for the 30th anniversary video. Being a perfect example of Lyrical Dissonance probably helped.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Federation's approach to Mobile Suits, while Zeon's very much Awesome, but Impractical pumping out a variety of different suits with different specializations and abilities. The Federation standardized their model, a downscaled version of the Gundam called the GM. It isn't a very flashy mobile suit, but it does have the basics: beam sword, shield, beam rifle and maneuverable in both Earthbound and space engagements. Coupled with the Ball Mobile suits they can be quite a formidable army, especially as Zeon never found an effective mass produced counter to the beam rifles. While Zeon pumped out esoteric designs like the Goggs, the Z'Goks, the Acguys (all of which were only deployed on Earth), the Federation had one design in mind and just mass produced it, ultimately winning them the war. The GM concept persisted into later series and other One Year War stories, with variations always coming across as a modification to a sturdy, versatile basic unit.
  • The Gundam itself is really just a solid mobile suit design with heavy armor, high performance and flexible weaponry. That design includes a lot of optional support craft and combination modes, but it doesn't have any of the Crippling Overspecialization that plagued many of the experimental Zeon suits.
• Bridge Bunnies: Mirai as White Base's pilot, Sayla as Communications Officer later replaced by Fraw Bow, plus two male navigators who play no role in the plot outside of navigating.
• Briefcase Full of Money: Late in the series, Char sends a briefcase full of gold to his sister Sayla in an attempt to persuade her to leave White Base and the Federation military. She turns it over to Bright.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The entire White Base crew knows and fears Char Aznable, the Red Comet. Conversely, for most of the series Char doesn't even know who Amuro is, and they only meet face-to-face very late in the series (Char helps Amuro pull his car out of a mud puddle). Of course, after Amuro kills Lalah while aiming for Char, the whole thing becomes very personal for both of them.
• But Not Too Foreign: Word of God is that Amuro is half-Japanese and half-North American, but over the years they've flip-flopped on whether his mother was American, Canadian, or Mexican.
• Char Clone: The original, actually, from which all Char Clones derive.
• Character Development: What set it aside from several other Humongous Mecha shows of its time, aside of the Real Robot aspect.
• Colony Drop: Operation British in the back story is the Trope Namer. Zeon nerve gassed a space colony, and then deorbited it in an attempt to destroy the Federation HQ in South America (which, being an Elaborate Underground Base whose exact location was secret, was effectively invulnerable to everything up to and including nukes). Unfortunately for them, the Federation intervened and inflicted enough damage on their missile that it broke up in the atmosphere, with the main colony cylinder landing on Sydney, Australia.
  • The effect is pretty terrifying. The blast was 60,000 megatons, devastated southeastern Australia (killing 10 million people in Sydney alone), and left a 500 kilometer crater in the continent that leaves a massive gulf along the coastline. Canonically, between the impact and the environmental damage dealt in the aftermath, half the Earth's population ended up dead.
• Combining Mecha: The Gundam is formed from three separate parts; later in the series, even more optional parts are added.
  • The Guncannon and Guntank are also merely plug-and-play parts that can be attached to a Core Fighter.
  • The Core Fighter, a little jet with anemic firepower, can combine with the G-Fighter in the TV series and the Core Booster in the movies.
• Compilation Movie: Three of them.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu:
  • When Ramba Ral first appears in the Gouf, Amuro can barely hold his own and is nearly taken down with it. Later, Goufs appear somewhat regularly and Amuro can destroy several of them at a time. Possibly justified by Ramba Ral being an ace pilot and Amuro not being used to the Gouf's speed and weapons.
  • Char's Gelgoog gives Amuro some trouble, but the mass produced Gelgoogs in the final battle go down with ease. Justified when one of Kycilia's subordinates tells her that the Gelgoogs aren't as effective as they ought to be because most of the Gelgoog pilots are inexperienced.
• Creator Provincialism: The ranks of both the Earth Federation and Zeon are identical to those of the Imperial Japanese forces.
• Cut Short: Narrowly averted. The show was initially designed for 48 episodes but was intended to be canceled after 38. The staff managed to convince the studio to give them a few more episodes to wrap up the story. This did result in a number of truncated plot points. Challia Bull gets an episode and episode name to himself, but he is at best a minor character and is defeated before the end. The narrator starts pulling double duty in explaining both backstory and heavier exposition. Newtypes themselves appear to just explode in importance after having little set-up.
• Cyber Cyclops: Zeon's mobile suits. The Zaku series is probably the most famous for Humongous Mecha as a whole.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Amuro is killed in Tomino's novelization. However, this wasn't due to his "Kill 'Em All" attitude but rather because he didn't anticipate any sequels, and he has said that he wouldn't have done it if he knew better.
  • Hayato, as well. In fact, of the three main pilots, only Kai survives in the novelization.
  • In Kondo's manga adaptation the soldier that Amuro shoots in self-defense in front of his mother is killed instead of only wounded, making the argument with Kamaria take on a different light.
• Death by Falling Over: Happens more than once. First Garma's girlfriend Icelina slips and falls off the top of the aircraft she was chasing after the White Base on in an ill-conceived attempt to avenge his death (though this part was cut from the compilation). Later on, Amuro's dad falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his neck. Eerily, this is also how M'Quve's voice actor died in Real Life.
• Depending on the Artist:
  • Nobody can seem to decide if the Gouf's left hand has functional fingers with small guns mounted at the ends or if it's simply a (more technically realistic but silly) five barreled machine gun stylized to look like a hand. Its debut episode further muddies things by having the right hand also alternate between both.
  • This ran rampant throughout the series^note animation teams included a few in-house teams at Sunrise, Studio Z (who would go uncredited after episode 4, with animator Shigenobu Nagasaki being a particular offender of the "Wide Gundam" error), Artland, Nakamura Productions (who would become a frequent contractor for Sunrise after this series), and Anime Friend, who would become infamous for their work on Super Dimension Fortress Macross a few years later, resulting in some absolutely wonky drawings that affected fight scenes and the overall appearance of a given episode. In some cases, this was for the worse, as this helped to result in one episode — Cucuruz Doan's Island — to be taken out of circulation and be treated like a black mark on the franchise^note The aforementioned Anime Friend, the episode's animators, were also dropped from rotation after this.
• Due to the Dead: After the Black Tri-Stars attack and both sides take casualties they go about honoring their dead. The White Base crew and Matilda's unit all share a moment of silence and salute as the ship takes off to pay respects to Matilda and the other soldiers that died. In the next episode Gaia and Ortega construct a small grave for Mash, say a few words, and discharge their guns in salute; M'Quve is dismissive of the whole affair.
• Doomed Hometown: Side 7.
• Downer Ending: In the novelization of the series, Amuro is actually killed by a random beam bazooka blast from behind during the Battle of A Baoa Qu. The novelization differs in several other points (such as actual use of the G3 Gundam), but this is the most shocking change.
  • So much so, Super Robot Wars Advance actually uses the novelization Amuro's fate as part of the Alternate Universe plot.
  • And of all things, SD Gundam G Generation DS used that downer ending to set up its Villain Route.
• Double Weapon: The Gelgoog, Zeon's answer to the Gundam, has a double-ended beam naginata, one of the earliest examples of this in speculative fiction.
• Dub Name Change: In the original (1980) Italian dub, Amuro is Peter Rei (not Ray), Mirai is Flammet, and Fraw Bow is Mirka, among other name changes.
• Dub Pronunciation Change: The English dub of the movie trilogy pronounced the title Gundam with an emphatic "Gun-Damn", while most works pronounce it with a more relaxed "Gundumb".
• Early-Installment Weirdness: A lot of classic Gundam tropes are absent, ignored or otherwise at odds with the style of tone of the franchise. The series can have something of a rough around the edges feeling, given that Tomino was in the process of figuring things out.
  • No Mid-Season Upgrade — the closest is some dialogue indicating passive modifications to the original Gundam to handle Amuro's burgeoning skill as an Ace Pilot.
  • Only one Gundam. The Guncannon and Guntank are peripheral tech associated with the Gundam that better explains how it is a Super Prototype, they had lesser prototypes leading into the Gundam. The Guntank especially is a humanoid body on tank treads, far different from the types of mobile suits seen in later installments.
  • Several non-mobile suits military gear like tanks and planes are featured and plenty of battle scenes do not revolve around actual mobile suit battle. In-universe, the (rather logical) explanation for all of this is that the One Year War is the very beginning of Mobile Suits, and for technological and logistical reasons it's easier to keep fighting with what they had.
  • Heavier emphasis on Gundam auxiliaries with the G Fighter and associated combination modes. Technology Porn was a bit more consistent in later shows with the emphasis on the mobile suits and their weapons, rather than any support vehicles. Likewise, there are some mobile suit, ships and other military hardware that look more exotic and stylized, the Gyan is a straightforward medieval knight and many Zeon ships almost look alien compared to the more functional Federation ships.
  • Personnel rifles behaved like beam rifles, something that would never appear again in the series as the metaphysics got more established. All future installments would use standard kinetic weaponry for human combatants instead, and would go decidedly retro for several of them, Zeon in particular naturally having an affinity for weapons similar to those of Nazi Germany.
  • Universal Century-wise, while the loose idea of Psychic Powers was introduced fairly early on through a throwaway line by Matilda that sticks with Amuro, the actual concept of Newtypes wouldn't be introduced until towards the end of the series with Amuro's growth and Lalah's introduction. From Zeta Gundam onwards, Newtypes would become a regular topic and plotline basis in the franchise and even retroactively more emphasized earlier than before in the Compilation Movie re-releases and video game adaptations of the original series.
  • The show is largely a War Is Hell drama, but it has some broader comedy and slapstick that is really out of place and more in line with other '70s era animated comedies. This mostly centers around a trio of orphans running around the White Base, sometimes cheering on Amuro and the Gundam like it is a sports game. While other Gundam shows may be a bit lighter and funny, it is usually more naturally integrated into the tone of the show.
  • The use of jetpacks under gravity is something that only really appeared in this show and pretty much never appeared again. All other works set in the same or other timeline's show them as only powerful enough to use in microgravity.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After spending several months fighting a war into which he was conscripted against his will, and running the gauntlet against Dozle and Char in a series of increasingly physically and mentally draining battles that climax with him getting stabbed in the shoulder and coming close to giving up on life altogether, the story ends with Amuro floating in space towards the surviving White Base crew, who joyfully welcome him home with open arms.
• Elite Mooks: Zeon's foot soldiers and Zaku II suits are the regular mooks, and several elite groups and newer mechs show up to give the heroes a harder time.
  • Ramba Ral introduces the Gouf to the series and much later it shows up in larger quantities. While the Gundam can still beat them, they're tougher than the Zakus.
  • Ramba Ral's soldiers pose quite a challenge when compared to Char or Garma's men. Though they're largely with the same resources (only 4 Zakus were under Ral's command for his entire tenure as a villain) they prove to be very powerful and skilled adversaries with Ral's final attack costing a lot of White Base's personnel and Hamon's final attack leaving Ryu dead.
  • The Black Tri-Stars are a trio of powerful soldiers all showing off the new Dom type mobile suit. In their debut they give White Base and Matilda's staff quite the fight even with the new upgrades for Gundam culminating in Matilda's death.
• Energy Weapons: Mostly based on Minovsky reaction-derived mega-particles, though there's lasers here and there.
  • The Gelgoog debuts at the end of the war as Zeon's top Mobile Suit. Though it's performance isn't stellar compared to previous suits partly because of how skilled the White Base crew has gotten, partly because of the lack of experienced fighters to crew the suits, and partly because the series was wrapping up and the Gelgoog could only get a good showing with Char. It is one of the better Zeon weapons and it's notable for finally being the suit that Zeon mass-produced beam rifles for. Later series set around this time frame would retroactively demonstrate that the Gelgoog really was a cut above the other mass-produced Zeon suits.
• Engineered Public Confession: How General Elran gets caught - Amuro corners him with incriminating evidence whilst the general's soldiers (who Amuro had warned beforehand) monitor the cameras in his office.
• Establishing Character Moment: Ramba Ral's introduction in episode 12 really hammers home who he is and how the audience should feel about him. He attacks White Base from reentry to the planet forcing them to retreat. His attitude to the conflict is entirely businessman like; he's firm and clever but also a pretty good guy to work for. He debuts the Gouf and matches Amuro in combat and when routed his wife Hamon organizes the retreat. It's notable that when he went into combat his side had no casualties and the Red Shirt Zakus and Capsule Pilots all made it back alive.
• Everybody Cries: The White Base crew is left in tears after Ryu's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Evil Is Bigger: If the Braw Bro, Elmeth, and Big Zam are any indicator, someone at Zeon's department of design likes to build large. This is justified, however: The Brow Bro and Elmeth were designed around the use of psy-commu weapons, then in its infancy, which forced them to be larger than Mobile Suits. The Big Zam was designed to be able to take a whole fleet on by itself, and is big in order to fit everything it needs.
• Exact Words: A treaty signed in the first few weeks of the conflict stated that they wouldn't use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against each other, in an attempt to avoid rampant use of weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, Zeon was more than happy to use a Colony Drop. Later in the series both the Federation and Zeon developed powerful mirror-addled lasers with comparable destructive power to a nuclear weapon.
• Falling into the Cockpit: Amuro, even when his dad was the one who built the Gundam itself. To a lesser extent, the entire White Base crew; at age 19, Bright was the most junior officer of the White Base's original crew until a Zeon attack left him as acting captain.
• Fanservice:
  • The Char Shower Scene. Beyond just being fanservice, it's the only time in the entire original series that his face is fully visible and not hidden behind his signature mask, helmet, or under a space helmet.
  • Amuro is not only introduced when he's not dressed, stays in his undershirt when he rebels, and tends to not be fully dressed whenever he works on something mechanical, he spends the vast majority of the episode "The Island of Cucuruz Doan" wandering around in his initial undershirt and underpants, as well as swimming with only the latter on.
  • Throughout the series, Mirai, Fraw Bow, and Sayla all get shower or bath scenes that have no connection whatsoever to the plot.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Throughout the show, the efficiency of the Zeon forces is frequently hampered by several of their leaders being involved in constant political power struggles against each other, leading to problems such as officers getting backstabbed in the heat of battle or supplies being conspicuously delayed when they are needed the most. It is often suggested White Base would be facing even more insurmountable odds if Zeon could actually pull themselves together for once and stop their low-intensity in-fighting.
• The Federation: The Earth Federation, naturally.
• Fictional Geneva Conventions: The Antarctic Treaty sets out the laws of war for both the Federation and Zeon. It's treated more as a guideline.
• Finger Firearms: The Gouf comes equipped with cannon fingers and the Zeong has laser ones.
• Foreshadowing: Amuro and certain other combatants like Sayla tend to have sudden moments of reflexive expertise, even if it seems implausible at best with how fast they might recover from damage prior. Later in the series, it even tends to have some kind of visual effect accompanying them, albeit in multiple formats. The last arcs reveal this to be their latent Newtype capabilities awakening within them, and refines the effect to the now-famous flash and sound that the rest of the UC entries kept.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum: The super napalm used in the second episode; a mecha-scaled flamethrower would have been awesome and useful, if impractical in vacuum and limited in ammunition. Somewhat rectified in recent years, as newer video games included it as part of Gundam's arsenal, as well as its inclusion in the newest Gundam MG model kit.
• Full-Name Basis: Everyone calls him "Ramba Ral". Nobody calls him just "Ramba". Sometimes (in the series) they call him just "Ral", but mostly it's "Ramba Ral". Also Challia Bull, and often, but not always, Fraw Bow.
• Full-Potential Upgrade: The RX 78-2 needed multiple upgrades due to Amuro's growing capabilities, the best-known of which is the Magnet(ic) Coating on its joints to make them react faster. Of course, even this wasn't enough, and the NT-1 "Alex" was designed just for him.
• Furo Scene: Sayla got a bath scene.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The wires around the Zaku II and Gouf's faces invoke this trope, looking like breathing tubes and adding to their evil militaristic designs.
• Generational Trauma:
  • Most famously the effects of the devastating One Year War reverberate throughout the decades of the Universal Century. Part of this is due to the sheer loss of life (5.8 billion people lost their lives, over half the entire population of the entire Earth Sphere), part of this is due to the horrific destruction unleashed (many of the destroyed colonies and Sides are simply left as haunted ruins, with little interest and attempts at rebuilding and recolonising them), and partly due to the Lensman Arms Race begun by the creation of the titular Gundam as well as the development of Psyco (Psychic Communication) technology. There are still stubborn Zeon remnants from the One Year War active as late as 0094, almost 20 years after the war ended. Worse, many of these remnants have raised families and their children have inherited their hatred of the Earth Federation, despite not even being born when the War took place.
  • The ideas (and assassination) of Zeon Zum Deikun likewise haunt the Universal Century for decades. Zeon developed the ideas of Ere-ism (i.e. Earth is sacred as the origin of mankind, and mankind ought to leave it to recover and take to the stars) and Side-ism (i.e. the space colonies have the right to be independent of the Earth Federation rather than be second class citizens), and also put forth the theory of Newtypes (i.e. by expanding into space, humanity would evolve into a "new type" of mankind). His ideas continue to be utilised by various factions as justification for all sorts of atrocities, such as the Titans accusing anyone sympathetic to his ideas as rebels to be killed on sight, to numerous Spacenoid organisations invoking his name, to his own son Casval Rem Deikun (aka Red Comet Char Aznable) attempting to drop the asteroid Axis on Earth to cause a nuclear winter and force humanity to leave Earth for good. Even as late as UC0149, almost 70 years after Zeon's death, the Zanscare Empire adopt part of his ideals during their own brutal grab for power.
  • The Zabi Family, who ruled Side 3 and the Principality of Zeon during the One Year War era, likewise cast a long shadow. Several antagonist factions continued to fight on in their name. ^note In Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, both Admiral Delaz and Anavel Gato continue to believe in Gihren Zabi's ideals, while Glemy Toto of Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ claimed to be his successor or cloned son. Sole Survivor Mineva Lao Zabi, daughter of Dozle Zabi, is painfully aware of the power of her family name, as she was propped up as the figurehead of Axis Zeon during both the Gryps and First Neo Zeon Wars. When she becomes involved in the Laplace Box incident, simply the fact she was being held aboard a Federation ship was enough to cause the Zeon loyalists to retreat rather than risk her being harmed. She eventually resolves to use her family name to actually do some good but also laments that she would've much rather been allowed to be a normal girl.
• Genius Bruiser: Prince Dozle Zabi is 7' feet of pure Zabi muscle and leads his troops in person heroically in the Battle of Solomon. Might be a bit of a Gentle Giant, since he truly cared for his family (namely his little brother Garma, his wife Zenna and his daughter Mineva) and was apparently well-loved by his subordinates. Thank God Mineva didn't take after her father in appearance.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: The infamous Bright Slap, delivered by Bright to Amuro, was the original Trope Namer. We also have Sleggar and Ryu mastering this technique. Somewhat humorously, for how famous the original incident's become it didn't work as intended, with Amuro going AWOL within episodes.
• Giant Mook: The mobile armors that show up tend to give the Gundam a little more trouble just by sheer size. The last major weapon deployed, the Zeong, is technically a mobile suit but has the firepower of a mobile armor and is twice the size of the Gundam.
• Hate Sink: Gihren Zabi, the de-facto dictator of Zeon, is the first main villain of the franchise and one of the most despicable. A cold man that underestimates his enemies, Gihren is the man responsible for the One Year War, leading to the death of half of humanity. Turning his brother's funeral into a militarist speech, Gihren kills his own father alongside General Revil to avoid an armistice. Confronted by his sister, Gihren is apathetic at her rage at the death of their father. A megalomaniac that uses hypocritical rhetoric about liberating the Colonies while murdering their population, Gihren had plans to reduce the population of Earth to less than one billion to ensure his complete control over the Earth Sphere. The biggest mass murderer of the Universal Century, Gihren's tyrannical legacy haunted the Earth Sphere even beyond his death.
• Helping Hands: The Zeong mobile suit can disconnect its arms at the elbow (they're connected by wires, but very long ones) in order to attack with its beam cannon fingers from any angle. For example, it could disconnect an arm and circle around a GM in order to shoot it in the back, bypassing its shield, but this isn't very necessary given its incredible power. This ability was built into the suit in order to let pilot Char Aznable make use of his telepathy to guide the arms and attack from unpredictable angles.
• Heroic Sacrifice: From both throwaway and major characters. Poor Matilda, poor Ryu, poor Miharu, poor Woody, poor Lalah...
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: The entry for Interservice Rivalry is the big reason why Zeon lost the war: from Zabi family squabbles to wannabes and has-beens trying to one-up actual aces and trying to squash the Gundam and failing miserably means that, by the end of war, Zeon has lost so much of its might, it's pretty much down to rookies who barely know how to control their powerful new Gelgoogs.
• Hollywood Homely: Invoked. Despite the Zabi family being frequently described as ugly, only Degwin and Dozle (and in The Origin, Sasro) are particularly ugly. The rest of the family ranges from average to beautiful. The Zabi males, however, are considerably darker than most of the other main characters.
• Hot Blade: Being a step behind the Federation in Energy Weapons science, Zeon's standard mecha melee weapons for most of the war are superheated metal blades like the Zaku's heat hawk and the Dom's heat saber. General consensus is that they're good, but not quite as good as a beam saber.
• Hover Skates: The MS-09 Dom has these in the form of thermonuclear jets built into its legs. It can't use them to fly, but it can zip across the ground at a much higher speed than simply running.
• Hover Mecha: The MS-09 Dom. The MS-09R Rick Dom and MSN-02 Zeong look like they might count, but they're designed to fight in space (and the Zeong isn't meant to hover).
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Dozle Zabi and his wife Zenna. Zenna appears normal size, but Dozle is gigantically tall at 210cm coupled with a broad muscular frame built up like a brick house. And his daughter literally fits in the palm of his hand.
• Humongous Mecha: Features many huge mobile suits such as the Zaku II, the Gouf, the Big Zam, the Guncannon, the Guntank and most famously, the RX-78-2 Gundam.
  • Real Robot: Started the genre. Despite this, it still has many Super Robot hangups, mainly in the TV series.
• Hypocrite: Zeon claims to be liberating the colonies, even as it destroys several of them.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Lalah, for both Amuro and Char.
• Image Song:
  • Char gets his own song, "Char ga Kuru" albeit not sung by his respective voice actor.
  • One might argue that the first ending is actually also an image song, though in the same case as above. That, or "Eien ni Amuro" (Forever Amuro) is a tribute to Amuro.
    • At least Andrew W.K.'s versions of "Tobe! Gundam" and "Eien ni Amuro" sound like tributes... only awesome.
• Implausible Deniability: After Kycilia killed Gihren for murdering their father during the Battle of A Baoa Qu, one of her generals announced that Gihren died in battle to the Zeon forces. Despite the fact that not only was Gihren in the safest room of the entire fortress, but orders were still being sent from that same room. In Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, Gihren loyalist Aiguille Delaz instantly figured out what was happening when he heard the news and pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here with his fleet, contributing to A Baoa Qu's fall.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: Thanks to Early-Installment Weirdness, the RX-78 is far more agile than later Gundams - it even pulls off the occasional Unnecessary Combat Roll. You could probably Handwave it as not having the multitude of thrusters all over its body that future Mobile Suits do, but still...
• In a Single Bound: Thanks to its thrusters, the Gundam can jump high enough to engage enemy fighters in their own airspace.
• Inconsistent Dub: The Gouf: Whether it's pronounced as "Goof" or "Guff" in the dub came down to the actor saying the line. It's "Guff" more often than not.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Lots of 'em, including the Principality/Duchy/Archduchy/Grand Duchy of Zeon/Zion/Jion. Also Kycilia/Kishiria, Gihren/Ghiren/Giren, and Mineva/Minerva Zabi. Frau/Fraw. Bright's last name being Noah vs. Noa. Not helped by the official subtitles for the 1998 English movie trilogy dub having Kishiria, Giren, and Frau. Amuro's last name also frequently shows up as "Rei" instead of the official "Ray". Fun fact : Char Aznable is what happens when your joke Nom de Guerre of Charles Aznavour becomes the Breakout Character of the franchise. Since Aznavour more than likely existed in pre-UC history, it's probably also a Character Name Alias.
• Insult Backfire: Gihren takes it as a compliment when his father compares his world view with that of Adolf Hitler. Though he'd never heard of Hitler before Degwin made the comparison onscreen, and Gihren didn't hear very much detail about Hitler. In this sense it's almost a backfire of an Insult Backfire.
• Interservice Rivalry: The Zeon forces would probably have beaten the Federation if they could resist the urge to play politics with each other. One memorable case is when M'Quve "loses" a request by Ramba Ral (who's not part of Kycilia's faction) for the new Rick Doms. Gihren's Greed suggests that if M'Quve had provided Ramba Ral with the support he needed, he'd have been able to capture White Base.
  • Supplemental material also makes clear that this is part of why Zeon has so many mobile suit variations; there were several companies and design teams all pushing their own programs and diverting resources to pet projects, and many Ace Customs (for example, M'Quve's Gyan) are just prototypes, rejected or otherwise, that some ace or Zeon bigwig liked and kept for their personal suit. Conversely, all of this tail-chasing meant that Char's preferred design, the Gelgoog, didn't go into mass production until it was too late to affect the outcome of the war.
• I Surrender, Suckers: At one point, White Base sets up a ceasefire with the Zeon forces to let the civilians off the ship, and uses the ceasefire to secretly plant the Gundam behind enemy lines before the fighting restarts. Zeon, for their part, fully intended on opening fire the very moment the White Base took off.
• Lady and Knight: Kycilia apparently has this effect on people (that aren't Char, at least):
  • Kycilia Zabi and her Dragon M'Quve have got this vibe going. Kycilia is a Manipulative Bastard and Evil Genius, who nevertheless maintains a very feminine air to her persona. M'Quve, who always addresses her as "Lady Kycilia" serves as her strategist, enforcer, and go to whenever dirty work is required; he is obsessively loyal to her, and to top it all off, pilots a mecha (the YMS-15 Gyan) designed to resemble a knight.
  • From the Expanded Universe, Johnny Ridden served under Lady Kycilia and fought hard for her. His personal insignia was a unicorn, meant to represent the woman he served, and famously fought like a madman in the battle of A Baoa Qu, specifically to clear an escape for her.
• Latex Space Suit: Pilot suits. Averted on the Federation side with the suits worn by civilians and the ship's crew, which are much bulkier.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: The "Char custom" is probably the most iconic example.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Kycilia's explosion death involves getting a rocket to the face, then her eviscerated torso and limbs are sent flying from the ensuing explosion. Ouch.
• Manly Tears: A more rare villainous example is when Masked badboy Char promises to get his revenge on the Gundam, a few tears trickle under his mask. Amuro also cries a lot.
• Mascot Villain: Char Anzable, who is popular enough to show up in the sequel series and a film, as well as inspire a slew of copycats.
• Mask Power: Char, of course. Also, Kycilia.
• Meaningful Name: Zaku comes from the Japanese word for Mooks, zako　(雑魚, "small/inferior fish") which, incidentally was what they were actually called in SD Gundam Force.
  • Some fans believe Zaku to be derived from the word 'Zakuzaku', which (fittingly enough) means 'cut up roughly'.
  • This is also played straight with the Musai-class Battlecruisers, the word 'musai' meaning 'lacking skills or abilities'.
  • The colossal, green-colored, Mega Particle Cannon-equipped Mobile Armor Big Zam is named after the Zam Zammah, a massive, greenish cannon built by the Durrani Empire, immortalized in Rudyard Kipling's Kim.
  • Cucuruz Doan's name is rather fitting for a man trying to escape his past and a brutal war by becoming a farmer, since variations of "Cucuruz" translate to "maize" in multiple languages (many slavic ones, plus some dialects of turkish and german).
  • The Zeong, which has a detachable head, sounds rather similar to Hua Xiong, a subordinate of Dong Zhuo who was famously decapitated by Guan Yu in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
  • In earlier drafts of the script it was originally called the Galava, which is Russian for "head".
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Zeon resorted to a Colony Drop among many other super destructive tactics in order to try and match the Federation resources. While it worked in the short term as they invaded Earth and gained a lot of ground, they basically destroyed the same infrastructure that could have benefitted them had they used more discretion. On top of that public perception of Zeon took a downturn, anyone affiliated with Zeon or Zeon Remnant would always be known as the ones who dropped a Colony.
• Mecha Expansion Pack:
  • The G-Armor, a transport/fighter-bomber/tank that is compatible with the Core Block System. Later adaptations would remove it, as Tomino felt it was "too super-robot."
  • Numerous Mecha Expansion Packs exist in the Expanded Universe, most notably the "Full Armor Gundam" which takes the RX-78-1 and slaps heavier armor and weapons on it. Deconstructed in that it makes an overall worse machine and later versions are built Full Armor from the ground up.
• The Men First: Dozle has everyone else in his mobile armor evacuate before making his last stand.
• Men of Sherwood: While the greater Federation army's competency fluctuates and is primarily offscreen (with battles like the Odessa offensive only briefly shown), they can be a competent force. Their earliest showing is the Jaburo defensive where in the face of a full on Zeon assault the heavily armed Federation soldiers destroy Zakus, Goufs, and Doms left and right. It's also where the the Federation mass produced mobile suits, the GM's, make their debut to help even the odds.
• Merchandise-Driven: Like you would not believe. It's interesting to note that this was a necessity - since the show was pulling low viewership numbers, the only thing that kept it on air past a certain point was a strong toy line - the full story of which is chronicled in Gundam Sousei. While the story stood on its own in beginning well enough, the episode of Lt. Matilda introducing the G-Fighter/G-Armor/G-Bull to the White Base was a very obvious sign that the direction of the series had to rely on introducing new toy gimmicks to keep going. The scene itself just felt like the commercialized direction that many cartoons would take during The '80s.
  • What's impressive is that they were able to justify this to a believable extent - competition between manufacturers, a fundamental difference in the weapons designing process between the two sides, the scale of the war, etc.
• Mid-Season Upgrade:
  • An unusual subversion for the franchise; while nearly every Gundam show since has the protagonist's mech eventually get either drastically remodeled into or replaced with a better one, in this series the Gundam's only upgrade is a magnetic coating for a better reaction time — otherwise it's exactly the same machine throughout. This can be attributed to Early-Installment Weirdness.
    • Other versions downplay the trope. The movie version, for example, has the mid-season introduction of the Core Booster, basically a set of Core Fighters with additional fire-power.
  • Definitely applies to main antagonist Char Aznable, who starts the series with a basic, albeit upgraded, Zaku and ends it piloting a Zeong — a mecha so bleeding edge it isn't even finished when Char takes it out.
• Mildly Military: A deliberate choice on the part of the White Base officer cadre - given their desperate situation and the fact that most of their crew were green recruits and civilians, they decided that it would be easier for all concerned if they played fast-and-loose with the formalities. The mainstream Federation military is notably more rigid and disciplined.
• Minovsky Physics: Trope Namer.
• Missing Backblast: Averted, as Miharu finds out.
• Modesty Towel: In one scene Hamon is seen in a towel, having just got out of the shower.
• Mood Whiplash: At one part, the kids catch Zeon troops planting time bombs to destroy a series of Gundams at Jaburo and have to find and dispose of them themselves before they explode. An otherwise tense scene is made rather odd with some more comical moments added in.
• Mook Lieutenant: The Zeon forces featured a number throughout the show's tenure usually given more to do than the average mook. They wore distinctive helmets and a black insignia on their outfit.
  • Dren was one to Char's forces, often issuing orders and acting as second in command.
  • Clamp was one to Ramba Ral's troops.
  • Boon was the commander of the aquatic squadron that started attacking White Base at Northern Ireland.
  • Tokwan was another one of Char's lieutenants who engages the White Base in space.
  • Conscon was the Chivvy commander that harassed the Base during their visit to Side 6.
  • Mulligan was Tokwan's replacement as Char's 2nd in command and serves till the final few episodes.
  • Twanning was the head soldier under Gihren and later Kycilia during the battle at A Baoa Qu.
• Moral Myopia: Even beyond Icelina's indignant vengeance over Garma's death that doesn't justify her trying to kill Amuro, the Zeon and Federation alike have soldiers filled with hatred for the other side's atrocities. The White Base is caught up in this maelstrom; Amuro and the gang's high kill count of Zeon forces overwhelms the fact that Amuro is a civilian and there are other civvies aboard that would be killed in the constant attacks. Char in particular shoots several fleeing older innocents in a failed infiltration attempt, and holds Lalah's death as Amuro having crossed a line despite himself having all but caused it in the first place.
• Motive Decay: Explored in the series, as Char initially was hoping to slowly dismantle the Zabi family from the inside for their murder of his father. Once he met Lalah and Newtype research gained full swing, he shifted his attention to that as this was closer to the vision his father had for Zeon. But after Lalah's death, he became obsessed with killing Amuro to avenge her, even saying that he wanted to kill Amuro more than he wanted to kill the Zabis. After Sayla stops their duel to the death, he goes back to trying to kill the Zabis.
• Mukokuseki: Mostly averted. Mirai Yashima, the one with more direct Asian heritage, looks noticeably more Asian than the rest. Amuro is an aversion, since he's But Not Too Foreign (his mother is either American, Canadian or Mexican, depending on the canon you follow).
• Names To Run Away From Very Fast: The Elmeth, while originally a mistranslation of "Hermes", rather fortuitously also resembles "El-Maeth", which is (grammatically dodgy) Hebrew for "God of Death".
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: SIEG ZEON! HAIL ZEON! Gihren Zabi is directly compared to Hitler by his father at one point, though if one looks more closely, they're more similar to Imperial Japan's Hideki Tojo.
• Never My Fault: While played somewhat sympathetically, Amuro's mother comes off as this, given her refusal to join him and her husband on Side 7, and thus removing herself and her influence from Amuro's life, as well has having no idea what he's actually been through since joining White Base's crew.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When Amuro shoots the soldier at the refugee camp out of desperation when his cover is blown, there doesn't seem to be any major repercussions for everyone else (on-screen anyway). In the manga adaptation, Amuro shoots the soldier and as he falls he discharges his machine gun, gunning down at least two other civilians. Their survival is left up in the air.
• Non-Indicative Name: Char's Newtype Corps is three people, including himself, two of which (Challia Bull, Lalah Sune) end up dead before they even get to A Baoa Qu.
• Nose Art: Many of Char Aznable's Ace Custom mobile suits featured his trademark red paintjob. Played Straight to the point of parody, where several mangas even featured "Char Aznable" custom RB-79 Ball designs, painted red with horns attached.
• No-Sell:
  • An interesting variation in the first episode. When Amuro is shot at point blank with a Zaku machine gun after starting up the Gundam for the first time, he starts screaming in abject terror, but the Gundam itself stands stalk still as the bullets bounce off its fancy new super alloy armor.
  • As the series goes on and Zeon develops more heavily armored Mobile Suits, the Vulcan guns (the machine guns in Gundam's head and a primary ground attack weapon) can't even scratch the Doms or Z'Goks. Though in Episode 32, Amuro manages to shoot out the less protected eye of one Dom using Gundam's head Vulcans.
• Nicknaming the Enemy: Some of the English localizations had this. The Federation forces were nicknamed "Feddies", while Zeon forces were nicknamed "Zekes". Some weapons received nicknames too, such as 'skirts' for Zeon's Dom fast assault suits, which used hover-jets to propel their massively-armoured frames.
• Nuclear Nullifier: Minovsky particles don't make ICBMs and other long-range missiles that practical.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Averted. Nukes are used extensively in the opening battles of the war, resulting in up to a billion civilian casualties. M'Quve also launches an explicitly nuclear missile when it becomes clear that he's lost. Mobile suits also have nuclear reactors in them that are Going Critical when hit by beam weapons; this happens several times in the series, including in Side 7 during the first episode.
• The Ojou: Iselina Eschenbach is a very tragic version of the trope. Mirai is technically one, but she tries her best to not let her family connections interfere.
• Out of Focus: The Guntank in the movies. While it serves largely the same role on earth, when the White Base returns to space for the third movie, it's swapped out for another Guncannon for Hayato to pilot.
• Overranked Soldier: A lot of characters are really young for their ranks. On the Federation side, it's due to rapid promotions to give them the rank to do what they've already been doing. On the Zeon side, it tends to be a mixture of promotions for impressive feats and nepotism (though of all the high ranked officials named Zabi, the only one who doesn't indisputably demonstrate that he/she is worthy of the rank their father gave them is Garma).
• Overshadowed by Awesome: By the end of the One Year War, Hayato, Sayla, and Kai are all highly competent pilots who qualify as aces several times over. They just have the bad luck of serving alongside the One-Man Army that is Amuro Ray. Zeon, meanwhile, has its own examples in the MS-14 Gelgoog and MSN-02 Zeong (particularly and especially the Gelgoog), suits that equal or exceed the Gundam in performance but pale before Amuro's supreme piloting skills.
  • This is also Deconstructed to an extent - even as late as Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, 8 years later, Amuro lives under virtual house arrest and Bright flies a shuttle, while Hayato, Sayla, and Kai (especially) live and work in relative freedom.
• Pastel-Chalked Freeze Frame: Used multiple times, partly for dramatic effect, mostly because of the very cheap animation.
• Pet the Dog: While the upper leadership of Zeon is very Nazi-like in behavior, their individual soldiers are Just Following Orders and often shown to have their own sense of nobility. An early episode had White Base request a cease fire while they evacuate civilians. A Zeon scout craft monitored their departure peacefully and the main pilot went above orders to send a supply drop to a mother and her young child.
• Psychic Powers: Newtypes can communicate with each other telepathically such as Lalah and Amuro having a communication despite being in the middle of a battle.
• Putting on the Reich: the Zeon flag is basically the flag of the Third Reich with a different symbol.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The White Base's crew is partly composed of civilian volunteers, since some members of its original complement were killed in the incident at Side 7.
• Ramming Always Works: Averted. Ramming sometimes works (at huge expense in lives and equipment), but mostly it's just an excellent way to get killed.
• Real Robot: The Trope Maker.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: A healthy share of the Federation officers are like this, and whilst Zeon doesn't have as many, they're still visibly present.
• Red and Black Totalitarianism: Given that the Principality of Zeon embodies the worst aspects of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, it's unsurprising to note that their Kriegsmarine-esque flag is coloured in... you guessed it, red, black and white.
• Red-plica Baron: Char is based partially on the Red Baron, nicknamed the Red Comet. Both are aces famous for their striking red vehicles. By extension, a character who's a Char Clone is an expy of an expy of the Red Baron.
• Red Shirt Army:
  • In most games, both the Zaku II, Gouf, GM and Ball qualify for this. In Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, this is increased to every One Year War-era suit except for the Gundam, Char's Zaku and Gelgoog, and the Zeong.
  • In SD Gundam G Generation Wars, this is, however, not so much the case. While they can still get blown up in one attack, provided a strong enough Mobile Suit, the GM, Zaku II, Gouf and Ball can actually become some of the most lethal Mobile Weapons at Level 99, provided they get both the +3 inheritance bonus, a Level 99 pilot from the beginning and a target to kill.^note The reason for needing a Level 99 pilot? The Pilot's level determines the Suit's upgrade amount (3 points, +1 to ATK, DEF or EVA at level 1, while 20 points and +10 to ATK, DEF or EVA per certain number of points).
• Regional Redecoration: During the One Year War, the Principality of Zeon attempted to drop a depopulated colony onto the Federation's base in South America. Unfortunately, they miscalculated and the colony fell onto Sydney, Australia. This resulted in a massive explosion that vaporized the city and much of the surrounding landscape, leaving behind a 500-kilometer-wide crater known as the Gulf of Sydney.
• Reporting Names:
  • The White Base is codenamed "the Trojan Horse" by the Zeon forces.
  • The Earth Federation refers to Lalah's Elmeth as the "Tricorn Hat."
• Restricted Expanded Universe:
  • The multiverse suffers this in spades. Since the events of the anime are set in stone (and have been that way for up to thirty years), manga and video game expansions almost always deal with an entirely new cast of characters, set off to the side of the anime's events and never directly interfering (though, on some rare occasions, having a degree of crossover).
  • However, the manga series Gundam the Origin completely and utterly ignores this (it helps that it's being written and illustrated by the original character designer and apparently has Tomino's blessing) and introduces a chain of events that while similar, are significantly changed and make a whole hell of a lot more sense in some respects. It's from here that a lot of the backstory for the mainline universe can be gleaned (though distortedly). Tomino is not a stickler for continuity; his novelisations and Compilation Movies often change plots around.
• Right Behind Me: At one point, Kai is praising Matilda's virtues and explaining why she's his ideal girlfriend. She promptly walks by and tells him to focus on repairing the White Base, and wishes him good luck in finding a girlfriend.
• Robeast: While it's subverted in that they are still piloted war machines, Zeon's experimental mobile armors that start appearing late into the series fit many aspects of this trope; all of them are larger than the standard mobile suit, have non-humanoid designs and often served a Monster of the Week role. The Zakrello in particular has a design that wouldn't look out of place in a contemporary Super Robot show.
• Say My Name: Half of what Fraw Bow says tends to be Amuro's name, and when Char is around or simply on his mind you can be almost assured that Amuro is going to shout it.
• Self-Made Orphan:
  • Gihren kills his father via Solar Ray, and then his younger sister offs him.
  • Tragically, Amuro is indirectly responsible for his father's brain damage and subsequent death.
• Series Franchise: But man, the staff had no idea this would turn out to be the case at the time. They knew they were making a pretty good show - they just had no idea they were inventing a genre or a series.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: "Winds of War," Episode 8, has a mother and her child leaving White Base with a group of civilians in search of her husbands home town on earth, St. Agnes. The episode plays out with Amuro and the others engaging the Zeon forces to protect her, the other refugees finding a different place for shelter, and even a Zeon pilot aiding the mother and child. At the episode's end the pilot reveals that the town was long since destroyed, not knowing she was searching for it, and encourages her to follow the other refugees to the shelter they found. As Amuro and the others leave they wonder if she ever really found that town.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Amuro Ray, towards the end.
• Shiny New Australia: Australia was one of the first victims of a Colony Drop by Zeon.
• Shoot Out the Lock: Sayla tries to do this while chasing an escaped prisoner and fails. Then another character comes by and blows the door open with a bazooka.
• Stab the Sky: The Gundam's "Last Shooting" in the final episode was a Shoot the Sky where it tries to destroy the last of the Zeong's head with its last shot.
• Shout-Out:
  • "Sieg Zeon!" is taken directly from Adolf Hitler's infamous quote, "Sieg Heil!"
    • Zeon is an outright reference to Nazi-Germany. Heck, their political leader, Gihren Zabi, is even compared to Hitler in-series, and takes it as a compliment!
  • The term "Mobile Suit" comes from the Mobile Infantry of Starship Troopers
  • As one would expect for a science-fiction show from the late 70s, Star Wars' fingerprints are everywhere, from the Gundam's beam saber to Char's Darth Vader-esque helmet. Tomino wanted the Gundam to be all-white like an Imperial Stormtrooper, but was overruled by the producers, who wanted kid-friendly primary colors.
    • Similarly, it also takes many cues from Star Wars's most famous imitator, the original Battlestar Galactica. The Pegasus class assault carriers function similarly to the Battlestar class ships and take their name from one of the ships in the series. The iconic Zeon mono-eye is markedly similar to those of the Cylons.
  • Gundam's evolutionary concept of Newtypes is likely influenced from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
    • The scene when Amuro first senses Lalah attacking Solomon from the Elmeth is specifically a reference to that film's Stargate sequence.
    • The RB-79 Ball vehicles are modelled after the EVA pods on Discovery One.
  • Char Aznable is named after singer Charles Aznavour, reportedly against Tomino's wishes thanks to Executive Meddling.
  • Speaking of music, the insert song Ai Senshi, sounds a lot like a sped up version of the Bruce Springsteen song Jungle Land. Appropriately enough, in the TV series it plays as the Zeon forces air drop into the South American jungle during the battle of Jaburo.
    • "Kaze ni Hitoride" has a style suspiciously similar to most of John Lennon's 1970s output.
    • Most notorious of all, "Beginning" is most undeniably a reimagining of King Crimson's "Prince Rupert Awakes".
• Shower Scene:
  • Near the beginning of the series Char got a shower scene.
  • Fraw Bow and the kiddies get a scene where she tries to keep the kids from horsing around in the shower. Fraw's nipples are in plain view.
• Shown Their Work: As fantastical as the technology in the anime is, a lot of it is based on real world science. The space colonies are "Island 3" cylinders designed by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill, the Gundam's beam saber is a weaponized Tokamak reactor and even the goofy plastic bag-like heat shield from Reentry to Earth is based on the MOOSE (Man Out Of Space Easiest), an attempt by GE to create a reentry survival system for astronauts in orbit that could be contained inside a spacesuit.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Justified, in that the mobile suits that Amuro fights are all top-of-the-line at the time, and Zeon is forced to continually develop more powerful suits as they come to terms with the Gundam, and later the Federation's GM's.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • The entirety of the Principality of Zeon is just one big spanner against themselves in the One Year War. Among them being:
    • M'Quve refusing to give Ramba Ral the new Doms, leading to his death and later that of the Black Tri-Stars, depriving Zeon of experienced and talented soldiers.
    • Sayla and Amuro spotting a Federation traitor just before Operation Odessa, managing to foil his plans.
    • Zeon blowing a lot of their funding on expensive Mobile Armors or experimental, extremely limited-focus Mobile Suits.
    • Gihren firing a superweapon too early just to kill his own father, also wiping out thousands of Zeon's troops. Then a pissed off Kycilia executes Gihren for patricide, leading to the powerful Delaz Fleet (that Gato is a part of) to bail. And to think, they had spent 9 months at that point in a stalemate and were really close to winning...
    • And, of course, the ultimate one: three Zeon soldiers go to Side 7 to investigate goings on in there and discover the Federation building Mobile Suits there. Had one of them not been a hot-headed rookie and opened fire against orders, Amuro would never have become a pilot, and the crew of the White Base would have been completely different. On the other hand, had the attack not happened, White Base would have left Side 7 with at least four Gundams (the others were all destroyed by Zeon in the attack or by the retreating Federation troops to deny them to Zeon).
  • From the spinoff:
    • Ginias Sahalin snapping and attacking, leading to the death of his own men that his sister Aina had brokered for a cease-fire to get them out for medical attention.
    • Colonel Killing sending the elite Cyclops Team on ill-conceived missions and ultimately sacrificing them on a hopeless mission, all so he can nuke the colony where the Gundam NT-1 was being developed, which ended up failing anyway.
    • The Delaz Fleet pulling a Screw This, I'm Outta Here after Delaz learns about Gihren's death during the Battle of A Baoa Qu, leaving a massive hole in the fortress's defenses.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • In the novels, Degwin Zabi is just said to be dethroned. This suggests that he survived as he did not accompany the fleet that was destroyed by the Colony Laser.
  • In the compilation trilogy, Captain Paolo is last seen being carted off to receive medical care at Luna II. While in the original anime, Paolo dies of his wounds after the Luna II fiasco, the movies never state that he died. In addition, Icelina and M'Quve survive because the episodes featuring their deaths were not featured in the movies.
• Spikes of Villainy: The Principality of Zeon are big fans - more so here, in fact, than at any other point in the faction's history.
• Spoiler Opening: Ending, really, but the ending used for the Toonami broadcast spoil the final moments of the show, with Amuro in his damaged Core Fighter finding the White Base crew's Launch.
• Spy Speak: When Bright comes across what looks like a Feddie jeep and driver in the desert.
  Bright: Do butterflies fly in the desert?
  Driver: Only the cactus thorns fly in the desert.
• Staying Alive: Char is presumed to have been killed when Kycilia's Gwanzine exploded, but the final compilation movie adds a scene during the end credits showing a shadowy figure bearing a resemblance to Char on a Zeon escape ship. Zeta Gundam confirms that Char survived the One Year War.
• Stealth Pun: Zako is Japanese for small fry. The Zaku Mobile Suit, with the exception of the ones that are Ace Custom models that follow the Law of Chromatic Superiority, are piloted by Mooks.
• Stock Footage: Mostly involving the Gundam launching or combining with its various parts. A number of episodes in the middle of the season would reuse the mid-air conversion system in its entirety, all with the pretense that they were training to do it faster.
• Super Prototype:
  • The Gundam. Its status as a prototype is actually played as an important factor in the overall series. Halfway through the series there is The Reveal of the GM, standard infantry mobile suits that are scaled down versions of the Gundam. It's this that turns the tide of the war using hundreds of them, rather than having one extra powerful mobile suit.
  • The first half of the series shows a number of newer mobile suits other than the Zaku's but are still technically production line models like the Gouf and the Dom. The second half of the series has a Federation official inform the characters that Zeon is shaken up by the Gundam's victories and is rushing out numerous prototypes in an attempt to match it, which is where mobile armors become more common. The Big Zam, YMS-15 Gyan, Elmeth and Zeong all had unique specialties that gave the Gundam more of a fight.
• Superweapon Surprise: More than one, and used by both sides such as the Federation unexpectedly using a huge assortment of mirrors to wipe out Side 6 of Zeon fortress Solomon and the Zeon forces under Gihren using a Colony Laser to wipe out more than half of General Revil's fleet.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Bright accuses Sayla of stealing the Gundam so she could prove she was as good as a man in battle. She lets him think that rather than tell him she was looking for Char, to find out if he really was her brother Casval.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: For its time, the military actions and forces were far different from the Super Robot shows prior, and everyone has to constantly resupply, repair and retrofit equipment to keep themselves afloat.
  • A cluster of civilians and inexperienced soldiers are thrown head-first into surviving some of the strongest forces the enemy has to offer. This results in PTSD, trauma, inefficiency, careless mistakes, a lack of structural cohesion as a group for a long while, and the list goes on. Amuro is the most blatant case, but when Bright is temporarily indisposed after Ryu's death, Mirai has to step up to the commander's plate and demonstrates why a commercial airliner pilot forced into the helmsman role is not commanding material.
  • Amuro's initial reckless rookie behavior constantly exhausts all of his ammunition, at least until he starts to reign in that habit, and this forces mid-battle weapon changes that he has to obtain manually and often puts him at risk.
  • Injuries sustained often last a long period of time, and even with the advancements in humanity's technology, severe internal wounds cannot be fixed with a lack of proper medical equipment. Spacesuits and combat uniforms are also not armor, as seen multiple times when various soldiers are often killed quickly and suddenly by any sort of ambush or direct attack.
  • Civilians not experienced with warfare are not the best option to throw into the battlefield. This gets Amuro some trouble before he adapts, but is even worse for Hayato, Kai and Sayla until late series. Characters like Miharu also find this out the hard way when the back blast of a missile she had to manually launch propels her out the opposite end of a combat ship's open missile bay, and out to her death in the ocean. In that last case, it's also a terrifying, Surprisingly Sudden Death where Kai doesn't even realize what happened for a solid minute, and Miharu dies in shocked horror rather than anything dramatic or accepting.
  • Zeon's utilization of superweapons as part of the Monster of the Week format causes them to lose the war in a combination of repeated failures (including numerous deaths of their experienced pilots) and an inability to produce more standardized Mobile Suits. Also, by the end of the war, their crop of pilots are mostly young and inexperienced recruits, who are outmatched and outnumbered by the Federation's seasoned pilots with new GM mobile suits.
  • This is explicit with the Gelgoog: on paper, it matches or exceeds the Gundam and in the hands of an Ace Pilot could be a terror...but unfortunately for Zeon, those don't grow on trees and they've lost a lot of those. Thus they have to make do with inexperienced pilots, resulting in the Gelgoogs having a far worse performance than expected. Some sources even point out the Gelgoogs were actually too good in the sense their inexperienced pilots couldn't actually keep up with them.
  • Amuro ends up Falling into the Cockpit and becomes the standard Gundam pilot, and Bright is forced to take charge as everyone above him is killed or separated. They are forced to learn military protocol and combat skills in the field, which results in a lot of mistakes at first, and then more mistakes as they get tired and exhausted while separated from the rest of the Federation. Once they regain contact with the main Federation forces, they are given an offer to either sign on with official Battlefield Promotions or be imprisoned for at least a year while the war is ongoing. Why? Because they had unlimited access to some of the most advanced equipment the Federation had to offer.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: A very basic example - the Gundam's beam sabers can extend their handles to become short-bladed tridents.
• Sword Fight: With mobile suits, and between Char and Amuro in person during the final episodes!
• Tagalong Kid: Katz, Kikka, and Letz, who are White Base's Bratty Half-Pints.
• Tank Goodness: Guntanks. They do one job, and they do it well. (Just, y'know, more on land than space.)
• Telepathic Spacemen: Newtypes.
• Theme Naming: Several characters are named for World War II aircraft; Kai is named for the N1K2-J Shiden Kai, while Amuro himself is named for the infamous "Zero".
  • A few postwar fighters get referenced, too. The name of M'Quve's assistant Uragang is a corruption of the Dassault Ouragan, which first saw service in the Arab–Israeli Conflict.
  • One so subtle it may not even be intentional, of the non-humanoid Mobile Armors, all the ones with names ending in "-ro" (or "lo") have large arms ending in sharp claws, while ones ending in "-zam" have prominent legs. the only MA to have neither suffix, the Elmeth, has no moving parts at all.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: The stance of Amuro's mother. Deconstructed and played for drama. See What the Hell, Hero? below.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The up next ads at the ends of episodes almost always spoil something for the next episode and the narration gives away key details and directly states which characters die even though it always ends with "who will survive?" Some of the trailers, and even episode names, discuss things that only happen at the very end of the episode they're about, most notably "Amuro Deserts".
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Zig-Zagged with Amuro's midair docking procedures; the Core Fighter combines with the two halves of Gundam to be fully battle ready even when in the midst of combat. Out of combat the crew is seen practicing the procedure so they can do it faster because the soldiers will be shooting at them when they attempt it and in Episode 23 a Gouf does try and blast him while Gundam forms. That said, any and all attempts at stopping the transformation have the enemies turn into the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy for a bit and never get any meaningful hits in until Gundam has formed and can protect itself.
• Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: All three of Zeon's late-game superweapons, the Big Zam, the Colony Laser, and the Zeong. Results were decidedly mixed. To elaborate:
  • The Big Zam proved devastatingly effective, but they hadn't fitted in the close-ranged defences yet, letting Amuro and Sleggar eventually take it out.
  • The Colony Laser was fired prematurely, destroying it after it had wiped out only half the Federation fleet and letting the other half win the war.
  • The Zeong went into battle missing its legs. This had no real effect on its performance - they were fighting in outer space at the time, and legs aren't much use in zero gravity - other than perhaps not allowing Char to use one of his famous kicks.
• Unobtainium: Played straight and subverted. Early on the Gundam is all but indestructible, much to the surprise and misfortune of Zeon troops. However by the latter half of the series, Zeon gains access to beam weaponry, and it turns out to be equally deadly to the Gundam as it is to everything else. Afterwords tactics in the entire Universal Century timeline focus on avoiding getting hit at all, as no matter how much armor you have, beam weaponry punches right through it.
  • Lunar Titanium isn't really Unobtanium per se, it's just a significant upgrade over the kind of armor most mobile suits of the day were using which were steel alloys. Conventional weapons still manage to significantly damage the Gundam on several occasions, and during one encounter explosive charges small enough to be carried in one hand are shown to be capable of breaching the armor if placed in the right spot. Really, Lunar Titanium has about as much effect on the battlefield as the invention of Sloped Armor did in WWII; it is superior to any existing design, but not a game-changer in and of itself.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Amuro starts out hopelessly inept in mobile suit combat, and only survives because the Gundam's armor is so tough that none of the weapons wielded by an early series Zaku can hurt it. This is the only reason he survives against the veteran Char in their early engagements. He does get better over time.
• Vanilla Unit: The humble GM, the mass-produced version of the Gundam, is more than a match for their primary opposition the Zaku IIs, Goufs and Doms. However, unlike the Gundam they're made of regular titanium (except for their lunar titanium shield) and their beam spray gun has less range than the Gundam's beam rifle. In-universe, they're considered Boring, but Practical, with a design that would continue to be used for decades with occasional improvements.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Played with. Char is the most consistent enemy for the first 12 episodes, but he doesn't directly engage Amuro until over 20 episodes later. Char upgraded to the Gelgoog, the most advanced production model Zeon has yet developed, but at this point Amuro's skills were pushing the Gundam to its limit. In their Texas Zone confrontation Char realizes who he is up against and for the first time shows fear.
• Villainous Valor: Gadem attempting to destroy the Gundam with his aging and unarmed Zaku I to get revenge for his downed ship. He doesn't last long, but it is still quite impressive.
• Violation of Common Sense: The fact that the Guntank can be operated in space is one of the more absurd examples in the franchise. Sure it's sealed air-tight and has a few maneuvering thrusters to move and change direction but the Guntank's speed and maneuverability are laughable enough to make an ordinary Zaku I look fast. Not to mention that the lower half of the Guntank would be disappointingly easy to hit. In the remakes, the Guntank was left behind in Jaburo and replaced with a Guncannon which confirms that even the creators thought that a Guntank operating in space was too silly.
• Visual Pun: During its stay in the neutral zone of Side Six, the White Base's weapons are literally tied down with red tape.
• War Is Hell: Downplayed but certainly a running theme throughout the series. The start of the early episodes shows us the infamous Colony Drop that wiped out Sydney, Australia, and the very first episode shows us innocent civilians who are evacuating being blown up and killed by an overzealous Zeon soldier in a Mobile Suit, including Fraw Bow's mother and grandfather.
• Warfare Regression: Minovsky Particles can screw up electronics and telecommunications. As a result, war in the Universal Century goes back to visual ranges.
• Warrior Therapist: Char and Amuro tend to talk a lot while they're fighting. Being the first Gundam, every subsequent series following it followed suit.
• Weak, but Skilled: Initially the reason that Char can keep up with Amuro. Later on it's the reason Amuro can keep up with Char.
  • And by the end of the show, Gundam can't keep up with Amuro's reflexes, which is fixed through an off-screen upgrade.
• Weaponized Exhaust: An overconfident Zaku pilot under Ramba Ral, trying to missile White Base's stern, learns this the hard way.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Zeon suffers severe factionalism issues with the Big, Screwed-Up Family in charge and the power plays among their nobility that set Char off on his course for vengeance in the first place. Zeon's internal power struggles are a major reason why the Federation manage to gain the upper hand, especially after Gihren and Char's antics wipe out all their leaders. They also present a similar problem for the entirety of Spacenoids, being an extremist faction by comparison to others protesting and fighting for their rights, which results in Earth prejudice against all Spacenoids as hatred that lasts the entire rest of the Universal Century and beyond.
  • The Earth Federation isn't much better. Despite a common enemy, many of the grunts impose themselves upon the innocent for food and board while threatening or harassing anyone that gets in their way, a number of officers are blowhards that make everything worse, and much of the executive command are manipulative and veer straight into Obstructive Bureaucrat territory. Half of the turmoil the White Base has to deal with comes from their own supposed allies refusing to send them supplies and reinforcements, and Zeon was able to gain so much headway in the war because of the Federation's sheer complacency in the status quo, making the heroes have to struggle way more than they should have to win the war.
• We Have Reserves: Averted. A main plot point is that Zeon and the Earth Federation have both fought to the point of exhaustion, and are physically running out of soldiers. The war began in January of UC '79 with a devastating blitzkrieg in the space colonies, each side using NBC weapons indiscriminately, and even featuring the trope-naming Colony Drop. Within a week, the populations of both factions had been halved (Zeon had better weapons, but space colonies are more vulnerable to attack, so the few Earth long-range missile strikes that managed to get through caused disproportionately more damage). Zeon achieved space supremacy and started their ground invasion in March, going to theoretically capture everything except sub-saharan Africa and South America (the later of which was home to the Federation's subterranean HQ, Jaburo). "Theoretically" capture, as by that point Zeon's forces were stretched thin, constantly facing partisan attacks. The actual TV series starts in September, after the fighting has stalled for months.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Amuro's dad, who never actually got a death scene even though he did die at Side 6. The Compilation Movie fixes this by adding a scene where he falls down some stairs and apparently breaks his neck — the animation doesn't make it clear. The whole thing comes off as rather arbitrary, really.
  • On the other hand, M'Quve disappears after Odessa in the films. The manga Char's Deleted Affair depicts him dying in a similar fashion as the TV series, only at A Baoa Qu instead of in the Texas Colony.
  • Lieutenant Reed, the soldier who escorted White Base to Earth and stayed on ship for a number of episodes butting heads with Bright, leaves the series on a transport ship and never returns. It's especially noticeable because all of the recurring soldiers around Reed: Wakkein, his CO; Matilda, his rescuer; and Dren, the one who injured him; all return at different parts in the series whilst he stays gone.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Amuro's mother denounces him for becoming a soldier and killing other soldiers who could have had children of their own in spite of Amuro's intention of protecting the refugees.
• Worst Aid: After having his arm impaled by the blade of Char's fencing foil, Amuro pulls the broken piece out. This can probably be forgiven as he was in a depressurized area of A Baoa Qu, and his main motivation appears to be patching his normal suit.
• Worthy Opponent: Char and Amuro eventually consider each other this. Earlier, Ramba Ral came to respect Amuro.
• You Are in Command Now: The Zeon attack that starts the series ends up decimating most of the White Base command structure, which forces Bright to take charge despite being 19 years old and only an ensign. The first half of the series he either has the injured Captain offering advice over his shoulder, only to finally pass away after a few episodes, or has to fend off ambitious upstarts who try to take command over him while not understanding the strain in personnel and the fact they are dealing with the Red Comet.
• War Comes Home: In the Universal Century, Australians in particular hate Zeon with a passion for the Colony Drop that obliterated Sydney and created the Sydney Sea. In addition, in many side stories Federation characters mention joining up to fight Zeon because their colonies or hometowns came under attack in the early stages of the war and they want payback. Shiro Amada's home colony was the victim of a gas attack that wiped out the unprotected populace, for example.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: The men Char sent to sabotage Jaburo were unable to bring themselves to harm the children who spotted them directly, and instead left them tied up in a building they had rigged for demolition. This turned out to be a mistake - the children got themselves free, found all the bombs, and loaded them into a car that they moved to an area of zero strategic value.

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Who will survive?

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