Amuro Ray

Outside of occasional YouTube availability, the inability to consistently stream the first three series of the iconic Gundam franchise—Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, and Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ—has been a source of frustration for fans. But, at long last, that’s changed.Bryce Dallas Howard on a Feature Star Wars Film and Book of Boba FettAlthough in recent years the first three shows that make up the vast Gundam franchise have made their way to streaming in the U.S. in fits and starts, this week Crunchyroll—as…

Screenshot: CrunchyrollGundam as a franchise is no stranger to some very messed up ideas. War is hell, of course, and the ruling powers that play with it are even more hellish: for 40 years, an unending litany of bad things have happened to the good people in Gundam’s worlds. But The Witch From Mercury could be setting up the stage for a very grim realization.Star Wars: Shatterpoint Announcement Trailer02:27The First Things To Do In VR, Part 3Today 9:39AMThe latest episode of the series, its sixth, culminates around a…

Screenshot: CrunchyrollThe Witch From Mercury, the latest series in the Gundam franchise, carves its own path in the series in many ways, the least of which involves the introduction of yet another alternate timeline to the already-multiversal-level series. But that doesn’t mean that the series isn’t making its own fascinating connections to some of Gundam’s earliest and most potent ideas.The fifth episode of The Witch From Mercury, “Reflection in an Icy Eye,” ups the stakes for our hero Suletta Mercury far beyond whether…

Screenshot: CruncyrollWelcome to the future of Gundam, my friends: we’ve got a robot school, we’ve got megacorporation politics, and we’ve got girls defending each other’s honor by engaging in giant mecha duels for the right to be wives. This weekend saw the debut of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury, the first mainline entry in the legendary mecha anime franchise since 2015's Iron Blooded Orphans. Set in a new timeline within the Gundam continuity, the series follows the franchise’s first female protagonist,…

Image: Sunrise/CrunchyrollLast year, Netflix brought us Gundam: Hathaway, a modern entry in the mecha franchise’s vaunted “Universal Century” timeline that, despite a weight of context upon it, served as an interesting entry into a decades-old saga. This year, we have another Gundam movie on the way—but it’s one that works best if you love the series already.That’s because Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island is a curiously indulgent entry for Sunrise. For a franchise that’s been known just as much to expand and…

Image: Sunrise/CrunchyrollAs the world of Gundam on the small screen gets ready for a new future with The Witch From Mercury, on the big screen we’re about to jump right back into its earliest history again—because at long last, the latest movie in the franchise is finally making its way out of Asia.Crunchyroll has announced that it has acquired the release rights for English dubbed and subtitled versions of Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island, the latest film in the legendary mecha franchise. Set during the events…

Screenshot: SunriseIf anime loves a child soldier, there’s few franchises that love them more than Gundam. From Amuro Ray to incoming hero Suletta Mercury, the series is defined by putting youths into walking weapons of war. But its latest series is kicking off with bringing that idea to its most extreme.This week Sunrise internationally debuted The Witch From Mercury Prologue, a one-off prequel episode that is set a decade or so before the events of the main series—at the least, as it stars the show’s protagonist,…

Image: SunriseOne of Mobile Suit Gundam’s most-maligned series is finally available to stream this week—which means, hopefully, Gundam fans old and new alike will use it as a chance to re-evaluate what has often been seen as the black sheep of early Gundam.Over the weekend Crunchyroll announced that as part of its ongoing expansion of its Gundam catalog three more pieces of the esteemed mecha franchise had been added to the platform: Awakening of the Trailblazer, the movie sequel to the 2007 series Gundam 00; Char’s…

Mobile Suit Gundam is a decades-old franchise examining the costs of war and imperialism over eons of interstellar conflict between decaying, corrupt governments. It’s also an anime show about giant robots made to sell toys, so sometimes you get the very peculiar sensation of one of the series’ most iconic characters hawkinga car.Char Aznable—the ace pilot of the secessionist space colony Principality of Zeon in the original 1979 classic Mobile Suit Gundam, eventual Anti-Earth guerrilla fighter under the guise of…