Everything You Didn't Know About Gundam Mobile Suits

From the RX-78-02 Gundam to the XVX-016 Gundam Aerial, Gundam's Mobile Suits are fascinating—but over the years, they've gone through many changes.

Mobile Suit Gundam is one of the most instantly recognizable franchises ever made. First launching in 1979, the series has gone from strength to strength, with the franchise now featuring many different anime, manga, and novel series. Of course, with this sheer amount of content comes a lot of fascinating world-building and trivia, especially about the franchise's titular Mobile Suits.

One of the most frequently overlooked elements of Gundam's lore is that what a Gundam is and what technology one uses has changed over the years, with each Gundam timeline approaching the concept slightly differently and the only standard element being that Gundams feature rare, bleeding-edge, or experimental technology of some form. The original show and others set in the Universal Century tend to have Gundams as a more advanced form of the generic Mobile Suits, ones outfitted with beam weapons and coated with Luna Titanium—though the latter would become standard on most Mobile Suits by the end of the era.

The Differing Technologies of Mobile Suits

The first Gundam seen in the original show, the RX-78-02 Gundam, acts as the template that most other Gundam craft pull from, meaning that several of its more iconic parts, like the V-shaped fin on the head and the white and blue color scheme, tend to be the quickest way to identify a Gundam, especially in the franchise's early years. However, from Gundam F91 onwards, the franchise became much more willing to ditch some or all of these visual signifiers when the story called for it, with the titular Gundam F91 being a massive departure from the franchise's previous robots, meaning this rule of thumb doesn't always apply.

In the Future Century continuity, a Gundam is any craft designed to compete in the Gundam Fight tournament, most of which are made from the alloy Gundarium and controlled with the Mobile Trace System. The use of Gundarium is also what makes a Mobile Suit a Gundam in the After Colony timeline. While in Cosmic Era stories (like Gundam SEED), a Gundam is a Mobile Suit controlled by a specially designed, purpose-built operating system. But, in an amusing touch, each of these systems can be an acronym of "GUNDAM"; many of Morgenröte's craft uses the "General Unilateral Neuro-link Dispersive Autonomic Maneuver synthesis system," ZAFT mechs use the "Generation Unsubdued Nuclear Drive Assault Module complex," and the GFAS-X1 Destroy Gundam has the "Gigantic Unilateral Numerous Dominating Ammunition" system.

The Gundam franchise has frequently gone out of its way to explain how its robots function and why they are used in the ways they are, as a way to differentiate the franchise from the more fantastical super-robot shows that came before it. The elements that the original Mobile Suit Gundam created have become so well-known that other science fiction and mecha shows reference or outright copy them. The most famous of these concepts is Minovsky physics, a branch of physics created by Trenov Y. Minovsky. This branch of physics aimed to build a nuclear reactor that emitted no neutron radiation. Over time, scientists developed and then miniaturized these reactors, allowing them to be placed directly inside Mobile Suits.

The sheer power these tiny nuclear reactors generated allowed Mobile Suits to fly for long distances and allowed the use of powerful weapons like the iconic beam sabers. While trying to make these reactors, scientists discovered a new particle, dubbing it the Minovsky Particle. When left in open space, this particle damages electronic circuits, disrupts radio waves and microwaves, and renders radar unusable, destroying most long-range communication methods and making precision-guided weapons non-viable. Because of this, close-quarters combat quickly became the norm again. Most fights take place within visual range of the opponent and require manned rather than remotely controlled weapons, making the Mobile Suits a crucial part of every army.

Another massive technological advancement in the Mobile Suit Gundam universe was the Active Mass Balance Auto-Control. This system allowed the Mobile Suits to operate precisely in space without relying on thrusters, giving pilots precise control. Without this technology, most of the combat feats seen in Mobile Suit Gundam wouldn't be possible.

The other prominent technological growth focused on the discovery of Newtypes. Newtypes are humans who have reached the next level of evolution, leading to them having unique brainwaves. This change means that Newtypes have incredible spacial awareness and reaction times, as well as low-level telepathy and the ability to feel the presence of other Newtypes. Of course, both sides of the One Year War began exploiting Newtypes for their combat potential, leading to the development of the Psycommu System, which allowed Newtypes to control weapons and suits via thought. This system would get refined and become the Psycoframe, which allowed a Newtype to control a Gundam as if it was their own body. While the Newtypes generally don't exist outside the Universal Century timeline, many other timelines have their equivalent, most with similar technology, including the Innovators in the Anno Domini line and the Coordinators in the Cosmic Era.

Of course, while these technologies are iconic, they don't appear in every Gundam timeline, and the franchise alters and drops things as the story requires. For instance, in the Ad Stella timeline, Gundam robots use the GUND Format as their base. In the Anno Domini timeline, GN Drives are used to power most Gundam units, with many using the resulting GN particles as offensive and defensive tools, giving them vastly different capabilities to the Minovsky Particle-powered mechs seen in other timelines. Because of this flexibility, Gundam's history is full of strange robots with unique quirks. For instance, those who dug into the Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Skull Heart manga would meet the MS-06MS Barbus, a modified version of the MS-06F designed to be piloted by the Newtype monkeys Zeon scientists had been working on. Infamously, Mobile Fighter G Gundam contained the GF13-066NO Nether Gundam, a fighting robot designed to represent Neo Holland. Because of this, the robot has a massive windmill on it, the blades of which can replace the Nether Gundam's legs to give it extended flight capabilities.

The Behind-The-Scenes Factors That Shaped Them

Another fascinating thing about the Mobile Suits seen in the original Gundam and its follow-ups is how their designs got shaped by the things going on behind the scenes. For instance, early in production, the team was heavily inspired by Robert A. Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel Starship Troopers and based the early robot concepts on the Powered armor worn by the Mobile Infantry troops in that story, meaning they were only around three meters tall. However, the show's sponsors believed that an enormous robot would appeal to children more and asked for them to be taller, with the creators and sponsors eventually agreeing on a height of 18 meters.

The legendary Zaku mechs were also heavily shaped by behind-the-scenes discussions. According to those who worked on the show, there was never any intention to sell toys based on them, meaning that the sponsors gave the team free rein to do whatever they felt like. The Zaku could therefore be asymmetrical and use a less kid-friendly color palette, allowing for the robot's most iconic design elements to take shape and leading to Char's MS-06S Zaku II Commander Type becoming one of the most instantly recognizable mechs in fiction.

Over time the average size of Gundam's robots has fluctuated. Initially, this change was because of another behind-the-scenes discussion. During the production of Gundam F91, franchise creator Yoshiyuki Tomino wanted to shorten the robots to 9 meters tall. He wanted this because the animators were struggling to frame scenes that featured humans and robots side by side. If the entire robot appeared in the frame, the human would be too small to be visible, making it hard to convey emotion with facial expressions or movements. But, if zoomed in enough to see the human character's face, the Gundam would be oddly cut off. However, due to the success of the Gunpla model kits, Bandai wasn't happy with this, fearing that the reduced size and scale would cause customer confusion. Eventually, they compromised and made the new Gundam around 15 meters high, allowing the 1/100 model kits to be 15cm tall. However, in recent years, most main Gundam robots have returned to the original 18 meters tall, as seen with Suletta Mercury's XVX-016 Gundam Aerial from Mobile Suit Gundam the Witch from Mercury—though the franchise has remained flexible with height ever since.

Gundam's mobile suits are fascinating because the writers have been able to balance their iconic design details with general flexibility. Because of this, most Gundam robots are instantly recognizable as Gundam while still giving writers room to deviate from the norm whenever it suits the story. The franchise features a massive variety of Mobile Suits, each with unique technology, abilities, and designs. And as the success of Witch from Mercury shows, this is a winning formula that is just as popular today as in 1979.