It’s been a while since Netflix and Sunrise announced they were working on the upcoming Mobile Suit Gundam movie, Gundam Requiem for Vengeance. While the movie is still being worked on, Netflix released yet another teaser trailer today. Being the Gundam fan/freak/lover at this lovely outlet, I’ve watched the trailer multiple times and don’t know what to think about it. Mind you, this isn’t the Live-Action Gundam movie that was unveiled in 2018—that’s still being worked on, and we haven’t heard much about it since.
On the one hand, I love that this focuses on the Zeon forces and their perspective of the battles they fight while also showing the fear of seeing a Gundam up close for the first time. Though, I’m not sure how that’s a thing given that the RX-78 and various mass-produced suits based on the Gundam were everywhere. Yet, I worry about CGI-animated movies, especially ones that focus on a series I hold dear to my heart. This show is being developed by SAFEHOUSE (Love Death + Robots, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero), who is producing the show using Unreal Engine 5.
It will be nice to see another show that shows Zeon’s perspective of the battles against the Federation, but it will be far from being the only one that does this. We’ve had games such as Mobile Suit Gundam Zeonic Front, Mobile Suit Gundam Battle Operation Code Fairy, and several others. Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt 1 and 2 told tales from both the Zeon and Federation perspectives, as did MSG: Igloo, and Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin – Advent of the Red Comet, to name a few.
Regardless, I can’t wait to see this new series. I have my fingers crossed that it turns out good.
Here’s the first trailer if you haven’t seen it yet.
What is the Gundam Requiem for Vengeance?
Gundam Requiem for Vengeance will occur nearly one year after the One Year War. For those not familiar with the name, this is the war that took place through several animated series, including Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, and season one of Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt. This is also after the event of the cursed colony drop that happened as part of Operation British, and the Zeon forces decided to drop a space colony called Side 2 onto the Federation military headquarters, Jaburo. If you’re wondering what happened to the Side 2 space colony cluster, Zeon used a lethal gas called G3 and killed everyone aboard it before the colony drop. So, it was just a floating graveyard that no one wanted to touch after that.
Of course, it didn’t happen as planned, as the space colony broke up while descending onto Earth. No… instead, the parts ended up hitting various locations of the planet, with the largest part of the space colony hitting and wiping out the city of Sydney, Australia. This act killed millions of people, and the remaining pieces of the space colony eventually fell onto Earth, causing more damage and worse for decades.
Zeon Zum Deikun organized this as part of this war campaign, and the plan was to make Earth unhabitable, forcing everyone to migrate into space. It is widely considered the worst act throughout the Mobile Suit Gundam’s Universal Century and is referred to quite a bit. Despite this goal forcing Zeon and the Federation to ban any acts like this, Char decides he doesn’t care, and after dropping an asteroid onto the Earth, he follows that act by dropping the asteroid base, Axis, onto the Earth. This takes place during Char’s counterattack, and thanks to Amuro’s efforts, that crisis was advertised. This is also when Amuro and Char disappear, with the debate on whether both of them have died or not continuing til this day. Of course, there are several colony drops in other Gundam universes.
Gundam Requiem for Vengeance at an unmentioned time during the Universal Century era and draws inferences from Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt and Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, the latter being one of my favorite animes.
It would seem that based on this trailer and the art for the show, the unnamed Gunda, which I’ve yet to figure out if it is based on an existing Gundam or will be new just for this show, is.
