With the upcoming show Witch From Mercury, there's never been a better time to try Gundam—but its many timelines can be intimidating
The Witch From Mercury, the latest series in the genre, will debut next month, marking the 11th canonical mainline timeline in Gundam continuity. Here's our guide to each Gundam timeline, as well as a few shows in each to help you sort your Correct Centuries from your Regilds and your After Colonies from your After Wars.
The Twentieth Century
For many Gundam enthusiasts, the continuity of the original Mobile Suit Gundam and its sequels is the be-all and end-all. The most popular and dominant of the Gundam timelines, it is the setting for the majority of the franchise, from the original show to last year's film Hathaway.
The advent of the Earth Federation—the unified administrative force on a post-space-expansion Earth plagued by climate change, financial imbalance, and population crises—and its wars with diverse groups of interstellar colonial secessionists define the Universal Century. Of course, the most significant is the "One Year War" in U.C. 0079 between Earth and the Principality of Zeon—a group of the most remote space colonies rebelling against Earth's sovereignty, usurped by the fascist Zabi family's ascension to power. This is the conflict in the original Mobile Suit Gundam that sees mechanized infantry, Mobile Suits, begin to dominate warfare, and a brutal event that sees half of all humanity made extinct in the opening months of the war that almost every other story set here will deal with the long-term ramifications of.
- Gundam Mobile Suit
- Zeta Gundam Mobile Suit
- Gundam ZZ Mobile Suit
- Char's Counterattack - Mobile Suit Gundam
- The 08th MS Team of Mobile Suit Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: Pocket War
- Stardust Memory, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083
- Gundam F91 Mobile Suit
- Gundam Victory Mobile Suit
- G-Saviour
- Thunderbolt: December Sky, Thunderbolt: Bandit Flower, and Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt
- Gundam Unicorn Mobile Suit
- Twilight Axis, Mobile Suit Gundam
- Narrative of the Mobile Suit Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway
Century of the Future
Gundam's first canonical alternate timeline is one of the strangest: it is home to only one series, Mobile Fighter G Gundam, and is set in a future when most of humanity has abandoned a damaged Earth for life in space colonies, split by their Earth nations rather than as a united people. The "Gundam Fight," an inter-colonial Mobile Suit combat tournament that determines the ruler of Earth's remnants, has replaced conflict.
- Gundam G Gundam Mobile Fighter
Following the Colony
This is the home of the Gundam Wing series, which gave the franchise its western break. The After Colony era is set in an ongoing time of fight for independence between the space colonies and the United Earth Sphere Alliance, which shares many similarities in premise with the Universal Century. This time, however, it is the colonies who create the Gundams—superior Mobile Suits made of powerful alloys created by a team of brilliant scientists for use by five young men entrusted with infiltrating Earth and utilizing the Gundams to obtain freedom for the colonies at whatever cost.
- New Gundam Wing Mobile Report
- Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz is a new mobile report.
After The War
In the 1990s, Gundam went completely insane with other timelines. This is the setting of Wings' successor After War Gundam X, which, like it, contains further parallels to the Universal Century conflicts, albeit without being directly linked to them. It's also the only non-Universal Century Gundam timeline to address a subject that is generally reserved for Universal Century stories: the concept of the Newtype, the natural evolution of space-living people that results in the development of latent psychic talents.
- Gundam X After War
The Correct Century
Another "alternative" chronology, this one is even more overtly linked to the Universal Century than the parallels in the After Colony and After War continuities. The Correct Century is set thousands of years after a time of "Dark History," in which an Earth destroyed by conflict between Mobile Suits is abandoned by much of mankind, who build a new civilisation on the moon. The "Moonrace" from above intends to return to its repaired home and live alongside its distant cousins—peacefully or otherwise—as the remaining humans on Earth continue to reconstruct society up to an early 20th-century level of technology.
Turn A reveals that the Correct Century is actually in the same continuity as the Universal Century, but is set in an unspecified future long after its events.
- Turn A Gundam
The Cosmic Era
This is the only timeline since the Universal Century to have many TV shows set in it, and it is Gundam's first truly 21st century serial. Economic and environmental calamities triggered a nuclear conflict on its version of Earth, resulting in all nations being dramatically realigned and rebuilt into separate economic blocks. Another interplanetary struggle between Earth and its colonies can be seen in the early days of humanity's aspirations to colonize the stars, where there is a growing rift between humans and their genetically modified equivalents known as "Coordinators."
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED C.E. 73: STARGAZER
Anno Domini
This is the only Gundam timeline that uses the Gregorian calendar, and it is home to Gundam 00, a series set in the 24th century in which a post-fossil-fuel world has given rise to three great power blocs based on near-unlimited solar power systems. As smaller countries abandoned by the blocs are thrown into resource warfare and poverty, a paramilitary group known as Celestial Being launches a noble battle to destroy all strife using four powerful Gundams.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 - Awakening of the Trailblazer
The Next Generation
Move over, One Year War, because the One Hundred Years War has here. Set in a far future in which people have long since migrated to space colonies, centuries of peace are shattered when a rogue faction of abandoned colonists attacks Earth and its other colonies, beginning a new conflict in which the construction of the Gundam is seen as humanity's final hope for survival.
- Mobile Suit Gundam AGE
- Mobile Suit Gundam Age: Memory of Eden
The Regild Century
Although officially its own chronology, the Regild Century is inextricably linked to the Universal Century and Correct Century settings, with its lone TV series, Reconguista in G, taking place approximately 500 years after the events of Turn A Gundam. Earth prospers in a new era of peace following the conflicts of the Universal and Correct Centuries, with society rebuilding itself around a Universal Century-era space elevator used to transport energy resources from space to Earth, leading to the rise of a dominant religious belief known as SU-Cordism—a religion strictly controlling technological advancement on Earth itself in an attempt to prevent past wars from occurring again.
- Gundam Reconguista in G
Following the Disaster
This is the setting of Iron-Blood Orphans, which takes place in the most current Gundam chronology prior to Witch From Mercury. Set three centuries after the Calamity War ends and a reformed Earth begins to populate Mars, an emerging independence movement on the Red Planet sparks a new fight between a PMC of young soldiers and Earth's forces.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans
Ad Stella
The current Gundam timeline is the setting for the franchise's newest series, The Witch From Mercury, which will premiere in October 2022. In a future when giant megacorporations push humanity's climb towards the stars, Spacian residents have learned to adapt to the hardships of Zero-G existence with the use of cybernetic modifications and prosthetics known as the GUND Format. However, when the technology is used to assist in the development of new Mobile Suits directly integrating pilot and machine known as the Gundams, Earth's Mobile Suit developers form a new military unit to subdue their creation.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury Prologue
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury
#Gundam #MobileSuit
SOURCE: gizmodo
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