gundam wing

Background

Man has colonized space (with major colonies at each of the five Earth-Moon Lagrange points), and, down on the Earth, the nations have united as the United Earth Sphere Alliance. Unfortunately, the Alliance rules the colonies with an iron fist. The colonies wanted a peaceful resolution to the situation, with the movement being headed by the pacifist Heero Yuy. Unfortunately, in the year After Colony 175, he is shot dead by an assassin's bullet, forcing the colonies to search for other means of obtaining peace. This prompts five scientists from the Organization of Zodiac, much more commonly referred to as OZ, to turn rogue after the completion of the mobile suit prototype OZ-00MS Tallgeese.

Plot

The story of Gundam Wing begins in the year After Colony 195, with the start of Operation: Meteor, or the scientists' revenge against the OZ military organization. It centers around five young boys who have been chosen and trained by the five rogue scientists, then sent to Earth in extremely advanced Mobile Suits, one designed by each of the scientists, known as "Gundams". Their Mobile Suits are called Gundams because they are constructed from a rare and astonishingly durable material known as Gundanium alloy. The five Gundam Pilots, Heero Yuy (his code name, not to be confused with the name of the assassinated leader whom he is named after), Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, Quatre Raberba Winner, and Chang Wufei, originally have no knowledge of each others' existence, and, on their first meeting, each pilot believes the others to be new OZ mobile suit designs. Once the young pilots realize that they have the same objective of destroying OZ and in some cases, are given the same mission, they band together to help each other complete their ultimate goal.

Media Information

Gundam Wing had a run on Cartoon Network's Toonami where it was broadcasted as an edited version in the daytime and an uncut version at night (ex: blood is edited and the word 'kill' is replaced by the word 'destroy'). Also Duo's nickname the God of Death was edited to the Great Destroyer (which also included altering two episode titles). The uncut version, shown at midnight, was completely unedited, making history for Cartoon Network, which, at the time, had never before shown an unedited anime.

Due to the popularity of the series, two OVAs, compiling various scenes from the series along with a few minutes of new footage, were released in 1996 as Gundam Wing: Operation: Meteor I and II. A brand new, three-volume OVA series, Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz was made in 1997 as a sequel to the TV series and closes out the After Colony saga. A year later, in 1998, a movie version of the OVA series was made, with new footage and a different ending (Last Impression).

Manga sidestories have also been produced. A prequel, detailing the events leading up to the launch of the Gundams to Earth, is Episode Zero. Several sequel manga, occurring between Gundam Wing and Endless Waltz have been written, titled, Gundam Wing: Blind Target, Gundam Wing: Ground Zero,and Battlefield of Pacifists. A coincident storyline is presented in Last Outpost (G-Unit). The Gundam Wing, Battlefield of Pacifists, and Endless Waltz manga series are published in English by TOKYOPOP, while Blind Target, Ground Zero, and Episode Zero are published by Viz Communications.

In 1996, a fighting game called Gundam Wing: Endless Duel was released for the Super Famicom in Japan. The game was never released in the United States or Europe, but enjoys widespread popularity thanks to the emulation of older video games.

Trivia

• There were a number of production problems with the series, which culminated with head writer Katsuyuki Sumizawa quitting about halfway through the show. As a result, the backstories for the main cast, which were intended to be animated as part of the series, were cut, eventually becoming the manga, Episode Zero. Rumors state that director Ikeda also quit some time into the show, replaced by Shinji Takamatsu (who would go on to direct Gundam X), but this remains unconfirmed.

• A fair number of the characters' names are puns off of various languages' words for numbers. For example, Heero's name derives from Japanese words for "one" and "alone", Zechs is a variant of the German word for "six", and so forth. This trend was somewhat continued in the various spinoffs, with G-Unit's Adin Barnett (from the Russian word for "one") and Tiel's Impulse's Tiel Noembreux (from the French word meaning "numerous"). Many Gundam Wing fanfiction authors have adopted this into a shorthand denoting the romantic pairings in their stories; for example, "1xR" means that the story promotes the pairing of Heero and Relena, "3x4" means Trowa and Quatre, and so forth.

• OZ (which itself stands for Organisation of the Zodiac) names its production-model mobile suits for the signs of the Western Zodiac. The major exception to this rule is the ground-combat Tragos, whose name comes from the Greek word for "goat", and can be considered a stand-in for Capricorn.

• Several references to The Wizard of Oz are present throughout the series. The most obvious example is the OZ organisation, but also notable are a character named Dorothy, a small space force named Scarecrow, and various symbols of characters placed on uniforms and logos.

• The animation staff snuck several Easter eggs into the series in the form of quick snippets of joke text. In Episode 3, the medical readouts on Heero include the readme file for Adobe Photoshop; similarly, in Episode 8, a chip labelled "Intel Outside" can be seen. There are also several references to the Universal Century timelines, as seen in the mobile suit schematics, such as references to mega particles, movable frames, Gundarium, and the ALICE System from Gundam Sentinel.

¹ The translation New Mobile Report Gundam W is used by the R2 DVD releases in Japan, and thus is used extensively by the English-language fanbase in order to differentiate it from the Universal Century Gundam series. While the use of the term "report" in the title is not necessarily incorrect, it does not convey the full meaning of the original-language terminology. The Japanese word senki (戦記) has a specific meaning of "military history." Some official translations in the past have used the translation New Mobile War Chronicle Gundam Wing as well, and some of the official art uses The New Mobile History Gundam Wing, and at least one Japanese book has used Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.

Main characters

Main article: After Colony list of characters

Gundam Wing Pilots

• Heero Yuy
• Duo Maxwell
• Trowa Barton
• Quatre Raberba Winner
• Chang Wufei

Other major characters

• Relena Peacecraft
• Zechs Merquise
• Treize Khushrenada
• Lucrezia Noin

Episode guide

Main article: List of Gundam Wing Episodes

1. The Shooting Star She Saw
2. The Gundam Deathscythe
3. Five Gundams Confirmed
4. The Victoria Nightmare
5. Relena's Secret
6. Party Night
7. Scenario For Bloodshed
8. The Treize Assassination
9. Portrait Of A Ruined Country
10. Heero, Distracted By Defeat
11. The Whereabouts Of Happiness
12. Bewildered Warriors
13. Catherine's Tears
14. The Order To Destroy 01
15. To The Battleground Antarctica
16. The Sorrowful Battle
17. Betrayed By Home, Far Away
18. Tallgeese Destroyed
19. Assault On Barge
20. The Lunar Base Infiltration
21. Grief Stricken Quatre
22. The Fight For Independence
23. Duo, God Of Death Once Again (Edited on Toonami as: Duo, The Great Destroyer Once Again)
24. The Gundam They Called Zero
25. Quatre VS Heero
26. The Eternal Flame Of The Shooting Stars
27. The Locus Of Victory And Defeat
28. Passing Destinies
29. The Heroine Of The Battlefield
30. The Reunion With Relena
31. The Glass Kingdom
32. The God Of Death Meets Zero (Edited on Toonami as: The Great Destroyer Meets Zero)
33. The Lonely Battlefield
34. And Its Name Is Epyon
35. The Return Of Wufei
36. Sanc Kingdom's Collapse
37. Zero VS Epyon
38. The Birth Of Queen Relena
39. Trowa's Return To The Battlefield
40. A New Leader
41. Crossfire At Barge
42. Battleship Libra
43. Target: Earth
44. Go Forth, Gundam Team
45. Signs Of The Final Battle
46. Milliardo's Decision
47. Collision In Space
48. Takeoff Into Confusion
49. The Final Victor

Openings, Endings and Insert Songs

Openings:

• Just Communication by Two-Mix (ep. 1-40) (YTV Broadcast: 1-49)
• Rhythm Emotion by Two-Mix (ep. 41-49)
• Gundam Wings "أجنحة كاندم" (Arabic) [All episodes]

Ending:

• It's Just Love by Rumi Oishi (ep. 1-49)
• Just Communication (Instrumental Version) by Kou Ootani (Toonami Broadcast, ep. 1-49)

Insert Songs:

• Just Communication by Two-Mix (eps. 3 & 49)
• Rhythm Emotion by Two-Mix (eps. 36, 38, 39, and 41)

Cast

See also

• Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz
• After Colony Timeline
• After Colony Nations and Factions
• After Colony Mobile Units
• After Colony Technology
• After Colony list of characters

External links

• Official Mobile Suit Gundam Wing website
• Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (anime) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia