My 'Project Gundam'

As I am entering the latter episodes of Gundam SEED, I feel it is appropriate to publish this post. Unlike most of my recent entries, it is not a review, rather an overview of my plans for watching the remainder of Gundam series I have yet to see in their entirety.

As of today, May 16, 2010, I have completed the following series, OVAs, ONAs, and movies from the Gundam universe:

- Mobile Suit Gundam: 08th MS Team
- MS Igloo: The Hidden One Year War
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz
- Turn A Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray MSV
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Stargazer
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00

I have no intention of watching compilation movies such as The Last Blitz of Zeon, Miller's Report, or Moonlight Butterfly. I may, however, end up watching the Zeta Gundam: A New Translation films after I complete the 1985 Zeta Gundam series to see how the two compare. The list of series, OVAs, and films I have yet to complete (or in some cases, begin watching) includes the following:

- Mobile Suit Gundam
- MS Igloo: Apocalypse 0079
- MS Igloo 2: Gravity of the Battlefront
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam
- Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn
- Mobile Suit Gundam F91
- Mobile Suit Victory Gundam
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
- After War Gundam X
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Awakening of the Trailblazer

As Gundam Unicorn will be airing its second episode this Fall and Awakening of the Trailblazer will not be out in Japan until September, those two will obviously be on hold until they are available to me. As for the rest, I'm simply going to watch them at my leisure, intermitten with other anime series. Gundam is one of my favorite anime sagas and the OVAs and films are easy enough to watch over a short time frame. The full-length series, however, take a longer time to complete. I finished Turn A Gundam at the beginning of this year, and I am currently on episode thirty of Gundam SEED. I started watching Zeta Gundam when it was hosted under YouTube's shows and I plan to pick that series back up at some point this Summer, as it was very entertaining and had a deeper plot than I initially expected. I also managed to get nine episodes into Gundam Wing, though I'm not a huge Gundam Wing fan to begin with and I opted to complete Gundam SEED for now instead. If I manage to complete all three series by the end of the year, combined with Turn A Gundam that amounts to almost two-hundred episodes of Gundam, which would knock out of the way a major portion of the task ahead of me.

I expect this project to take me at least to the end of 2011 and possibly into 2012. As more Gundam series, OVAs, and films are released I will add them to my list. As much as I love Gundam, I do plan on watching other anime as well, because I feel like I could become overloaded if all I watch is Gundam for such a long stretch of time.

There are some series I am more excited about watching than others, based on my knowledge of the plot, characters, and director. While I do plan on watching SEED Destiny, it's not exactly a series I'm greatly anticipating. I'm going to try and end my project on a higher note, most likely with Victory Gundam or the original Mobile Suit Gundam (as odd as it might be to end with the beginning).