Until very recently, I had never seen Gundam. You would think I would have, at some point. After all, I went through the increasingly ancient rites of watching Toonami on Cartoon Network and then learning the deep magic (torrenting) in college. This was a peak period for Getting Into Gundam, and even if I hadn't then, you'd think I would have at some point in the many years of anime watching that have followed.
But I never did. Not for lack of interest! I've always been a huge science fiction fan, and robots have been one of my favorite things about science fiction since I was a kid. But I think that between it being such a venerable and very long franchise, and the fact that any Gundam talk from others sounded like it was in a foreign language, had me decide that for me, the Gundam Ship Had Sailed.
And smash cut to me spending all my Christmas money on gunpla last week.
So how did this happen?
The short answer is: The Witch From Mercury happened.
The longer answer is: I am a yuri fan, I found out the new Gundam show had yuri, people were saying it was good and you needed no prior franchise knowledge, and I decided to watch it.
When I went into it I was thinking something like: Well, everyone says this is good (the show had finished by this point), there's a bunch of cute fanart, and it's yuri. I'm sure I will enjoy this and it will be fun and then I'll move on to the next yuri anime.
Instead, I got the first show I really, really didn't want to stop watching, that I'd seen in a long time.
Everything felt like it was catered specifically to me. The characters. The music. The melodramatic but visually stunning action. And the science fiction! It is good science fiction! The show wasn't just using the genre as a setting, it was embracing the core ideas of “What if [this] happened? How would it affect humanity?” that are in all my favorite science fiction stuff.
So after I watched The Witch From Mercury, I was sitting there kind of stunned. What else was I supposed to watch now? Would anything else be a similar hole made just for me?
I chewed on this for a bit and then did something deranged and searched “Mobile Suit Gundam watch order”.
And at first, I didn't know if this was actually going to work. After all, The Witch From Mercury had yuri, and pretty much all my favorite anime is, if not yuri, at least a girl-fest. Could a show from 1979, with no yuri, keep me invested?
Well. Basically the same thing happened. I could not stop watching. It was hitting all the same beats! It had a banger theme song! The characters were all fun and interesting! And it was, again, telling a very good science fiction story. And when I finished it, that's when I knew I was in it for the long haul.
That is how robots happened. I still kind of can't believe I got here. The other day someone sent me a tumblr ask and I started rattling off mech names like “Qubeley” and "Z'Gok". I'm the one speaking in tongues now. Help
