Gundam Wing

Gundam Wing
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Format	Animated Series
Genre	Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Science Fiction
Creator	Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hajime Yatate
Production Company(s)	Sunrise Inc. Bandai Entertainment
Runtime	22 minutes (approx.)
Production
No. of seasons 1
No. of episodes 49
Longevity
Premiere (United States) March 6, 2000
Finale (United States) May 11, 2001
Status Ended

New Mobile Report Gundam Wing (alternatively referred to as Mobile Suit Gundam Wing or simply Gundam Wing) was a 49 episode anime broadcast in Japan beginning in 1995 and later broadcast in the United States in 2000 on Cartoon Network's Toonami programming block.

Gundam Wing premiered on Toonami on Monday, March 6, 2000 at 5:30 PM EST. In the promos leading up to the broadcast, Peter Cullen narrated the back story, evoking memories of Voltron's opening credits. It was broadcast in two formats; an edited version shown in the daytime and an uncut version aired at night on Toonami's Midnight Run.

Examples of the edits included the removal of blood, obscene language, and the word kill being replaced by the word destroy. (This was extended to Duo's nickname, "The God of Death", with it being changed to "The Great Destroyer", forcing the alteration of two episode titles.) The uncut version, shown at midnight, was completely unedited - a first for Cartoon Network, which at the time had never shown an unedited anime.

Plot

The story of Gundam Wing begins in the year After Colony 195, with the start of Operation Meteor, the scientists' plan for revenge against the OZ military organization. The operation involves five young boys who have each been chosen and trained by one of the five rogue scientists, then sent to Earth independently 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, which can only be created in outer space.

The five Gundam Pilots — Heero Yuy (an alias, not to be confused with the assassinated leader), Duo Maxwell (also an alias), Trowa Barton (another alias, he was previously known as Nanashi (No-Name)), Quatre Raberba Winner, and Chang Wufei — originally have no knowledge of each others' existence. On first meeting any of the other five, each pilot believes the others to be enemy pilots in new OZ mobile suit designs. Once the young pilots realize that they have the same objective of destroying OZ (and in some cases the same mission), they band together to help each other complete their goals.

Characters

Heero Yuy

Heero Yuy - The main protagonist of Gundam Wing and of several derivative works that make up the After Colony timeline. The pilot of the Wing Gundam, one of the five Gundams sent to Earth during Operation Meteor, and later the Gundam Wing Zero .The boy who is given the codename "Heero Yuy" is of Japanese descent. A complicated character, his cold, stoic demeanor seems more fitting for a battle hardened veteran than a fifteen-year-old boy. When Relena Peacecraft meets Doctor J, the engineer comments that Heero is actually a very kind-hearted young man who keeps his emotions reined in while fighting. On many occasions, Heero espouses the philosophy that being emotional on the battlefield will only result in heartbreak, so soldiers need to be able to fight without caring about their opponents.

Heero is the most skilled and focused in combat out of the five pilots, both in mobile suits and out, which makes him a great asset and a deadly force to be reckoned with. Heero's education was a tough training of self-discipline, extreme body control and ability to reason. This was only possible by Doctor J manipulating his genes. He's perfect in close combat, computer hacking and mobile suit piloting. There's almost no battle situation he doesn't emerge as the victor.

Duo Maxwell

Duo Maxwell - The pilot of The Gundam Deathscythe, one of the five Gundams sent to Earth during Operation Meteor. He is a central character of the anime and several of the derivative works that make up the After Colony Timeline. He is an expert salvager and a member of The Sweeper Group, a group of salvagers and tinkerers. Duo refers to himself as The God of Death; a reference to the amount of death he witnessed early in his life. On the exterior, Duo seems like a happy, charming, relaxed, and laid-back jokester, and for the most part he is; however, he is also a complex person with a terrible childhood that he hides. He also deeply cares for his comrades and is never afraid to rush to their aide in battle. 

Duo is trained in basic combat, showing skill with firearms throughout the series more so than hand to hand or melee weaponry. He seems to employ a number of technological gadgets when on-foot, such as a special watch and personal beam-propeller glider. As he is a Gundam pilot, Duo has exceptional mobile suit piloting skills, notably being masterful in evasive and other non-combative piloting techniques.

Trowa Barton

Trowa Barton - The pilot of The Gundam Heavyarms, one of the five Gundams sent to Earth during Operation Meteor. He is a central character of the anime and several of the derivative works that make up the After Colony Timeline. The most experienced soldier of the Gundam pilots, and the only one born on Earth, Trowa is a quiet but determined person. Patient and calm, he will analyze a situation before acting. He hides his feelings well behind an impassive mask. Despite his stoic demeanor, Trowa developed a close friendship with Quatre Raberba Winner. Symbolically, Trowa is often affiliated with masks; not only because of his neutrality and his talent for infiltrating enemy ranks, but also because of his job as a circus clown -- a job where he wears a costume and painted mask. On the battlefield, Trowa attacks his enemies with utter ruthlessness and deadly accuracy. 

Trowa has a great deal of emotional control, allowing him to calmly approach any situation without being emotionally compromised. He's naturally gifted in acrobatics; he has a good ability to balance his body and applies it to his Gundam in combat. Like the rest of the Gundam pilots, Trowa is skilled in firearms, infiltration tactics, and Mpbile Suit piloting.

Quatre Raberba Winner

Quatre Raberba Winner - The pilot of Gundam Sandrock, one of the five Gundams sent to Earth during Operation Meteor. He is a central character of the anime and several of the derivative works that make up the After Colony Timeline. Out of all of the Gundam Pilots, Quatre seems the most well-adjusted of the group, generally displaying a kind, humble personality. As a firm believer in the ideal of pacifism, he is a reluctant soldier who often expresses sorrow whenever he is forced to kill his enemies. 

Despite his rather small stature, Quatre has the highest level of endurance of the five Gundam pilots, which he demonstrates by walking for hours in a Middle Eastern desert without any water, drifting in outer space for days with limited oxygen, and continuing to fight in his Gundam despite holding a bleeding stab-wound. It is also implied that he may have a form of extrasensory perception or something similar, which he refers to as the "heart of outer space". This ability remains largely unexplored throughout the series, leaving many fans to speculate as to its depth and overall usefulness.

Chang Wufei

Chang Wufei - He is a central character of the anime and several of the derivative works that make up the After Colony Timeline. He is the pilot of The Shenlong Gundam and its upgraded form the Altron Gundam. Wufei is a conflicted character. While he remains calm in many situations that would concern his fellows, he's also prone to angry emotional outbursts in response to many things, such as conflict idealogies and the gender of his opponents. He tends not to care what others think of him or his ideas and takes direct action even when he is uncertain. Wufei is a fierce warrior descended from a long, proud clan of Chinese warriors, and thus despises weakness in character and body, in others and in himself. He has a particular and strict sense of honor, as is seen when he agreed to exit his Gundam and duel Treize on his vessel, a vessel he easily could have destroyed from a distance. When defeated, he admitted this and did not use his Gundam to kill the man who had bested him. 

As evidenced in Episode Zero, when Wufei was younger he was calmer and much more cerebral, but his unwillingness to fight resulted in the death of his wife Meilan, a strong girl who took the responsibility of protecting the colony (and the newly-built Shenlong Gundam) onto herself and was killed in battle. Wufei then chose to carry out her path of justice in honor of her sacrifice. Wufei refuses to fight those he sees as weak, such as pacifists, women and children. Wufei is an expert at "close-in" fighting and hand-to-hand combat. Additionally, when debriefing OZ soldiers about the various skillsets of the Gundam pilots at the beginning of the series, Lady Une orders her men to avoid combat with 05 Gundam entirely, saying that they'll overwhelm him with numbers when the time is right, which seems to suggest that he's very skilled at one-on-one combat within his Gundam, as well.

Episodes

Main Article: Gundam Wing/Episodes

Gundam Wing consists of a 49 episode anime series, a 4-part OVA titled, Gundam Wing: Operation Meteor and a 3-part OVA titled, Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz. Endless Waltz was later compiled into a movie titled, Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz Special Edition. The anime series aired in the U.S. on Cartoon Network's weekday afternoon programing block, Toonami, premiering on March 6, 2000 and ending on May 11, 2000. Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz premiered on Toonami on November 10, 2000. Gundam Wing: Operation Meteor was never shown in the U.S.

All Gundam Wing episodes have been released to VHS and DVD in the U.S. The Differences between the two video systems is that the VHS episodes contain the edited version while the DVD episodes contain the uncut version.

External Links

• Gundam Wiki
• Toonami Wiki
• Wikipedia