Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

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Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
新機動戦記ガンダムＷ (New Mobile Report Gundam W)
Genre	Mecha, Action, Science Fiction
Manga
Authored by	Hajime Yatate, Yoshiyuki Tomino
Publisher	Kodansha Panini Comics Pika Édition TokyoPop
Serialized in
Original run	October 1995 – May 1996
No. of volumes	3 volumes
TV anime
Directed by	Masashi Ikeda
Studio	Sunrise
Network	Cartoon Network YTV Etc...TV, Chilevisión (2002) M6 Tele 5 Animax, TV Asahi (1995) TV2 GMA Network (1998),RPN (2007) Hyper Cartoon Network Cartoon Network (2000)
Original run	April 7, 1995 – March 29, 1996
No. of episodes	49
OVA: Gundam Wing: Operation Meteor
Directed by	Masashi Ikeda
Studio	Sunrise
No. of episodes	2
Released	April 25, 1996 & October 10, 1996
OVA/Movie
Gundam Wing - Endless Waltz (1997)

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, known in Japan as New Mobile Report Gundam W (新機動戦記ガンダムW, Shin Kidō Senki Gandamu Uingu^?) ^[1], is a televised anime series, which aired across Japan on the anime satellite television network, Animax, and the terrestrial TV Asahi network. It ran for forty-nine half-hour episodes (25 in English), beginning in 1995. Initially directed by Masashi Ikeda and written by Katsuyuki Sumizawa (Samurai Troopers) with music by Ko Otani, the series was loosely based on the original 1979 Gundam series, Mobile Suit Gundam, created by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hajime Yatate.

Gundam Wing is one of the alternate universe Gundam series, taking place in the After Colony timeline. It is the second alternate universe in the Gundam media franchise, following Mobile Fighter G Gundam. Gundam Wing was the first anime in the Gundam franchise to be dubbed and released in English, airing on Cartoon Network in the United States in 2000. ^[1] Since then, the series has also been dubbed into French, German, Arabic, and Portuguese.

Contents 1 Background 2 Plot 3 Media information 4 Cast and characters 5 Openings, Endings, and Insert Songs 6 Footnotes 7 Trivia 8 See also 9 External links

[edit] 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 Tallgeese.

[edit] Plot

Main article: List of Gundam Wing episodes

The story of Gundam Wing begins in the year After Colony 195, with the start of Operation: Meteor; 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, which can only be created in outer space.

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 (also not his original name and known as Nanashi (No-Name)), 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.

[edit] Media information

Gundam Wing had a run on Cartoon Network's Toonami, premiering on Monday, March 6, 2000 at 5:30 PM EST. It was broadcast in two formats; an edited version was show in the daytime and an uncut version aired at night. Examples of the edits included the removal of blood,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", 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 has gained some popularity through the emulation of older video games.

Like most Gundam works, Wing has also appeared in the SD Gundam sub-franchise. It was the main focus for Musha Senki and the basis for Superior Defender Gundam Force's interpretation of Lacroa, established hub of the Knight Gundam series.

[edit] Cast and characters

Main article: After Colony list of characters

Character	Japanese Actor	English Actor
Heero Yuy	Hikaru Midorikawa	Mark Hildreth
Relena Peacecraft	Akiko Yajima	Lisa Ann Beley
Duo Maxwell	Toshihiko Seki	Scott McNeil
Trowa Barton	Shigeru Nakahara	Kirby Morrow
Quatre Raberba Winner	Ai Orikasa	Brad Swaile
Chang Wufei	Ryuuzou Ishino	Ted Cole
Zechs Merquise	Takehito Koyasu	Brian Drummond
Treize Khushrenada	Ryotaro Okiayu	David Kaye
Lucrezia Noin	Chisa Yokoyama	Saffron Henderson
Lady Une	Sayuri Yamauchi	Enuka Okuma
Dorothy Catalonia	Naoko Matsui	Cathy Weseluck
Duke Dermail	Osamu Kato	Michael Dobson
Catherine Bloom	Saori Suzuki	Moneca Stori & Cathy Weseluck
Sally Po	Yumi Touma	Moneca Stori & Samantha Ferris [2]
Hilde Schbeiker	Kae Araki	Marcy Goldberg
Narrator	Akio Ohtsuka	Campbell Lane

[edit] 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)

[edit] Footnotes

• ↑  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.
• ↑  Moneca Stori voiced Sally Po throughout episodes 3 to 12 of the English dub. Samantha Ferris, who had previously voiced minor characters in the anime, voiced the character from episode 20 until the end of the series, and in Endless Waltz.

[edit] Trivia

• There were a number of production problems with the series, which culminated with head writer Katsuyuki Sumizawa stepping down from his position about halfway through the show. He became story supervisor. 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 is untrue.

• 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 the pilot's Gundam number (i.e Gundam 01's pilot was Heero Yuy) into a shorthand denoting the romantic pairings in their stories; for example, "1x2" means that the story promotes the pairing of Heero and Duo, "3x4" means Trowa and Quatre, and so forth.

• OZ (which itself stands for Organization 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 organization, but also notable are a character named Dorothy, a small space force named Scarecrow, and various symbols of characters placed on uniforms and logos. A lion, a tiger and a bear can be seen in Catherines' circus.

• 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 the TWAIN plugin 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.

[edit] See also

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

[edit] External links

• Mobile Suit Gundam Wing at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
• AboutGundamWing.com - An archive of Gundam Wing transcript and reference information

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing Characters
Gundam Pilots Heero Yuy Duo Maxwell Trowa Barton Quatre Raberba Winner Chang Wufei	Civilians Relena Peacecraft Catherine Bloom Sally Po Hilde Schbeiker	Organization of Zodiac (OZ) Zechs Merquise Treize Khushrenada Lucrezia Noin Lady Une	Others Dorothy Catalonia Odin Lowe List of After Colony characters