, also stylized as ''∀ Gundam'', is a 1999 Japanese

mecha In science fiction, or mechs are giant robots or machines controlled by people, typically depicted as humanoid walking vehicles. The term was first used in Japanese after shortening the English loanword or , but the meaning in Japanese is ...

anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...

series produced by

Sunrise Sunrise (or sunup) is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon and its accompanying atmospheric effects. Terminology A ...

, and aired between 1999 and 2000 on Japan's FNN networks. It was created for the ''Gundam Big Bang'' 20th Anniversary celebration, and is the eighth installment in the ''

Gundam is a Japanese military fiction media franchise. Created by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Sunrise (now Bandai Namco Filmworks), the franchise features giant robots, or mecha, with the name "Gundam". The franchise began on April 7, 1979, with ''Mobile ...

'' franchise. It was later compiled in 2002 into two feature-length films entitled ''Turn A Gundam I: Earth Light'' and ''Turn A Gundam II: Moonlight Butterfly''. ''Turn A Gundam'' was directed by

Yoshiyuki Tomino is a Japanese mecha anime creator, animator, director, screenwriter, songwriter and novelist best known for creating the ''Gundam'' anime franchise. He was born in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, and studied at Nihon University's College of Art ...

, who is the main creator of the ''

'' franchise, and who had written and directed many previous ''Gundam'' works. Tomino created the series as a means of "affirmatively accepting all of the ''Gundam'' series", which is reflected in the series title's use of the

Turned A Turned A (capital: Ɐ, lowercase: ɐ, math symbol ∀) is a letter and symbol based upon the letter A. Modern Usage * Lowercase ɐ (in Roman or two story form) is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to identify the near-open centra ...

, a mathematical symbol representing

universal quantification In mathematical logic, a universal quantification is a type of quantifier, a logical constant which is interpreted as "given any" or "for all". It expresses that a predicate can be satisfied by every member of a domain of discourse. In other ...

Overview

''Turn A Gundam'' takes place in the year , in a different

calendar era A calendar era is the period of time elapsed since one '' epoch'' of a calendar and, if it exists, before the next one. For example, it is the year as per the Gregorian calendar, which numbers its years in the Western Christian era (the Copti ...

than the previous Gundam projects. The Japanese term for Correct Century, ''Seireki'', is a wordplay on the Japanese term for the

Common Era Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the o ...

(CE) Western calendar system (; pronounced ''Seireki''). The population of the Earth is, at the beginning of the series, limited to simple, steam-driven technology after past cataclysms; the Moon is populated by the Moonrace, humans who left Earth after a great war long ago to reside in technologically advanced lunar colonies until such time as they deemed the Earth suitable to return to.

Plot

''Turn A Gundam'' follows the character Loran Cehack, a young member of the Moonrace. Selected as part of a

reconnaissance In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmisher ...

mission to determine whether the Earth was fit for resettlement, Loran lands on the continent of North America, spends two years living on Earth as the chauffeur to the Heim family, and grows attached to its people. With the expectation of a peaceful resettlement operation from his people, he and a pair of his close friends sent down with him confirm that the Earth is now fit for the Moonrace to make their return. He's taken by surprise when the Moonrace intends to return to Earth via an offensive with mobile suits, and their first attack sparks a violent conflict between Earth and moon. The night of the first attack, Loran is at the White Doll, an enormous humanoid statue, for a coming-of-age ceremony. When the Moonrace attacks and the battle in town can be seen from a distance the children panic. In the midst of this panic, the White Doll shatters, revealing a metallic figure within, and the shrine collapses around it. During the panic, Loran recognizes the White Doll as a mobile suit, and succeeds in applying his knowledge of the Moonrace's mobile suits to pilot it. The death of the Heim patriarch in the attack pulls the family and Loran into the budding war; Loran becomes the designated pilot of the White Doll, and its discovery prompts the excavation of further mobile suits in the various "mountain cycles" covering the Earth. As the Moonrace's invasion rapidly turns into a full-fledged war against the increasingly armed Earthrace, it becomes clear that this state of affairs is divisive among both groups; while the Moonrace's queen Dianna Soreil attempts to negotiate with the local leaders for a peaceful solution by which the Moonrace can come to reside on the Earth, the militaristic among both populations interfere with the negotiations again and again, forcing the war to continue as opposed to accepting a compromise.

Media

Anime

The series aired 50 episodes in Japan from April 9, 1999 to April 14, 2000 on

Fuji TV JOCX-DTV (channel 8), branded as and colloquially known as CX, is a Japanese television station based in Odaiba, Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Owned and operated by the it is the key station of the Fuji News Network (FNN) and the Fuji Network S ...

, being the only Gundam anime to air on said channel. It was directed by

and produced by Hideyuki Tomioka, Takayuki Yoshii, and

Yoshihiro Suzuki Yoshihiro Suzuki (鈴木義広, born January 5, 1983 in Mannō, Kagawa Prefecture) is a retired Japanese professional baseball pitcher. He played for the Chunichi Dragons in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball or NPB is the highest leve ...

. Character designs was by

Akira Yasuda (born July 21, 1964) is a Japanese animator, character designer, game designer and mecha designer, who works under the pen name "Akiman". Yasuda is a former employee of the video game company Capcom (joining in 1985) and has worked on many Capcom g ...

and Yoshihito Hishinuma while mecha designs were done by Atsushi Shigeta,

Kunio Okawara is a mechanical designer in the Japanese anime industry. Okawara was the first in the industry to be specifically credited as a mechanical designer. He designed mecha for the ''Gundam'' and ''Brave Series'' franchises, as well as those of numerou ...

, Syd Mead, Takumi Sakura. Shigemi Ikeda directed the art and Yota Tsuruoka directed the sound. Toshiaki Ohta and

Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger and music producer best known for her work on the soundtracks of anime series, television series, live-action films, video games, and advertisements. She was born in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. She has wri ...

composed the music. The eponymous Turn A Gundam is notable because it is the first Gundam mecha designed entirely by a foreigner, the famous American visual futurist and conceptual artist Syd Mead. The first design of the new Gundam created by Mead was rejected at first by Yoshiyuki due to its extremely exotic appearance, since Tomino decided that he wanted a figure closer to previous Gundam designs. Because of its quality and impressive appearance, the old design was not discarded at all by Tomino, instead renamed and used by him as the antagonist mobile suit design ''Sumo''. Mead designed the Turn A Gundam using real world industrial design aspects, which were aimed to make it look simple and realistic.Master Grade Turn A Gundam instruction manual The shield was one of the components designed by Syd Mead with little constraint from the production team. It needed to be big enough so that the suit could hide behind it, making it easier for the anime production staff to draw. Syd Mead imagined it to be like a clam shell and finally settled with a design that looked like the old MS-14 Gelgoog's shield from the first series. ''Turn A Gundam'' is the last entry of the Gundam franchise (not counting the compilations and future video game cut scenes) to be mostly hand painted on

cel A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid (consisting of cellulose nitrate and camphor) was used during the first half of the 20th century, bu ...

s. '' Mobile Suit Gundam SEED'', released in 2002, was the first series to switch entirely to

digital ink and paint Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until computer animation. Pr ...

. The series had two films releases, Turn A Gundam I: Earth Light released February 9, 2002 and Turn A Gundam II: Moonlight Butterfly released February 10, 2002. The films were a condensed retelling of the 50 episodes between the two.

Manga

The Series had two manga adaptations. One by

Kōichi Tokita is a Japanese manga artist that is best known for his ''Gundam'' manga. Most of his works deal with the alternate universe Gundam series such as ''Mobile Fighter G Gundam'', and ''Mobile Suit Gundam Wing''. Before he became a manga artist, he d ...

published by Kodansha Ltd. running from April 15, 1999 to March 15, 2000 through Comic BomBom Magazine. Another written by

running from June 26, 1999 to March, 2002 that was published by Kodansha Ltd. In their magazine, Monthly Magazine Z. There would be a manga release that would serve as a prequel for the main series titled, Turn A Gundam: Tsuki no Kaze written by

that would be published by Kadokawa Shoten in their magazine, Gundam Ace running from March 2004 to March 2005. The manga would follow a younger Loran prior to the events of the main show or manga. Here it is shown the process that Loran and the other characters training to for the upcoming reconnaissance mission on earth. As well as introduce how Loran would eventually be selected for the mission, and send off to earth.

Relationship with other ''Gundam'' series

''Turn A Gundam'' has been cited by Director Tomino and other sources as a show that would unify the stories from the various ''Gundam'' series into one. Throughout the show, mobile suits resembling those from the eras depicted in previous ''Gundam'' shows and indicated to be preserved by nano machines for thousands of years, including as those of the

Universal Century is a Japanese military fiction media franchise. Created by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Sunrise (now Bandai Namco Filmworks), the franchise features giant robots, or mecha, with the name "Gundam". The franchise began on April 7, 1979, with ''Mobile ...

, are excavated by the show's various factions. In Episode 42, this plotline comes to a culmination as the history of the Correct Century timeline is shown in a collection of clips known as the , which is revealed to be events that took place in different ''Gundam'' series prior to ''Turn A Gundam'', thus making those events part of the Correct Century timeline's history. The book ''2001 Correct Century, A Bibliographical Study of "Dark History"'', printed in black pages in front of the ''Universal Century Gundam Officials Encyclopedia'', is supposedly uncovered by a fictional ''Lecturer in Black History'' named Yokk Wakk Onimott during Correct Century 1993. Onimott spends two years to fix the broken pages, five years to interpret the language, and a year to find a publisher. He states that the book was first printed around 3,000 years ago by the Rhea branch of the Earth Federation Government University. Included in the book is a picture drawn by

showing a mobile suit supposed to be MS-04 as a S.U.I.T. project of the

Zeon , also known as ''First Gundam'', ''Gundam 0079'' or simply ''Gundam '79'', is an anime television series, produced and animated by Nippon Sunrise. Created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, it premiered in Japan on Nagoya Broadcasting ...

forces in UC0072~0075. It supposedly was found in 1993 Correct Century in the mountain cycle ''Library A-a''. The white page introduction by another fictional writer, ''Minaka Junkers'', an economy assistant professor of the Rhea branch of the Earth Federation Government University, states the book was published in UC0100 to celebrate the Centennial anniversary of the Universal Century. Thus it is officially claimed that the Universal Century is a time before Correct Century, possibly around 3,000 years before the story of Turn A begins. Later sources would greatly increase the time frame between the two. The official English Gundam.info Archives website, created by Sunrise, describes Correct Century as, "similar to early 20th Century America, but is actually set tens of thousands of years in the distant future and incorporates every Universal Century and Another Gundam timeline that ever existed." The manual for the Master Grade Turn X

gunpla Gundam models, or , are model kits depicting the vehicles and characters of the fictional '' Gundam'' multiverse by Bandai. These kits became popular among mecha anime fans and model enthusiasts in Japan and nearby Asian countries beginning i ...

, released in June 2014, would further attempt to expand what is covered by the Dark History as the original ''

Mobile Suit Gundam , also known as ''First Gundam'', ''Gundam 0079'' or simply ''Gundam '79'', is an anime television series, produced and animated by Nippon Sunrise. Created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, it premiered in Japan on Nagoya Broadcastin ...

'' marking the beginning of humanity's space age, and ''Turn A'' as the final result, with all other ''Gundam'' series, including those that were produced prior to ''Turn A'': ''

G Gundam ''Mobile Fighter G Gundam'', also known in Japan as (and commonly referred to as simply ''G Gundam''), is a 1994 Japanese animated television series produced by Sunrise and the fifth installment in the long-running ''Gundam'' franchis ...

'', '' Gundam Wing'', and '' Gundam X'', and those produced after: ''

Gundam SEED is an anime series developed by Sunrise and directed by Mitsuo Fukuda. The ninth installment in the ''Gundam'' franchise, ''Gundam SEED'' takes place in a future calendar era, in this case the Cosmic Era. In this era, mankind has devel ...

'', '' Gundam 00'', and '' Gundam AGE'', taking place in the tens of thousands of years in between the two shows. However, due to the ''Irreconcilable'' setting conflicts caused by attempting to include more series into a unified backstory than was originally included at the time of Turn A's make, the idea of setting alternate timeline Gundam Series—Especially ones produced after Turn A was—in the same universe as Turn A itself has come to be a concept that is largely dismissed and disregarded due to the needless complications and retcons that then engenders to material that was never intended to originally be part of such.

Music

Openings: * by

Hideki Saijo was a Japanese singer and television celebrity most famous for singing the Japanese version of the Village People's hit song " Y.M.C.A.," called " Young Man." In the 1970s, he was called with Goro Noguchi and Hiromi Go. Although the origina ...

(Ep. 2-38) *"Century Color" by RAY-GUNS (Ep. 39 - 50) Endings: *"Aura" by

Shinji Tanimura is a Japanese singer-songwriter. Career Tanimura set up the musical group Alice together with Takao Horiuchi in 1971 and released his first extended play musical album in the following year. Alice produced its first album two years later. Du ...

(Ep. 1 - 40) * by

(sung by Aki Okui) (Ep. 41–49) * by Aki Okui (Ep. 50) *"After All" by Donna Burke (First compilation film ending) *"Tsuki no Mayu" (Moon's Cocoon) by Yoko Kanno (sung by Aki Okui) (Second compilation film ending ~ In its full version right before the ending credits which are instrumental only) Inserts: *"Moon" by

Gabriela Robin is a Japanese composer, arranger and music producer best known for her work on the soundtracks of anime series, television series, live-action films, video games, and advertisements. She was born in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. She has wri ...

(a.k.a. Yoko Kanno) * by White Doll no Matsuri no Kaiichidou * by Hideki Saijo * by RRET Team *"Black History" by Kaoru Nishino

North American release

On 22 July 2010,

Bandai Entertainment was a Japanese anime, film production, and distribution enterprise, established by Bandai and a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings. They focused mainly in international distribution of anime properties in North America. Most of the anime and f ...

announced that they had acquired the license to release ''Turn A Gundam'' in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

and that they were planning to release the series on Region 1 DVD in 2011. The release was cancelled in January 2012 when Bandai Entertainment announced it would no longer offer any new products in the North American territory. On October 11, 2014 at their 2014 New York Comic-Con panel, Sunrise announced they will be releasing all of the Gundam franchise, including ''Turn A Gundam'' in North America though distribution from Right Stuf Inc., beginning in Spring 2015. On March 11, 2015, Right Stuf Inc. announced that the first 25 episodes will be released on June 30, 2015. Sunrise and Right Stuf will also release the ''Turn A Gundam'' films in addition to the TV series. On April 3, 2015, Right Stuf Inc. announced the remaining 25 episodes of the show would be released on August 4, 2015 via Blu-ray release.

Reception

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is a Japanese anime television series, the eleventh installment in Sunrise (company), Sunrise studio's long-running ''Gundam'' franchise comprising two seasons. The series is set on a futuristic Earth and is centered on the exploits of the f ...

'' designer

Yun Kōga , better known by her pen name is a Japanese Mangaka, manga artist. She is married to fellow manga artist Tatsuneko, from whom he took the name of . She is a graduate of Mita Senior High School, Tokyo. She currently lives in Setagaya, Tokyo with ...

cited ''Turn A'' when asked about her favorite series within the franchise. The Turn A Gundam was chosen to be the 100th Master Grade model of Gunpla (abbreviation of Gundam Plastic Model) and at an earlier time, the first release of the Turn A Gundam DVD box set was announced. Two of the three Model Magazine in Japan, Hobby Japan and Dengeki Hobby was informed to build their own Turn A model using the old 1/100 kit for a display in the official announcement of the MS100 Turn A. Hobby Japan modeller Seira Masuo drastically redesigned the unit while Dengeki Hobby modeller went for the original approach of diorama.Dengeki Hobby, May, 2007 issue, 20th anniversary of Turn A Both of the models was placed next to the MG100 draft design at the Bandai display forum at the announcement of MG100. Tomino addressed his little disappointment in the design of Turn A Gundam not having good reception, but he commented that it was happy to see that it was not pointless work as Turn A was selected as the 100th Master Grade model. Turn A Gundam is also available on High Grade 1/144 scale and on Robot Spirit line. Turn X was released in Master Grade format in June 2014.

References

External links

Official Website
* {{Sunrise films 1999 anime television series debuts 1999 manga 2002 anime films Japanese animated films 2004 manga Fuji TV original programming Gundam anime and manga Kadokawa Shoten manga Kodansha manga Kōichi Tokita Post-apocalyptic anime and manga Shōnen manga Sunrise (company)