Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

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Mobile Suit Gundam Wing <tr><td colspan="2" style="background: #fff; text-align: center;">Image:Gundamw.jpg</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="background: #ccf; text-align: center;">新機動戦記ガンダムＷ (New Mobile Report Gundam W)</td></tr>
Genre	Mecha, Action, Science Fiction
Manga
Authored by	Hajime Yatate, Yoshiyuki Tomino
Publisher	Image:Flag of Japan (bordered).svg Kodansha Image:Flag of Brazil.svg Panini Comics Image:Flag of France.svg Pika Édition Image:Flag of the United States.svg TokyoPop
Serialized in
Original run	October 1995 – May 1996
No. of volumes	3 volumes
TV anime
Directed by	Masashi Ikeda
Studio	Sunrise
Network	Image:Flag of Japan (bordered).svg Animax, TV Asahi Image:Flag of the Philippines.svg GMA Network (1998) Image:Flag of the United States.svg Cartoon Network Image:Flag of Poland (bordered).svg Hyper Image:Flag of Canada.svg YTV Image:Flag of Germany.svg Tele 5 Image:Flag of France.svg M6 Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg Cartoon Network Image:Flag of the United Arab Emirates.svg Spacetoon Image:Flag of Chile (bordered).svg Etc...TV
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
Runtime
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^?), 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 episodes beginning in 1995. Initially directed by Masashi Ikeda and written by Katsuyuki Sumizawa (Samurai Troopers), 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.

1 Background
2 Plot
3 Media information
4 Trivia
5 Main characters
- 5.1 Gundam Wing Pilots
- 5.2 Other major characters
6 Episode guide
7 Openings, Endings and Insert Songs
8 Cast
9 See also
10 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 OZ-00MS Tallgeese.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story of Gundam Wing begins in the year After Colony 195, with the start of Operation: Meteor, or 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. 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, 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.

Spoilers end here.

[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 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.

[edit] Trivia

There were a number of production problems with the series, which culminated with head writer Katsuyuki Sumizawa quitting about halfway through the show. 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 remains unconfirmed.

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

The pilots name are also numbers in different languages such as Heero being "one", Duo "Two", Trowa "three", Quatre "four", and Wufei "five"

OZ (which itself stands for Organisation 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 organisation, but also notable are a character named Dorothy, a small space force named Scarecrow, and various symbols of characters placed on uniforms and logos.

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.

¹ 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.

[edit] Main characters

Main article: After Colony list of characters

[edit] Gundam Wing Pilots

[edit] Other major characters

[edit] Episode guide

Main article: List of Gundam Wing Episodes

The Shooting Star She Saw
The Gundam Deathscythe
Five Gundams Confirmed
The Victoria Nightmare
Relena's Secret
Party Night
Scenario For Bloodshed
The Treize Assassination
Portrait Of A Ruined Country
Heero, Distracted By Defeat
The Whereabouts Of Happiness
Bewildered Warriors
Catherine's Tears
The Order To Destroy 01
To The Battleground Antarctica
The Sorrowful Battle
Betrayed By Home, Far Away
Tallgeese Destroyed
Assault On Barge
The Lunar Base Infiltration
Grief Stricken Quatre
The Fight For Independence
Duo, God Of Death Once Again
The Gundam They Called Zero
Quatre VS Heero
The Eternal Flame Of The Shooting Stars
The Locus Of Victory And Defeat
Passing Destinies
The Heroine Of The Battlefield
The Reunion With Relena
The Glass Kingdom
The God Of Death Meets Zero
The Lonely Battlefield
And Its Name Is Epyon
The Return Of Wufei
Sanc Kingdom's Collapse
Zero VS Epyon
The Birth Of Queen Relena
Trowa's Return To The Battlefield
A New Leader
Crossfire At Barge
Battleship Libra
Target: Earth
Go Forth, Gundam Team
Signs Of The Final Battle
Milliardo's Decision
Collision In Space
Takeoff Into Confusion
The Final Victor

[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] Cast

Character	Japanese Actor	English Actor
Heero Yuy	Hikaru Midorikawa	Mark Hildreth
Duo Maxwell	Toshihiko Seki	Scott McNeil
Trowa Barton	Shigeru Nakahara	Kirby Morrow
Quatre Rebaba Winner	Ai Orikasa	Brad Swaile
Wufei Chang	Ryuuzou Ishino	Ted Cole
Zechs Marquise	Takehito Koyasu	Brian Drummond
Relena Peacecraft	Akiko Yajima	Lisa Ann Beley
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
Narrator	Akio Ohtsuka	Campbell Lane