The latest installment in the long running Gundam franchise has arrived in a unique fashion. Unlike other Gundam series, it made its debut on the big screen. In February 2025, a film compiling three as-yet-unaired episodes hit theaters in both Japan and the United States. The film begins with a long what if scenario about the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime from 1979 playing out differently. While robots, characters, and locations from the original are used, this is not a faithful remake. In this universe, Amuro Ray, the Earth Federation’s war hero in the first Gundam series, is seemingly non-existent or uninvolved in the One Year War. In this version, Zeon’s masked Char Aznable, pilots the Gundam, then mysteriously vanishes at the end of the war. Char’s lieutenant Challia Bull is left behind and leads a search to find Zeon’s ace pilot. In the TV edition, the backstory about the revised Universal Century timeline was placed as the second episode.

After establishing these changes to Gundam history, the film suddenly jumps five years later. There is a massive tonal shift from what feels like a Marvel What If comic to a new cast of characters using the robots to engage in Clan Battles, a sport where mobile suit pilots partner up to engage in team battles for money. We are introduced to two girls who look like ten year old Pokemon trainers: Machu and Nyaan. Their designs were created by take, who also designed many Pokemon gym leaders in recent games like Sword and Shield. At first a Zeon soldier named Xavier attempts to pilot the Red Gundam, but finds the omega psycommu used for psychic communication overwhelming and struggles to pilot it. A boy named Shuji pilots Char’s red Gundam, while Machu pilots the awkwardly titled Gundam GQuuuuuux. Machu and Shuji are able to communicate through the psycommu due to their status as newtypes, tying to the longstanding Gundam concept of humans in space who advance to the next stage of evolution and develop psychic resonances.

While the first half hour of the film is heavily reliant on musical cues and characters from the original series, the latter two thirds of the film are more similar to another Sunrise robot anime about robot combat sports named Armored Trooper Votoms: Case; Irvine. Just as Irvine was criticized for deviating from the hard boiled war stories from the original Votoms series, fans of the gritty Gundam formula may find the post timeskip episodes to be too cutesy and low stakes. Part of the change in tone is owing to the different writers. The One Year War segment was written by Hideaki Anno, best known for creating the 1990s robot anime classic Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anno’s appreciation for Showa era Japanese TV has led to him remaking Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and Godzilla. Anno’s contributions here continue in that neoclassical mold. While this series was initially promoted as Anno’s take on Gundam, Yoji Enokido takes over writing for the remainder of the film. Enokido’s approach leans more slice of life, evoking his prior work scripting series like Sailor Moon and FLCL.

GQuuuuuux is off to a very unusual start. The decision to air the episodes out of order has lead to comparisons to Victory Gundam, an early 90s anime which was infamous for airing out of sequence to promote toy sales of the titular Gundam. Gundam Seed Freedom was a thrill to see in theaters, with a large and active crowd. By contrast, the GQuuuuuux screening was entirely empty. With not a single other soul to view it with, the excitement of the community viewing experience was absent. Gundam Seed Freedom also had lots of bonus interviews with the director and cast before the film began. Meanwhile GQuuuuuux had no special features, only typical Hollywood movie trailers.

It is hard to say who this anime is really for. 00, G, Wing, and Seed have loyal western fanbases due to their runs on Toonami and other late night blocks like Sci-Fi Channel’s Ani-Monday. A large returning crowd wanting to see the fate of Kira and Athrun after Destiny made sense, as many fans were deeply invested in their character arcs and romantic interests. By contrast, the original Gundam had a short Toonami run that was abbreviated by poor ratings and the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Many Gundam fans introduced to the series through later alternate universe series have difficulty getting into the original series, due to the poor pacing, rushed ending, underdeveloped characters, and dated animation. While many later Gundam projects like the Origin and Unicorn smooth out the rough edges of early Universal Century anime, there is a tremendous barrier to entry to understand the first portion of the film. Anyone unfamiliar with the lore of the 55 year old story of the original would be lost in the first portion of the film. However, UC purists are likely to balk at the retconning of established continuity to remove Amuro, along with the Pokemon style preteen characters who appear in the latter two thirds of the film. It is difficult to understand why Anno didn’t simply do a live action Shin Gundam film. Even a video game with cutscenes would have been a more fitting place for his portion of the story than writing one episode and tacking it onto a project with so little thematic coherence.

Did you enjoy GQuuuuuux in theaters or on streaming? Are you looking forward to the remainder of the series being uploaded to Amazon Prime video? Leave a comment on the ToonZone forums.

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