Now that I have a novelization project finished up, I’m trying to figure out how to balance my time with relatively obscure Gundam-related material. So, much like the “Translation Tuesday” posts for novel chapters, I decided on “Framework Friday” for Gundam background material. Aren’t I so clever? I guess that means there will eventually be a “Manga Monday” at some point in the future. Oh god. Stop me now, please! Anyways, I posted about some Turn A Gundam goodness quite a while back, but I decided to go back and review the information prior to it since it sets the stage quite nicely! Anyways, enjoy!

∀ Gundam’s Scientific Investigation

It is said that ∀ Gundam is set several thousand to tens of thousands of years after the end of the space age, where despite humanity advancing into the cosmos, the Earth Sphere was facing a devastating situation due to wars and environmental destruction.

Are the Earth and outer space in the same situation as they were in the past? The stage setting is a crucial and fundamental element in the creation of any work. In this respect, ∀ Gundam has extensively detailed setting documentation in areas that aren’t visible on the surface. Here, we actually had someone in charge of the setting research.

That someone is Mr. Shigeru Morita of Studio Nue, and he wrote about the state of civilization on the Earth and the Moon for ∀ Gundam.

The Truth Behind the Dark History

In the world of the Correct Century, accounts of Earth’s past passed down as “Dark History” have been considered to be the product of fiction and delusion, with no credibility whatsoever. Stories of humanity’s expansion into the cosmos where, that as its stage, it repeatedly waged massive wars with unimaginable superweapons is certainly hard to believe. For this reason, “Dark History” has been regarded as occult-like defamatory literature that some fanatical believers sometimes vocally opine about, only to be either ignored or ridiculed by the general public.

Nonetheless, the situation changed dramatically following the Moonrace’s “Earth Return” led by Dianna Soreil. The fact that humans were living on the Moon and the existence of mobile suits—the gigantic humanoid fighting machines operated by Dianna Counter, the Moonrace’s army—all inevitably proved that the “Dark History,” or the history behind the scenes, was true after all.

According to the “Dark History,” humanity had been driven to the brink of extinction many times over and finally succeeded in putting an end to its history of warfare several thousand years ago. Their means to do so were through “forgetting and falsifying history” and “denying scientific and technological civilization.” The people rewrote history, sealed up the truth of the past, and denied the scientific and technological civilization that was a major factor in fanning the flames of war.

Rebuilding Earth’s Civilizations

Those who control history and education can influence the values of those who study it in any way they wish.

At the end of the old era, those who sought to build a new “Correct Century” world rejected “evil civilizations” by positioning progress and curiosity as evil, thus avoiding the deadly conflicts that had plagued them for thousands of years. Over the years, the systemic control of history and education morphed into an implicit consensus of the entire human race, and the public’s aversion to the study of “Dark History” and attempts to advance scientific civilization had deepened to a level that was almost second nature.

As of the year C.C.2345, the average level of civilization on Earth is close to the beginning of the 1900 A.D. However, this is merely a pretense, as in the background of civilization lies the remnants of for former super-technological era. While denying technological civilization, the people of the time did not try to regress into an uncivilized, primitive civilization.

A typical example of super-technology tucked away in the background of civilization is the source of energy supply. Most of the mines scattered across the planet’s surface are resource asteroids brought down from outer space in the old days, yet no one knows about them now in the “Correct Century.”

Exhausted Resources

The prosperity of civilization over the past several millennia has completed depleted Earth’s resources. Fossil fuels (coal and oil) have been depleted in the Correct Century world. Methane hydrates (methane gas deposits at the bottom of the ocean), one of the few remaining energy resources, have no technology available to mine them. The use of nuclear energy has been deliberately abandoned, and past administrations were extremely hesitant to pollute the environment, which has led people to utilize energy sources that are less aggressive on the natural environment. The only sources of energy currently utilized on the planet are hydropower, solar power, wind power, wave power, geothermal power, and power from hydrogen combustion, which does not emit hazardous waste.