The End Is the Beginning
by Ryota Fujitsu

How Turn A Gundam Reset the Double Layer of “Historic Weight” the Gundam Series Had Carried

“…It seems we’re seeing an unusual amount of non-Tomino material…”
“Perhaps it’s a sign of discernment, Kiel.”

No, these lines aren’t from an episode of Turn A Gundam. They appear in a manga by Hajime Ueda included in the Animage April 2000 bonus booklet, Turn A Gundam: Ultimate Paradise Book, where Kiel and Dianna exchange thoughts while watching “the Dark History” unfold on screen. In this short exchange, the line “it seems we’re seeing an unusual amount of non-Tomino material” strikes with the sharpness one expects from Hajime Ueda himself.

Why?

Because it’s precisely those “non-Tomino” works that give the Dark History its deeper meaning. By folding in everything from across the Gundam franchise, even entries directed by people other than Yoshiyuki Tomino, Turn A Gundam effectively dismantled the “historic weight” of the Gundam series on two different levels.

TURN A GUNDAM AFFIRMS EVERY GUNDAM

Turn A Gundam aired in 1999 to celebrate 20 years since the broadcast of the original Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979. One of the guiding principles announced by the production team was that Turn A Gundam would “affirm every Gundam.” That phrase, “every” and “affirm,” felt highly abstract, and it was tough to imagine its exact meaning early on. Before the series premiered, many fans took it to mean that “there is no such thing as one ‘true’ Gundam.” In other words, all incarnations of Gundam, however different, are still Gundam, so there is no “right” or “wrong” version.

Incidentally, Turn A was a Tomino-coined name meant to combine the ideas of “returning” (turning) to the “origin,” the letter A (since during pre-production, the project was nicknamed “Gundam A Project”). He flipped “A” to symbolize that “turn,” arriving at “∀.” By happenstance, “∀” happens to be the mathematical symbol meaning “for all,” neatly reinforcing the notion that Turn A Gundam would be an “all-encompassing” entry in the franchise.

Then, when the actual series began (though whispers floated around beforehand), it became clear that this concept of total affirmation found form in the story through something called the “Dark History.”

“THE DARK HISTORY” AS A HUGE GUNDAM DATABASE

The “Dark History” refers to “the memory of past wars on Earth.” These memories had long been lost to both Earth’s people and the Moonrace. Yet all of it remains in data form, sealed away inside the Winter Palace of the Moon’s capital, Genganam. Crucially, the show establishes that every event from every Gundam series, even those that supposedly belong to different timelines, exists somewhere in this “Dark History.”

In practical terms, that means the “Dark History” is a massive Gundam database. In Turn A Gundam, we see older mobile suits unearthed, ignoring whatever historical context might have once surrounded them. This mirrors the fact that, instead of a linear progression of events, Turn A positions all Gundam entries as data: discrete, non-linear bits of content, each equally accessible. “Affirming every Gundam” thus also meant flattening the entire archive of Gundam into one shared data pool.

Earlier, I noted that Turn A Gundam dismantled the Gundam franchise’s “historic weight” on two levels, and that this dismantling was the direct outcome of converting everything into the “Dark History,” that is, a database.

From the start, the Gundam series had always carried a distinct sense of history. If you look at Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam, then Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, all the way through Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, they collectively depict about 70 in-universe years (from UC 0079 onward). One might view these as a sort of chronicle, where numerous political events and mobile suit development arcs form a causal chain across the Universal Century timeline. Even the three non-Tomino-directed OVAs fit within that wide “chronicle.”

But the “Dark History” tosses out this “chronicle-ness” entirely. In Turn A Gundam, the vast, sealed-off memories of Earth’s past wars are so distant that the main cast, who scarcely even recall they existed, cannot perceive them as a unified chronological record. When these characters witness “Dark History” footage, they only see what appears on screen. They never piece together the relationship among all those images. That’s the first dissolution of the franchise’s “historic weight.”

THE REAL HISTORICAL FLOW OF “CONSIDERING WHAT GUNDAM IS THROUGH CREATING GUNDAM WORKS”

The second layer of “historic weight” involves the Gundam series itself.

From the original Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979 up to Mobile Suit Victory Gundam in 1993–94, the series underwent a major turning point. After Victory, Sunrise abandoned the Universal Century setting and began creating separate universes for each subsequent installment. The only thread tying them into the “Gundam series” was that they featured a robot called a “Gundam,” which shared certain design similarities. Additionally, more and more Gundam works were directed by people other than Tomino. In that vein, we got Mobile Fighter G Gundam, New Mobile War Report Gundam Wing, and After War Gundam X.

Fans often group these three shows under the label “Heisei Trilogy,” and each struggled with an existential question: if the link to the original “Universal Century” timeline was weaker, why make a Gundam show at all? What exactly was “Gundam” in the first place? As a result, those three shows became “meta-Gundam,” answering the question of “What is Gundam?” precisely by creating new Gundam stories.

• Gundam Wing deliberately structured its plot to echo the entire “chronicle” from Mobile Suit Gundam to Char’s Counterattack.
• Gundam X, produced 15 years after Mobile Suit Gundam, uses “15 years since the war” as a deliberate nod, weaving its own place in the larger saga.
• Even G Gundam, the entry that seems furthest removed from “what Gundam stands for,” with its emphasis on martial-arts, style shounen manga flair, carefully examined what essential Gundam elements to include (space colonies, Earth’s devastation and renewal, robots designed as weapons of war, a chronicle-like worldview, etc.) before building its own story.

In short, these three “Heisei” works were each trying, in their own way, to break out of the creative dead ends that the long-running series had faced. They were “meta-Gundam” experiments that built upon the trial and error of the earlier Universal Century titles.

Yet that entire arc, shifting from “Universal Century” to “meta-Gundam,” also becomes irrelevant once you fold it all into the Dark History. In a DVD rental store, a newcomer could stumble on G Gundam as their very first Gundam. Likewise, in the Turn A Gundam narrative, no one cares about the historical inevitabilities that made each show turn out the way it did. It’s all just “Dark History.” So the real-world historical path that led from one series to the next likewise vanishes into the database. Future Gundam releases are similarly predestined to become part of that same data pool. That’s how Turn A Gundam dismantled the Gundam series’ real-world timeline.

Effectively, Turn A Gundam reset the franchise. As the opening lines of this essay suggest, noticing the presence of “non-Tomino entries” means Kiel understands the significance of this reset, truly a keen observation.

DEPICTING PEOPLE LIVING ORDINARY LIVES THROUGH “BATTLES” RATHER THAN “WAR”

Incorporating that “Dark History” inevitably turned Turn A into a rather offbeat Gundam show.

Take, for example, the White Doll itself (often referred to simply as the “White Doll” rather than “∀”). Its mustachioed design is undeniably unique. But what stands out even more is that the story, unlike other Gundam series, hardly centers on “war.” In fact, you could almost say “there is no war” in Turn A Gundam.

A prime illustration lies in the frequent meal scenes throughout the show.

Back in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, food scenes highlighted the stark divide between everyday life and the battlefield. For instance:

• In Episode 9, Fly, Gundam!, we see an old man stealing kids’ rations.
• In Episode 16, Sayla’s Agony, we learn there’s a shortage of salt.
• In Episode 19, Ramba Ral’s Attack, Amuro attempts to eat a rock-hard piece of bread.

All these episodes use the act of eating to emphasize the extremity of life during wartime.

By contrast, Turn A Gundam takes a different approach. Look at Episode 42, The Turn X Activates. Tension is running high in Genganam on the Moon, yet our protagonist Loran and his companions sit peacefully outdoors on a grassy plain, enjoying sandwiches. Loran even comments, “Militia corned beef still tastes great in space.” Rather than underscore a strict divide between everyday life and the front lines, the show underscores their continuity.

Episode 36, Militia Space Showdown, handles it similarly. The Militia soldiers, having ventured into space for the first time, get into a rowdy, drunk celebration, and one of them even tries to ride a barrel down to Earth. It’s a surreal moment of space mischief that stays rooted in the same everyday sensibilities they had on Earth. You see a comparable flavor of normalcy in Episode 21, Dianna’s Hard Fight, where a mobile suit is used as a makeshift washing machine.

In short, the “battles” in Turn A are more localized conflicts, incapable of drawing a firm line between peace and wartime, a line that was so stark in the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Meanwhile, a “real war” exists only in the vanished memories of the “Dark History.”

Thus, Turn A Gundam is truly a story of people living their everyday lives in a far-flung era, long after “that history called war” ended. And it’s equally valid to say this “history called war” stands in for “Gundam” itself. More than the show’s setting or mechanical designs, that perspective captures its true essence—and that’s what makes Turn A Gundam a one-of-a-kind standout. Notice it’s the only installment in the franchise whose title omits the phrase “Mobile Suit,” emphasizing its singular status.

GUNDAM FREEED THROUGH TURN A’S PASSAGE

So, how did the Gundam series fare after being reset? Readers of this magazine likely know the answer by heart.

In 2002, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED began, became wildly popular, and spawned its 2004 sequel, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED DESTINY. A theatrical film is now in development as of this writing.

The readiness to slap “Mobile Suit” onto Gundam SEED, which the “Heisei Trilogy” had deliberately avoided, underscores how little “historic weight” was left from that original phrase. The logic was apparently as simple as: “Well, it’s a Gundam show, so let’s call it Mobile Suit Gundam again.”

Indeed, for 21st-century Gundam, the earlier series are no longer an interconnected “history,” but more like a “Dark History”-esque database, a flat catalog from which producers can pick and choose as needed to evoke that “Gundam-esque” feeling. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just as the in-story civilization in Turn A was buried by the Moonlight Butterfly, the real-world Gundam series was likewise “sealed away” under the name “Dark History,” so this outcome was inevitable.

And that, in the end, is how Turn A Gundam put an end to “Gundam’s Modern Age.” By embracing all past entries in a universal database, Turn A simultaneously set Gundam free from its long-held burdens, opening a path for the franchise to evolve into something new.

Source: Great Mechanics DX Summer 2007 (page 122-124)