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….. I don’t think so?

Just off the top of my head I can’t think of any Particular examples of Zeon as a whole oppressing their own people (IE other members of Zeon, which I’ll get to in a minute).

EDIT: I can’t think of any examples of Zeon *overtly* oppressing their own citizens, other than propaganda.

I would like to call out Desert Rommel from mobile suit Gundam ZZ. He camps out in a small desert town and is implied to be oppressing the people there. Rommel is in charge of a remnant group comprised of some Desert Zaku’s and Dwadges. He smacks one of his own men for caring about his family instead of giving his all in his attempts to revive Zeon, and is implied to be ruling the town with an iron fist, conducting raids on the outer settlements and Federation bases. Thing is, he’s not affiliated with Zeon at this point, since he’s active during ZZ, and his actions seem largely to illustrate just how desperate his remnant group is.

The Manga “The Plot to Assassinate Gihren” does have some depictions of Zeon’s secret police and has examples of how the population was kept in line (I shan’t spoil, not least because I haven’t read all of it). It does however probably fall under the header of “Zabi Plots”.

Generally, when it comes to their own population during the one year war, my understanding is that Zeon didn’t really have to oppress their own people as such, since they had an excellent propaganda ministry and the Zabi family (Gihren) were massively charismatic and didn’t really require much else to keep the general population in line. It’s implied (at least in the Origin) that Kycillia had a lot of pull with the “civilian” police, and presumably she would deal with any major dissenters. It is stated in some side materials that the Zabi’s suppressed certain political dissidents who were vocally opposed to their rule, but it’s never shown.

I would however note that the Iffish Colony Gassing (the Opening Stage of Operation British) could be taken as an absolutely massive case of this, since I understand that publicly Zeon was trying to do the whole “Independence from the Corrupt and Unfair Federation!” thing, which Iffish completely undercuts. Zeon slaughters billions of colony residents, it’s supposed allies, in order to use Island Iffish as a weapon against the Earth. If the Federation hadn’t fought the (very costly) Battle of Loum, they probably would have tried again, doubling the death toll.

Like, in regards to your average Zeon Colony resident, I expect they’d just be seeing an awful lot of Gihren’s speeches and the occasional riot suppression. Maybe some shady secret service guys.

Genuine question that has just occurred to me: to what extent, in Universal Century Gundam stories, are the various iterations of Zeon shown to oppress their own people?

Because that strikes me as an interesting wrinkle to the whole ‘are they really the bad guys’ line of thought. I know the Earth Federation is repeatedly shown to be oppressive towards its citizens (that is how we got into this mess in the first place, after all). And that’s aside from the unethical experimentation and so forth – they are shown to trample on the rights of anyone inconvenient, up to and including instituting a police-state (the Titans, the situation by the time of Gundam:Hathaway).

Whereas on the Zeon side, yes we have the multiple war crimes and mass destruction against the opposing side, but the only solid incident I can think of where Zeon’s own citizens were definitely chafing under their rule is the Cicero uprising in ZZ. Which is … interesting given the issues of legitimacy inherent to Harman’s plot-line.

Like the Federation, I’m sort of parceling off the cyber-Newtype malarkey in its own box, and I’d equally treat the ascent of the Zabis as a separate issue: this is more a question around how the regime they instituted is presented at the level of the ordinary person. I’m curious as to what the overall impression is among people more invested in the UC stuff than me?

So I’ve been seeing a lot of people chatting about the new Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance trailer, and there’s a part of it I’d like to throw my two cents in on.

Honestly, in regards to there being a billion Gundam’s running around the OYW, I made my peace with that fact years ago, so it doesn’t bother me. Yeah, yeah it’s a little silly from an in-universe perspective, no matter how many times they pull the “secret prototype” card. But from an out of universe perspective, Gundams sell, and they want it to sell. It’s a rare thing in the UC series that doesn’t have a Gundam in it.

But just for the sake of it, how many Gundams are (at present) running around in the One Year War?

Note: I was originally going to ignore things like Thunderbolt, The Origin and the Sidestories, since they all have a somewhat weird canon state. Then I realised that “Gundams that Canonically existed in the OYW” ≠ “Gundams that you see marketed in OYW sidestories”. So, I’m going to lead with the suits that we know existed, then move on to the other ones. I am, however, ignoring Manga, because I haven’t read everything and we’ll be here all day.

Alrighty, so we start off with the original RX-78 series as built in Operation V (sometimes called the “Vinson Plan”). We have:

RX-78-1 “Prototype Gundam” - As its name suggests, the prototype unit to the entire line. Never deployed to my knowledge, I’m honestly not sure what happens to it. I usually read it as being destroyed during the attack on Side 7, but I’m not certain of that.

RX-78-2 “Gundam” - you know this one. Amuro falls into the cockpit at Side 7 and proceeds to pilot it from then until the end of the One Year War.

RX-78-3 “G-3 Gundam” - apparently recovered from Side 7 and used as a test bed for magnet coating technology. Beyond that we have absolutely no idea what happened to it, since there’s a bunch of conflicting accounts. My usual headcanon is that it was used as a basis for all the MSV suits, but we have absolutely no idea if and where it was deployed.

RX-78-4 “Gundam G04” - deployed alongside unit 5 at the Battle of Solomon.

RX-78-5 “Gundam G05” - deployed alongside unit 4 at the battle of Solomon.

RX-78-6 “Mudrock Gundam” - deployed in the defence of Jaburo and the re-taking of California base.

The other two units are part of the series, but were not (as far as we know) deployed during the OYW:

RX-78-7 “Gundam 7th” - completed and deployed after the war.

RX-78-8 - we know nothing about. There may have been an 8th unit, it may just have been design data, and we have no idea if it was deployed or what it looked like.

Next; The Gundam Ground Types. There were 20 (-ish, some sources say 28) Gundam ground types produced during the One Year War from spare parts of the RX-78 series. This includes:

The units seen in 08th MS Team - 12 Gundam Ground Types were deployed to the Kojima Battalion.

The Ez8 - Deployed, as above.

Blue Destiny Unit 1 - Deployed

Blue Destiny Unit 2 - stolen by Zeon Ace Nimbus Schterzen.

Blue Destiny Unit 3 - Deployed in pursuit of Unit 2.

Slave Wraith - Questionably Canon, assigned to and deployed by Slave Wraith team.

I’m also gonna quickly call out that we have no idea on the various Full Armor units (the FA Gundam, the Heavy Gundam, the FA Ground type, the FA type B etc). Some sources say they were built, others that they were only simulation data.

And finally we have everything else:

Gundam NT-1 “Alex” - Developed at Augusta Base, then moved to side 6, where it was deployed against the Cyclops Team.

Gundam NT-1 “Prototype NT-1” - apparently an entirely separate suit to the NT-1. The prototype to the above. Presumably not deployed.

RX-78XX “Pixy/Pixie Gundam” - Questionably Canon, three units built. Unit 1 deployed in Belfast, Unit 2 in the Gobi Desert (and planned to be deployed at Odessa) and Unit 3 in Africa.

RAG-79-G1 Gundam Marine type - Sometimes known as the “Gundiver”. An underwater-spec unit. Unknown amount produced, primarily because it’s essentially a modified Underwater GM as opposed to a “true” Gundam unit.

And that’s about it for mainline UC. Gundam The Origin intentionally keeps things very vague as to how many Gundam’s exist there, so I’m not going to bother.

Gundam Thunderbolt is a bit of an odd case, since at first glance, it adds three:

FA-78 Full Armour Gundam (Thunderbolt ver.) - deployed by the Moore Brotherhood at Side 4.

RX-79[GS] Gundam Ground type S - produced by the Federation during the One Year War and after, presumably deployed.

RGM-79/GH Gundam Head - a GM with a Gundam-style head in an attempt to reproduce the psychological effect on Zeon forces.

But that last one illustrates Thunderbolt’s position on the matter, which is later made clearer in the manga in regards to the Bull-G, a unit built postwar. The Bull-G is a prototype unit contending for the position of the Federations new main unit. However, it’s actually an upgraded GM, fitted with a Gundam-style head to make it more appealing.

And this seems to be thunderbolt’s position on the matter - after a certain point it comes down to a suit’s performance rather than it being a Gundam. So yes, it adds a bunch of Gundam-style suits, but it also deconstructs that just because a suit looks like a Gundam doesn’t make it special.

Which is honestly a pretty interesting position to take.

Ah! So, I’m a little late here, but since Mobile Suit Gundam The Witch From Mercury brought in a bunch of new fans, there is a recommendation I’d like to make:

Gundam Thunderbolt is, not to put too fine a point on it, rad. It’s a very good introduction to the Universal Century (if a little gritty). It’s fairly short, and the soundtrack’s really good. It provides a good short story set in the one year war to familiarise yourself with the setting (though honestly, the OYW doesn’t require much).

However, there are two points I’d like to bring up

I highly, HIGHLY recommend tracking down the original ONA over the movie, December Sky. While an absolutely baller name, the ONA is paced better, and better fleshes out a lotta things. Some aspects of the compilation movie kinda feel like they come out of nowhere simply because they lack that context.

While the first season/movie (December Sky) is largely self-contained, that second (Bandit Flower) is not. Thunderbolt was supposed to be an adaptation of the manga of the same name, but it was canned after the author had to take a break from the manga for medical reasons. As such, Bandit Flower is largely setup for a series that doesn’t continue (unless you read the manga).

Since I did a post talking about all the Mass-Production units I liked in SEED/SEED Destiny, so I should probably talk about the Gundams I did like, especially now that I’m thinking about it with the new movie trailer.

Generally, I don’t have a high opinion of much of the Gundam-type mobile suits in the Cosmic Era, principally because I find they all look rather similar (that’ll happen when they’re all developed from the same five suits by only two factions). I’m also gonna be focusing primarily on suits that appeared in the animated series, since sidestories typically can afford to be a bit more “out-there” with the designs. The first three are the designs that I genuinely like and appreciate, whereas the last two have asterisks attached.

First up, the Infinite Justice. Narrowly makes it into the top spot for me. A good part of it is the novelty of having a bright pink Gundam, I admit. But I do love how, where the Strike freedom decides to add funnels and more guns with which to shoot people, the IJ instead gets a bunch of blades. Like not only is it pink, but it’ll also cut you. It’s still well-armed in the ranged department though, having a beam rifle, “fortis” beam cannons and a bunch of beam boomerangs. I do like the original justice Gundam as well, but the Infinite Justice just feels like a fuller vision of the concept, without being tied into resembling the Aegis too much, in contrast to the Strike Freedom, which felt like they nailed it first time and had to add a bunch of extra stuff on.

The Providence is a solid second, because I like the concept more than the execution. The background for the Providence is that it was supposed to be a heavy assault suit, but they had to retrofit it with the Dragoon tech in a hurry, hence the cabling on its chest and the system’s overall lack of integration. I love the concept of this, and the heavy weaponry it retains makes me imagine a sort of Full Armour Gundam 7th-style unit. I *think* that the whole Dragoon system on its back thing is supposed to give the appearance of a halo? So Rau is a sort of angel of destruction that Kira must stop? It doesn’t work, but I think that’s what they were going for. Providence is a pretty cool name though. I’m not really sure about the integrated beam saber/gun thing on its left arm, but its not bad. The Providence also gets a bump because I quite like Rau as a character, and this is his final unit.

Grabbing third (and bringing an end to the ranking) is the Akatsuki (specifically the Oowashi Akatsuki). The Akatsuki itself is this lovely melding of SEED’s Gundam Aesthetic with the Hyaku-Shiki, and I think it looks gorgeous. You can obviously see the Strike influence, but it’s blended together with elements closer to the Astray series and it all works rather well. Its sensibly armed with a shield and rifle with optional bayonet in addition to beam sabers. I should note that I specifically prefer the atmospheric-based Oowashi pack to the space Shiranui one. This is because the Oowashi pack actually looks like something - wings and two beam cannons evocative of those on the F91. The Shiranui’s just a big box with some funnels stuck on. I do like how the Akatsuki’s great against beam weaponry but crap against physical though, since it’s a nice reversal of fortunes compared to the start of SEED.

Now if only Cagalli actually did anything with it.

The Calamity is a bit of a cheat, since it’s at least partially here because it can become the Sword Calamity. I like a lot of artillery suits, and the Calamity is just my favourite here, mostly because of how sensible it’s weaponry is. Guns in the shield, beam weaponry fitted on the suit itself to take advantage of the generator, then a nice, lovely plasma-sabot bazooka to round out the armament. The only thing it’s really missing is a beam saber. It also makes the most of its integrated weaponry - most of its handheld and the backpack’s replaceable, but that “Scylla” cannon isn’t going anywhere. I also quite like the head. If we had had the Calamity instead of the Buster, I’d probably prefer it.

The Legend Gundam’s here because A) it’s got a nice head. And b) we saw virtually nothing of it in series. It’s here because I end up liking it when it (very-rarely) shows up in side content (like videogames), but it regards to the anime itself, it could charitably be described as “being there”.