Mobile Suit Gundam (Season 1)

Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) is the anime series you can watch online on iFILM that launched an entire genre — and eventually one of Japan's biggest media franchises. Director Yoshiyuki Tomino set the story in a future where humanity's orbital colonies have gone to war with Earth.

Teenager Amuro Ray lives on the neutral colony Side 7 when the war arrives at his door. He stumbles into his father's lab, finds the prototype mobile suit Gundam — Earth Federation's classified weapon — and gets it moving before anyone with actual training can. Along with a crew of refugees and civilians, Amuro boards the warship White Base for a journey across the war zone with no exit in sight.

Tomino's gamble was to strip out the invincible-hero formula and replace it with fear, exhaustion, and moral ambiguity on both sides. The show was nearly cancelled mid-run in 1979 due to low ratings, then rescued by its own plastic model kits. Forty-three episodes later it had built the template that every real-robot anime since has worked from or pushed against. Watch all episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam online on iFILM.