Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (機動戦士Ζガンダム Kidō Senshi Zēta Gandamu) is the first anime series in the Gundam franchise.

Plot Summary
It is U.C. 0087, seven years after the end of the One Year War. After the events of Operation Stardust, the Earth Federation establishes an elite counter-insurgency division called the Titans to hunt down the remaining pockets of Zeon remnants. The Titans become overzealous in their mission, start resorting to brutal methods to achieve their goals, and become nothing more than ruthless tyrants with an ambition to rule the Earth Sphere. Two anti-Titans resistance groups, the Anti-Earth Union Group (AEUG) and their Earth-bound counterparts Karaba (led by Hayato Kobayashi), form to unite the various existing small forces in the struggle against Titans. Their members consist of renegade soldiers of the Earth Federal forces, former soldiers of Principality of Zeon, and militia from space colonies. Most notable is Bright Noa, who returns as captain of the assault cruiser Argama, the flagship of AEUG space fleet, and Quattro Bajeena, who is really the legendary ace pilot Char Aznable, the "Red Comet".

Kamille Bidan is a troubled civilian seventeen-year old from Side 7's Green Noa 1 colony. His personal resentment towards the Titans results in him joining the AEUG. Quattro takes Kamille under his wings and becomes his mentor. The series also sees the partnership and cooperation between Kamille and Amuro, and the tension between Amuro and Char. Behind the frontline, the resistance group AEUG and Karaba are supported by many companies on Earth and in space, particularly the moon-based corporations. Besides financial support, the lunar manufacturing giant Anaheim Electronics also provides logistics and technical supports for AEUG, including spaceships, mobile suits, and munitions.

The series begins Quattro Bajeena raids the Titans military base in Green Noa 1 to acquire intelligence on a new mobile suit prototype, the "Black Gundams". Kamille, a hot-headed Newtype dissident, is caught up in the raid and helps AEUG steal the Mark-II. Eventually, he joins the AEUG, initially as the Mark-II pilot, then as the pilot of the new Ζ Gundam (made by Anaheim Electronics and based on Kamille's own design). Hayato Kobayashi and Amuro Ray meet up with them shortly after the AEUG descends on Earth to attack the Jaburo base but Amuro won't return to space. Both will stay on Earth with Karaba while Hayato's son, Katz, goes to space with Quattro.

Things are complicated further as Paptimus Scirocco, a "contract killer"/mobile suit developer from the Jupiter Energy Fleet (who, unbeknownst to his government handlers, is an extremely powerful Newtype) executes his own plan. He secretly conducts a coup d'état and takes over the Titans as part of his ambition to dominate the Earth Sphere. The war between Titans and AEUG will soon escalate as Haman Karn, the true leader of Axis Zeon, joins the war as well, leading to a three-way war. In the beginning, it is not clear which side the Axis Zeon is, as Haman's cunning plan is to play AEUG and Titans against each other and take advantage of the damage from the clash between them.

Production
Among the returning staff members from Mobile Suit Gundam were original creator and director, Yoshiyuki Tomino, character designer Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and mechanical designer Kunio Okawara. Also providing mechanical designs were Mamoru Nagano (whom Tomino had worked with on Heavy Metal L-Gaim), and Kazumi Fujita.

Compilation Films
In celebration of Gundam's 25th anniversary (and also the 20th anniversary of Zeta Gundam), the 50-episode series was compiled into a new movie trilogy. According to Tomino, the movie series was created to fix some of the problems he identified in the Zeta TV series and to bring the 20-year-old series into a 21st-century context for the new generation now experiencing the increasingly commercialized series such as Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. The first movie, "Heirs to the Stars", opened on May 28, 2005, followed by "Lovers" on October 29, 2005, and "Love is the Pulse of the Stars" on March 6, 2006. The movies were a surprising hit, and went on to make almost 2 billion yen in box office revenue in total.

The compilations digitally remastered the TV series of Zeta Gundam with new footage. 33% of the first film was remastered footage, as well as around 70% of the second. Plot details such as the Argama's visit to the colony of 30 Bunch were changed to allow the film to flow more smoothly, unlike Tomino's previous Gundam film compilations. Also, other than Haman Karn's custom-type Gaza-C, some mobile suits that belong to the period designed after the TV version are also put into the movies such as GM Quel (Gundam 0083) as well as RX-121 Gundam TR-1 ［Hazel］ (Advance of Zeta).

Like the Mobile Suit Gundam movie trilogy, the majority of the original cast of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam reprised their roles for these theatrical versions — with the exception of Satomi Arai replacing Miyuki Matsuoka as Fa Yuiry, Yukana Nogami replacing Saeko Shimazu as Four Murasame, Yuu Asakawa replacing Kayoko Fujii as Rosamia Badam, and Chizuru Ikewaki (Lovers)/Kaori Shimamura (Love is the Pulse of the Stars) replacing Yuko Mizutani as Sarah Zabiarov.

One of the largest changes made in the movies is the ending, as contrast to the original TV series, Kamille does not mentally break down due to Scirocco's mind-crippling attack. This change contributed greatly to the success at the box office since Gundam fans were curious about the new ending (though it is an expected ending from Tomino's previous comment on the movies). Furthermore, the ending also removed the Axis Zeon from the Earth Sphere, with some fans felt that this affected the Universal Century timeline considerably and displaced the original sequel to Zeta, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, as well as the follow-up movie Char's Counterattack. However, Tomino himself said this was not the case, and the Zeta movies were merely another take on the events. This was supported by Gundam Unicorn, which not only features several ZZ and Char's Counterattack mobile suits, but also characters and events related to both stories.

The trilogy performed exceptionally well in the Japanese box office, far more so than previous efforts by a Gundam series as well as many high profile animated films such as Steamboy. This success is even more remarkable considering the film is shown in a more limited number of theaters than usual. Heirs to the Stars, the first film of A New Translation, came in 3rd place at the box office on its opening week, and the second film Lovers received similar success. One possibility for this startling success is the recent wave of nostalgia, which desires a return to the serious story-telling style of older anime. However, a good deal of New Translation's viewing demographic are of a younger generation, ranging from the late teens to early twenties.

Even more surprising is the rather high amount of female viewers, reaching 30% of the overall viewing audience. Although the core demographic is 20- to 32-year-old males still, many see this as a reminder of just how well crafted the original Gundam series were. Tomino himself, who had been wrought with a recent string of financially failed series, posted a personal "Thank you" to fans and casual moviegoers alike on A New Translation's official website.

In 2006, Bandai Entertainment acquired the rights to the U.S release of the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation movie trilogy. The movies were released as a three-pack entitled Mobile Suit Gundam Zeta: Movie Complete Collection on July 6, 2010. The collection contains all three films on three DVDs with English subtitles and in Japanese with a choice of either 2.0 stereo or 5.1 surround sound.

Distribution
The series was originally aired by Nagoya Broadcasting Network (and it's sister ANN stations), rerun on the anime satellite television network, Animax, across Japan and later its respective networks worldwide, including Southeast Asia, East Asia, Latin America, and other regions.

In 2004, after almost 2 years of delays and failed TV and merchandising deals, Bandai released a limited edition Zeta Gundam box set with both dubbed English and original Japanese audio tracks. The English dub was done by Ocean Productions with its Blue Water Studios talent pool.

Due to Bandai not having rights to the theme songs outside of Asia, the opening and closing sequences were altered, using incidental music in place of the original theme music. The English subtitles were criticized as inaccurate, and appeared to be based on the script for the English dub, rather than a direct translation of the original Japanese script. Bandai corrected the subtitles to a properly translated version for the later DVD release in 5 cases with 2 discs each, but has never officially recalled or offered to replace the box-set discs.The box-set included pencil sharpener collectibles and a 48-page booklet and poster. Each DVD in the Bandai Region 2 release contains five episodes as opposed to the standard three to six usually seen in single box releases.

After Sunrise teamed up with Right-Stuf! & Nozomi Entertainment, the plans for a Blu-ray release began. Again, due to licensing issues, this release and subsequent English releases so far lack are the original Japanese opening themes. Collection 1, containing episodes 1 to 25 was released on March 1, 2016. On February 16, they also announced the release of a three-disc DVD set, each one containing one of the A New Translation compilation movies. Anime Limited released the Region B Collection 1 Blu-ray on August 29, 2016. Those that had pre-ordered from their approved retailers prior to 12:00 BST June 22, 2016 also received a limited edition box featuring art of the MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam with a space inside for the collection 2 Amaray case and artbook.

On April 5th 2017, Gundam.Info announced that it would be streaming episodes on its YouTube channel for free, with 3 to 5 episodes per week. Episodes 1 to 5 were uploaded on April 7th 12:00 PM JST.