As part of celebrating 30 years of Gundam fighting machines, a life-size Gundam - Real-G - has been erected at the Shiokaze park in Japan. Real-G's a biggie, as you can see from the picture (top) of assembly workers applying the finishing touches earlier this month.
Gundams have been staggeringly successful over the years. They first appeared in April 1979, in a Japanese TV series called Mobile Suit Gundam. Since then the concept has been franchised, and the range now includes manga, anime, books, video games, toys and scale models of various sorts. The Isuzu VX-2 concept car (middle picture) and Mitsubishi Evo were styled with Gundam in mind, and Gundam art is also popular (bottom). An original by Hisahi Tenmyouya was auctioned for £600,000 USD in 2005. Overall, the Gundam business is reckoned to be worth more than $500 million USD a year.
The Gundam backstory is nicely polished, with O’Neill cylinders (remember them?) and Lagrange points being part of the scenery. Helium 3 is a basic fuel, though Minovsky energy is entirely fictional. The political story includes the battling forces of Zeon and the Earth Federation. The Gundams are weapons that can work in varying gravity fields, and able to do most of the things a human commando can do, hence giant humanoid combat machines.
Gundam fan Danny Choo has a great blog showing Real-G, here.
You can take a look at a few items from the galaxy of Gundam merchandise, here.
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