Last month I announced that, on occasion of the 40th anniversary of Gundam franchise, NHK, Japan’s national public broadcasting station, launched an online poll project titled “All Gundam Big Voting 40th” asking everybody to select their favourite series, characters, mobile suits and songs: the voting is now over and next week (May 5, to be precise) we’re going to look at the results! Are you excited? I am. To follow the event, this is the link: tune on.
In the meantime, you can browse came out of a previous survey of the same kind. In January 2014, NTT Docomo announced the results of its own user survey. Here’s the ranking and, I must say, I am not that surprised:
Mobile Suit Gundam (1979)
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed
Mobile Suit Z Gundam
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny
Gundam Wing
Mobile Suit Gundam 00
Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ
Mobile Fighter G Gundam
Mobile Suit Gundam V
Gundam Build Fighters
After War Gundam
Turn A Gundam
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE
I pretty much agree with this ranking, even though I’d put Gundam Z above Seed for reasons I’ll explain in another post and Gundam Wing at the fourth position (but this is really a matter of personal taste, due more to aesthetics than anything else. I’m well aware of the series shortcomings and awful “plot holes”).
If you want to read more about the latest survey, have a look here. Otherwise….sit tight. My forecast: Mobil Suit Gundam, the original one, is going to win again. Why? Because it has Char, of course. And it is by far the best.