[COLUMN] I Got Sick and Watched 2000 Minutes of Gundam Last Weekend | by Marty Sliva (Patreon)

Just to clear things up in case you misread the title – I didn’t get sick because I watched 2000 minutes of Gundam. I was already sick, and then I proceeded to watch 2000 minutes of Gundam. Hope that makes sense.

Oh, it doesn’t? Okay. Let me explain.

So late last week I came down with a nice lil’ pneumonia that laid me on my ass for the past four days. I’m the type of person who simply cannot focus on video games when they’re sick, on account of my brain slowly simmering to a boil, so I tend to pair my time wallowing away in bed with the more passive entertainment of watching something on TV. I tend to focus on a comfort food rewatch that I can drift in and out of consciousness to without feeling like I missed too much of the plot. Sitcoms like 30 Rock or Parks and Recreation tend to fit nicely in this role.

But this time was different. Part of it might have been because I’ve recently spent a lot of time reflecting on how much amazing media has already been released in 2025 that I haven’t had the time to sit down and properly experience. This was paired with a recent viewing of a video essay by the excellent Geoff Thew of the Mother’s Basement YouTube channel titled “The Day Anime Changed,” where he argued that the most important anime of all time was, in fact, the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam series.

That video – and seriously, I highly recommend checking it out even if you have just a passing interest in anime and/or large robos in general – sparked a recent dip into the classic series for the very first time. Despite being one of Second Wind’s resident weebs, I still feel like I’m constantly playing catch up on the medium thanks to a nearly 20-year gap in watching anime that I had from 2002-2020.

While Gundam Wing was one of the foundational works that got me into anime in the first place thanks to its prime spot on the Toonami lineup, the only other works I’d seen in the series came more recently with the first season of Witch From Mercury, the recent and surprisingly decent Unreal Engine 5-powered Requiem for Vengeance on Netflix, and the absolutely incredible 8th MS Team that I finally watched last summer thanks to an accompanying watchalong series from one of my favorite podcasts out there, Get Anime’d.

So yeah, thanks to Mother’s Basement, I was already a few episodes into the original Gundam series before the sickness took hold of me. One of the reasons I decided to finally test the waters from the very beginning was the challenge of experiencing the entirety of the massively impressive shared universe that is the Universal Century (UC), a singular timeline that dozens of Gundam works all exist in that tell stories within the framework of a few decades during a period in time where humanity finally reaches the stars, but in doing so eventually goes to war with itself, as humanity is want to do.

Seeing as how the 43 episodes of 1979’s Mobile Suit Gundam are the start of this whole grand experiment, and as a fan of big, messy, complicated shared universes in general, I felt like it was my duty to experience this at least once. I wasn’t committed to watching all several dozen series/movies/OVA/theme park rides that comprise the UC, but I figured having an understanding of the foundation would be useful when thinking about the arc of anime history as a whole. As of last week, I was a handful of episodes into the series, and my intent was to slowly plug away at it with the goal of finishing it by the end of the summer.

But the sickness had other plans. As I prepared for a weekend in bed, for some reason I decided that I wouldn’t lean on my familiar comfort food background noise, and instead I’d restart Gundam ‘79 from the first episode and see where the winds would take me. Turns out, by the end of the weekend they took me through all 43 episodes (including tracking down one somewhat-lost episode that was originally not released in the US because of quality concerns), the six separate hour-long OVAs that act as a prequel called The Origin, three feature length films that retold the story of the original series that were great thanks to the added context of the prequel, the four episodes that have currently aired of the brand new Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, which aren’t technically part of the UC but splinter off from a major “what if?” point stemming from the pilot of the Gundam ‘79, and then the first 10 episodes of the 1985’s sequel series Zeta Gundam.

And folks, I’m here to tell you – Gundam is good.

The original Gundam series is a staggering work of serialized storytelling, sci-fi world-building, and commentary on the nature of war, especially from an animated series from nearly 50 years ago. This premiered just two years after the release of the original Star Wars, and it feels like the two of them act in tandem as a skeleton key that unlocks an understanding for so much pop culture that came afterwards.

Gundam ‘79 focuses on the story of Amuro Ray, a 16 year old kid who unwittingly becomes a focal point of a sprawling conflict known as the One Year War when he steps into the cockpit of the titular mobile suit called Gundam. He joins a crew of mostly civilians-turned-soldiers on a military airship known as White Base, which is constantly under attack from enemy forces including the amazing-but-complicated Char Aznable, who starts off as a pretty clear antagonist, but slowly morphs into something so much greater than that.

There’s so much about Gundam that stands out from my whirlwind viewing this past weekend. I love how much time is devoted to both sides of the conflict, showing that the line that separates the “bad” guys from the “good” is often blurred depending on where you view it from. Themes of PTSD, loss of innocence in wartime, and the never-ending cycle of violence are explored with surprising nuance.

And on top of all that, the show is just straight-up entertaining as well. The original Japanese and opening and closing credits became absolute no-skips for me, both of which feel like they were recorded in smoky ‘70s karaoke lounges (complimentary). The action is rad, as is the evolving mech design. While those were clearly there to sell toys – and eventually spawned the massive Gunpla model kits that helped make the series iconic – it was always entertaining to see a new one enter the fray. And as a whole, the series is so clearly a major influence on the mecha that came afterwards, including my all-time favorite anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Down the road, I hope to go more in-depth on my Gundam journey, which I’m still cruising along with and seeing how far it’ll take me. I have a note in my phone on the best watch order of over a dozen parts of the UC, I’ve bought handful of old PS2 and PS3 Gundam games, and I’m worryingly considering taking a dip into the world of Gunpla. 

Do I recommend getting pneumonia and laying in bed for 72 hours? Nope, absolutely not. But do I recommend mainlining 2000 minutes of Gundam in a weekend and developing a new and dangerously deep obsession? Also probably not, but Gundam ‘79 rules, and I do recommend that anyone with a passing interest in mecha, war stories, or anime history in general check it out, if only for those incredible opening and closing credits.