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Bandai Head: No Plans for 2009 Gundam TV Series (Updated)

The Gpara.com website reports that Bandai President and CEO Kazunori Ueno said on Wednesday that "there are no plans to broadcast [another Gundam] television series in 2009." Ueno was responding to a question posed during a press conference: "Will a new work be announced in 2009 to commemorate the 30th anniversary [of the Gundam robot anime franchise]?" There will be a short movie produced to mark the anniversary at August's Gundam Big Expo convention in Tokyo.

Bandai's parent company, Bandai Namco Holdings, held this press conference on Wednesday to announce the Mobile Suit Gundam 30th Anniversary Project, which consists of three phases. The "Real G" phase will erect a 18-meter-tall (59-feet-tall) "life-size" statue of the original RX-78-2 Gundam robot in Shiokaze Park on Tokyo's artificial Odaiba island. The statue will stand for two months. The "Feel G" phase will be the Gundam Big Expo, the anniversary convention which will be held from August 21 to August 23 at the Tokyo Big Sight convention center on Odaiba, just four train stops away from Shiokaze Park. Finally, the "Soul G" phase will be a Gundam 30th anniversary commemorative live concert which the promoters aim to hold in 2009. The overall theme for the anniversary project is "Always Beginning."

The Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Second Season anime project is currently airing in Japan, but it started in October of 2008 and it is scheduled to end on March 29. A new, as yet unnamed series will mark the anniversary in Kadokawa Shoten's Gundam Ace manga magazine.

Sunrise has produced event anime shorts to mark Gundam's anniversaries in the past. On the 10th anniversary of Gundam, the Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket video series and the "All That Gundam" event anime short debuted in 1989. For the 15th anniversary, Mobile Fighter G Gundam (the first Gundam anime set in a different timeline from the original Gundam series) premiered on Japanese airwaves. Sunrise marked the Gundam's 20th anniversary with its Big Bang Project, which consisted of Yoshiyuki Tomino's Turn A Gundam television series, the live-action G-Saviour television special, the theatrical versions of the Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz and Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team series, and Katsuhiro Ōtomo's Gundam: Mission to the Rise event anime short. The 25th anniversary ushered in the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam movie trilogy, the Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny sequel, and the Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO: The Hidden One Year War computer-graphics project.

Image © Sotsu, Sunrise

Update: Background information added.