The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX

Amate Yuzuriha is a high-school student living peacefully in a space colony floating in outer space. When she meets a war refugee named Nyaan, Amate is drawn into the illegal mobile suit dueling sport known as Clan Battle. Under the entry name "Machu," she throws herself into fierce battle day after day, piloting the GQuuuuuuX. Then, an unidentified Gundam mobile suit pursued by both the space force and the police appears before her, along with its pilot, a boy named Shūji.

Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is an original anime project. The anime series is streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Tuesdays.

As someone who had seen Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: Beginning several times in theaters, I had wondered if the TV version would start with the beginning of that film (i.e., chronologically) or at the point where Machu enters the picture. But when you think about it, there was only one real choice: this one.

Although starting with Machu spoils the twist that this is set in a version of the UC timeline where Zeon, not Earth, won the war, this is the first episode of a Gundam series if there ever was one. It ticks all the boxes.

To start, we get an introduction to our important characters, Machu and Nyaan, and a brief look into what makes them tick. (For Machu, it is a longing for freedom—the primal need to escape from the metal tube floating through space she was born into. For Nyaan, it is the fact that she is a war refugee trying to survive in a place where she is unwanted at best, hated at worst.) The pair is then thrown into the midst of a mobile suit battle (which they are completely unrelated to), and Machu ends up piloting the Gundam and winning her first fight.

Honestly, it's a pretty darn good episode. Machu, with her bold and decisive personality, makes for an enjoyable protagonist, even as said attitude gets her into trouble. Visually, the show looks brilliant both in and out of the mobile suits, and the way the story balances the horror of war with the coolness of big robots fighting each other is spot on for a Gundam series. The music is pretty damn catchy as well.

Of course, if you are familiar with UC Gundam anime, you're going to enjoy this one more than newbies—or even those who've watched more than a few AU Gundam titles. Knowing what a Newtype is, where Side 6 is, and who all the characters that are name-dropped throughout the episode are obviously adds to the world. However, even if you understand none of this, Machu and Nyaan's personal story of unlikely friendship is more than enough to keep you interested.

But before you watch the next episode, I have homework for you all. Go out and watch the film “Mobile Suit Gundam I”—or at least the first 30 minutes of it. Whether as a refresher or something completely new, doing even that will massively increase your enjoyment of what's to come.

I find it very interesting—but understandable—that the first twenty minutes of the GQuuuuuuX movie has seemingly been moved around to be the 2nd episode of the series. I brought my wife with me to see the film when it screened in theaters, and so can confirm that, for someone who hasn't been poisoned by decades' worth of Universal Century lore, the extended recap of an alternate-universe interpretation of the events of the original Mobile Suit Gundam was completely meaningless. I won't go into details, since newcomers can just figure out what the deal is when that portion of the film airs next week, but anyone who doesn't know should at least be informed that this series is very much rooted in knowledge of the series' inaugural chapters. Names like Char Aznoble, Amuro Ray, Challia Bull, and Kycilia Zabi are meant to mean something to you—because they clearly mean a hell of a lot to writers Yōji Enokido and Hideaki Anno.

Here's the thing, though: All of that fanservice and timeline jiggery-pokery, which will no doubt continue to thrill and tease Gundam nerds and anime oldheads, is not at all required to enjoy Gundam GQuuuuuuX. As you will most likely discern after finishing this premiere episode, GQuuuuuuX is a bold, vibrant, and confident vision for Gundam that will be perfectly capable of knocking the socks off of fans who wouldn't know a Zeon from a Zaku.

Everything about GQuuuuuuX's aesthetic is just so damned enjoyable to behold, and I'm so excited to see how playful and kinetic Studio Khara's crew can get with all of these new Mobile Suit toys to bash around in their pristine new space-colony settings. Now that he has been freed from the shackles of Anno's fifteen-year-long Rebuild of Evangelion gauntlet, Kazuya Tsurumaki finally has the chance to flex some of those old FLCL muscles and remind the world that he is one of the all-time greats when it comes to crafting deliriously fun animated spectacle.

The story seems capable of living up to Khara's cinematic production values, too. I love protagonist Machu as our second official Gundam heroine. She is the polar opposite of The Witch from Mercury's Suletta in almost every way—except perhaps for her preternatural Gundam piloting abilities—but Machu's aggressive, revolutionary attitude towards the Zeon-dominated world she lives in feels quite fitting for the times. Would that we could all bump into a hot stranger girl in the middle of a train station and end up embroiled in a world of military conspiracy and live-streamed Gundam death matches. It is hard for me to say with certainty how this premiere will play for the uninitiated, but I have to imagine that any fan with even a passing interest in Mobile Suit Gundam will celebrate GQuuuuuuX as an exciting new chapter for one of the industry's most venerated franchises.

Hello, I will be your reviewer who hasn't seen the original Gundam series commenting on the newest Gundam, Gquuuuuux. I'm afraid my Gundam mainstay is Gundam Wing, although I did read the manga of the original Gundam when it was first released in English. All of this is to say that I simply don't have the background knowledge that would reveal the Easter eggs I'm assured are present here – but despite that, I had a good time with this introductory episode. (As a note, the theater run of the first three episodes never made it to my town.)

There's an intriguing mix of heady action and plot setup here. Our heroine, whose name I don't think was mentioned, is fully aware of the oddity of her situation. She knows that her world is artificial, that the “sky” is actually beneath her, and that the gravity that binds her to the surface is false. This knowledge doesn't seem entirely comfortable for her. Nonetheless, it is a piece of her everyday life, an understanding that just is until she gets kicked over by a girl jumping the turnstiles at the train station. She's knocked off balance in more than one way by this encounter, especially since the girl, either accidentally or on purpose, leaves an installer key in the redhead's backpack. When she looks it up online, she realizes that it's what allows civilian-flown mobile suits to use weapons, and from that point on, her day-to-day life is altered.

Some of the elements of this story are fairly pat. We know that the girl will be able to activate the psycommu system in the Quuuuuux Gundam because its official pilot, Xavier, can't. Naturally, the military police will try to destroy the strange mobile suit in its territory because that's what they do. And the specter of the past war with Zeon, to say nothing of Char, will hang over every action and thought the commanders of Quuuuux will have because nothing is so dangerous as nostalgia, especially when war heroes are involved. It doesn't matter who can make the psycommu system work, as long as it does.

I don't love the character designs for this, particularly our heroine's; there's something a bit too squished about her face for comfort. But the freewheeling images of mobile suits spinning through the air are excellent, and the dark color scheme gives the impression of both outer space and the weight of the past. The English dub is also pretty good, sounding natural without being too faithful to the subtitles, and my only real sticking point is that “psycommu” is still said with the “u” at the end; I would have thought in English it would be pronounced as “psycomm,” which would be more natural.

I fully expect that people with more Gundam experience will get more out of this episode than I did, and it wouldn't be my first suggestion for an entry point into the franchise. But it's still fast-paced and engaging, so if you don't mind missing a few bits and pieces, it's worth checking out.