Created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, it premiered in Japan on Nagoya Broadcasting Network and its affiliated ANN stations on April 7, 1979, and lasted until January 26, 1980, spanning 43 episodes.

Set in the futuristic calendar year "Universal Century" 0079, the plot focuses on the war between the Principality of Zeon and the Earth Federation, with the latter unveiling a new giant robot known as the RX-78-2 Gundam piloted by the teenage civilian mechanic Amuro Ray.

Despite initial low ratings that caused the series' cancellation, the popularity of Gundam saw a boost from the introduction of Bandai's Gunpla models in 1980 and from reruns and the theatrical release of the anime, leading to the creation of a prolific and lucrative media and toy franchise.

The series is famous for revolutionizing the giant robot genre due to the handling of mobile suits as weapons of war, as well as the portrayal of their pilots as ordinary soldiers.

A Zeon reconnaissance team member disobeys mission orders and attacks the colony, killing most of the Federation crew and civilians in the process.

Out of desperation, young Amuro Ray accidentally finds the Federation's new prototype arsenal—the RX-78 Gundam, and manages to beat back Zeon forces.

Tomino still held a grudge 10 years after the show aired and stated in an interview in Newtype 1989 April issue that the imaginary enemies of Gundam are Sunrise, sponsors and television stations.

Hoping to capitalize on the success of Gundam Wing from the previous year, Bandai Entertainment released a heavily edited and English-dubbed version of Mobile Suit Gundam, premiering on Cartoon Network's Toonami weekday afternoon after-school action programming block across the United States on Monday, July 23, 2001.

Due to 9-11, Cartoon Network, like many other American TV stations, began pulling, and editing, war-themed content and violent programming, resulting in the cancellation of the series.

[9] On Saturday, June 8, 2002, the series would later air on their late-night Adult Swim block, starting over from the first episode, but it was again pulled before completing its run because of low ratings.

[10] There was no Japanese audio track included, apparently because Yoshiyuki Tomino felt that the original mono mix was in too poor of a condition to use.

In the novel Amuro Ray is killed in the final attack against the Zeonic stronghold of A Baoa Qu when his RX-78-3 is pierced through the torso by a Rick Dom's beam bazooka.

This occurs as Char's unit attempts to warn him about Gihren's intention to destroy the fortress and take the Federation's offensive fleet along with it.

Since the rights holders in Japan by this time had created a unified (although still evolving) list of romanized character and mecha names, Schodt was able to use it, and Amuro's rival in the novel thus became "Char" and not "Sha"; the popular Zeon Mobile Suit, similarly, became "Zaku," and not "Zak".

[19] Following the success of the Mobile Suit Gundam TV series, in 1981 Tomino reworked the footage into three separate compilation films.

These are also available only with re-done Japanese audio with English subtitles, the DVDs identical to the 20th anniversary release of the film compilation in Japan.

Bandai Visual has announced the re-release of the Mobile Suit Gundam films on DVD from new HD masters and with the original, theatrical, mono audio mix.

Besides adaptations, there is a popular parody yonkoma manga titled Mobile Suit Gundam-san, which was written and drawn by Hideki Ohwada and serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Gundam Ace magazine since 2001.

Ohwada also created a spinoff manga, Gundam Sousei (ガンダム創世), which follows Yoshiyuki Tomino and the Sunrise staff as they work to make the television series and the compilation films.

This series was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Gundam Ace magazine from 2009 to 2011 and compiled in the Gundam-san tankōbon starting in Volume 5.

Of these, the following have been released in North America: Games that have been unreleased in countries outside Japan[citation needed] include: Gundam was not popular when it first aired, and in fact came close to being cancelled.

[32] When Bandai bought the copyrights to build plastic models for the show's mecha, which was a relatively new market compared to the old Chogokin series Clover was making, things changed completely.

[40] By the end of 2007, each episode of the original TV series averaged a sales figure of 80,928 copies, including all of the different formats it was published in (VHS, LD, DVD, etc.).

John Oppliger observes that the characters of Amuro Ray, to whom the young Japanese of that time could easily relate, and Char Aznable, who was "simply [...] fascinating", made a major contribution to the series' popularity.

[48][49] Mecha anime creator Shoji Kawamori attended Keio University in the same years as Macross screenwriter Hiroshi Ōnogi and character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto, where they had a Mobile Suit Gundam fan club called "Gunsight One", a name they would use years later as the call sign of the bridge of the SDF-1 spaceship from their first Macross anime television series.

In fact, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross mecha anime series was inspired by Gundam in several aspects during its early development.

[51] American musician Richie Kotzen, former guitarist from Poison and Mr. Big, released an album called Ai Senshi ZxR in 2006 in Japan.

The positions in which the colonies (sides) are located in orbit are called Lagrangian points, and are real world solutions to the three-body problem.

Set during the final chaotic Battle of A Baoa Qu, Gundam the Ride places its riders in an Escape Launch Shuttle about to leave the battleship Suruga.

Instead of sitting in a movable cockpit and watching a CG movie, it requires participants to carry handheld devices throughout the attraction to find certain pieces of information, similar to a scavenger hunt, in order to activate the Gundam.