Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (機動戦士Ζガンダム, Kidō Senshi Zēta Gandamu?) (aired 1985–1986) is a television anime, part of the Gundam series and a sequel to the original Mobile Suit Gundam. The show was created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, with character designs by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, while the series' mechanical designs is split amongst Kunio Okawara, Mamoru Nagano, and Kazumi Fujita. The series was originally aired by Nagoya Broadcasting Network (and its sister ANN stations), rerun on the anime satellite television network, Animax, across Japan and later its respective networks worldwide, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and other regions.

Between 2005 to 2006, the series was reproduced and compiled into a movie trilogy, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: A New Translation. Though still directed by Tomino, it involved many changes in the original storyline.

Plot summary

Set in a fictional universe in the Universal Century year 0087, eight years after the story told in Mobile Suit Gundam(0079), a group called AEUG secretly emerges from the Earth Federation and Zeon remnants. Their primary goal is to put an end to the actions of the Titans, the elite taskforce of the Earth Federation which was originally established to hunt down Zeon remnants but ruthlessly kills anyone demanding equal rights for the space citizens.

The story of Zeta Gundam is told through the viewpoint of Kamille Bidan, a civilian teenager and amateur mobile suit pilot whose parents are engineers working for the Earth Federation and the Titans. While traveling to the colony Green Noa to meet his parents, Kamille is insulted by and strikes a Titans officer, Jerid Messa. Following an AEUG attack led by Quattro Bajeena on the colony to capture the newly developed trio of Gundam Mk-II mobile suits being tested in Green Noa, Kamille takes the opportunity to steal Messa's Mk-II to repel the attack and follows Quattro back to Argama, the mothership of the AEUG. When the Titans take civilian hostages -including Kamille's parents- in an attempt to force the return of the stolen Gundam Mk-II's, Jerid, unaware of the hostage plot, mistakenly kills them, leading Kamille to join the AEUG to fight against Titans.

As the war escalates, Kamille encounters people from all sides of the conflict, including brainwashed artificial Newtypes of Titans and the giant corporation leaders of Anaheim Electronics who are secretly funding AEUG. The AEUG eventually launch a full-scale attack on the Earth Federation's assembly at Dakar, leading to an Earth Sphere civil war. Quattro reveals himself to be Char Aznable and presents evidence of the Titans' tyranny including using a nerve gas called G3 on a defenseless colony. The Earth Federation court soon rules the Titans' actions to be illegal and backs the AEUG in hunting down Titans leader Jamitov Hymem.

After losing the support from the Earth Federation, the Titans turn to their original enemy, remnants of the Principality of Zeon now known as Axis Zeon, in an effort to form an alliance to regain control of the Earth Sphere. Axis Zeon's leader Haman Karn contacts the AEUG, using the civil war of the Earth Federation at hand to politically ask for the control of Side 3, the former Zeon colony.

Axis involvement and Jamitov's assassination by the Jupiter fleet's leader Paptimus Scirocco soon lead to a battle to gain control of the colony headquarters of the Titans, Gryps, which has been modified to be a colony laser. The war ends when Kamille, piloting the titular mobile suit Z Gundam, kills Scirocco in battle and the AEUG sinks Scirocco's flagship and most of the Titans' fleet.

The series concludes with both the AEUG and Earth Federation, after suffering considerable losses over the course of the war facing the full force of Axis Zeon, leading into Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ.